The ringing phone woke me up yesterday morning after I’d been up quite late the night before, unable to sleep. Even without glasses, I could see that the person on caller ID was someone I knew. When she began to speak, I knew her voice immediately.

She introduced herself and told me she had been reading, as part of her morning quiet time, a meditation in The Secret Place. She noticed the author was from the same city and state she lived in, so decided to look the author up in the phone book and give her a call.

The author was me.

All the time she was talking, I assumed she knew to whom she was speaking; then she asked me what church I attended. To her surprise, we attend the same church. In fact, three weeks ago, I sat next to her and her husband in the back row.

“Oh, now I know you,” she said. “I just didn’t connect the last name with your first name.” We chatted some more and then  rang off, saying something like, “See you Sunday.”

I wondered later if she said to herself, “Small World,” as many would be prone to do considering the circumstances. The idiom seems to fit because you feel like the world keeps bringing people into your life that were there all the time, unbeknownst to you.

But I say, “What a Big, Big World.”

Since I decided to follow Christ, He’s enlarged my space. In fact, He’s given me the whole world. By introducing me to the people of His Church, my “family” increased immediately.

He also gives me the world He wants to save. I’m warned to not conform to the world and its standards, but encouraged to remember what the darkness was like. From that attitude, I’m more able to see people who need Christ’s love shown to them just as I did (and still do).

With Jesus, I have a new relationship with the world which takes into consideration His agenda for saving those He loves and helping to bring them into a relationship with Him. “Go,” Christ says, into the world He created.

Formerly, my life reflected worldly values and behavior. That was a Small Space in which to live. I have to admit the temptations of the world are always there. But now, my fruitful life includes everyone I meet on the path God’s put me on. Each of them challenges me in some way to walk more closely with Christ, becoming a little more like Him every day.