A Redesigned Life By Tracy SteelSample

Day Two

White Space

Design Principle to ponder: Emphasis

Principle helps us: remember God’s not calling us to be all things to all people, but to embrace the pops of color he gives us so others can see him clearly whenever life doesn’t go as planned.

I love simple and elegant design. We’ve all seen pictures of a living room with its crisp white walls and cream sofa. Imagine a coffee table in the middle of that living room. On top of the table sits a glass vase filled with a bouquet of orange tulips or powder blue hydrangeas. Our eyes are drawn to the flowers because of the pop of color they provide among all the white. This is the essence of emphasis as a design principle. Emphasis makes us stop, helping us focus. 

Imagine the same living room but now everything in it is red—from the couch to the walls to the flowers to the rug. I don’t want to linger or enjoy the space because it’s overwhelming and nothing grabs my attention. There’s too much red. Nothing is emphasized. 

In the same way, our world is pressing us to be like an all-red room. We must be all things to all people all the time, it seems. Good at everything. Involved in everything. I’m tired of the pressure, the striving, the competition. Give me some white space, please. I need God to give me emphasis and so do you.

God is not asking us to be all things to all people all the time. He’s the one who is capable of doing and being this. We’re only to add our little pop of color into the corner of the world in which he places us. We do this through the emphasis that God has designed for each of us. If we’re not careful, though, we can become busy listening to ourselves rather than allowing God to reveal our emphasis. 

The beautiful thing is, all our emphases or callings will look different. However different they may be, our little pops of color should cause others to rest the eyes of their hearts and minds upon God. And if we are doing too many things, we will be way too red or stressed out; our dark side will surface, and no one will want to linger around us either.

Instead, let’s seek the peace of God’s white space, and the beauty of our own gifting or pops of color so that when God prompts us we can pop for him instead of poop out on him.

What might you need to say no to right now in order to allow more white space in your life?