Offering Margin

One of the first things I learned as a budding freelance writer was that editors want generous margins on everything they read. They want them for the same reasons our teachers in school wanted them on our homework papers, businesspeople use them on invoices and proposals, books have them on every page, and even websites try to provide them.

Margins make a paper look better. A marginless paper is unpleasant and intimidating to the eye. In effect, words that run to the edge of a paper scream, “I had even more to say but no space to say it!” And furthermore…“No room for your comment!”

Margins, on the other hand, bring a sort of quiet order to our presentation. They showcase our work in a silent white frame, putting boundaries around our words and setting them off in an attractive and organized fashion. They show that we thought through what we had to say, completed our thoughts, and are awaiting response.

Margins also give the reader room to respond – to write notes to themselves or others involved in the communication process, or to the author himself. These might be notes of affirmation or suggestion or correction (one common editorial note, so I’ve read, is the acronym MEGO – “My Eyes Glaze Over” - indicating the editor was less than captivated while reading the material submitted!).

The Lord reminded me through Keith on Sunday that even my quiet times need margin - time set aside to listen for His voice, His opinion about my prayer concerns, His interpretation of His Word, His guidance for my daily life - whatever He wants to say. Margins will make my time with God more inviting to Him. They’ll say, “Enough from me. I’m making room for Your response. What You have to say is more important anyway.”

Those moments of quietness – when we zip our lip and just wait on God – allow the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit to penetrate our noisy hearts and hectic minds. We may never audibly hear anything, but realization dawns, a kind of knowing comes to us, and we begin to understand what His Word means, or begin to glimpse His perspective on a situation we’re wrestling with, or begin to grasp what needs to change in our lives.

That’s God, writing in the margins of our lives. Responding in the quiet space. Affirming, suggesting, correcting, revealing Himself to us. And have you noticed that sometimes the conundrums we agonize over and pray about for days are solved by a brief whisper from God? How much we can shorten our struggles by stopping to listen to Him! How easily we can please Him by waiting for His perfect Word for our lives! Yet how prone we are to talk and talk and talk and talk… until, if He were not the perfect Gentleman that He is, the Holy Spirit would write “MEGO” across our quiet time with Him.

Margin. Even just 5 minutes a day. Offer it to God in your next quiet time, and the next and the next… Who knows what He will write there!