Keep to the human scale

A few minutes of restful encouragement for your weekday

Years ago, when our family moved to Austin from our small upstate New York hometown, I took a crash course in the hospitality of city infrastructure (or lack thereof). The lesson embedded itself so thoroughly that it became a foundational metaphor for The Spacious Path, the book I wrote about practicing the restful way of Jesus in a fragmented world. Wherever I talk about the book, I hear from many folks concerned that the title “Spacious Path” sounds more like the “broad road” Jesus warns against in the gospel of Matthew than the path of life the psalmist talks about.

Despite that, and maybe even because of that, I chose the title Spacious Path on purpose. Spaciousness is embedded in the Hebrew etymology of many beautiful scripture passages, and the idea of a path evokes the path of life the psalmist celebrates. Even without the scriptural context, we find meaning in the ontology of a path as compared to a road. A path’s pathiness is significantly more conducive to restful rhythms tha…