One Room, Four Walls and an Open Door

The room was about the size of a small bedroom, which is what it had been before the landlord added a lock to the door and a hotplate on a shelf. A single bed pushed against one wall. A plastic wardrobe with a zip that stuck. A window looking onto the neighbour’s water tank. For two years that was where a young nurse, newly arrived in the city, cooked, studied, prayed and cried.

Many of us have lived in a room like that. Some of us still do: a back room in a relative’s house in Spanish Town, a shared flat in Brixton with a rota on the fridge, a basement in Toronto with a window at pavement level. And many more live in seasons that feel like that room, when life has shrunk to a few square feet of possibility and every direction seems to end at a wall.

Letters from a small place

Several of the most hopeful letters in the New Testament were written by a man under guard. Paul wrote to the Colossians asking them to pray that God would open a door for the message he carried, and he mentioned, almost in passing, that he was in chains for it (Colossians 4:3). To the Philippians he wrote that he had learned to be content in whatever state he found himself, whether he had plenty or was in need (Philippians 4:11-12).

What strikes me is that Paul does not pretend the chains are not there. He names them. He does not call confinement a blessing in disguise or insist he is secretly enjoying it. He simply refuses to let the size of the room decide the size of his hope. He keeps praying for an open door, and in the meantime he writes, teaches and encourages people from exactly where he is.

The temptation to live in the waiting room

When we live in a place we did not choose and do not like, it is easy to treat it as a waiting room. We do not unpack properly. We do not hang pictures, because we will not be here long. We do not invite anyone round, because we are embarrassed. We tell ourselves that life will start when we get the flat, the house, the job, the visa.

Sometimes that season lasts a few months. Sometimes it lasts years. And a life spent postponing itself can become very thin.

Contentment, in the biblical sense, is not the same as giving up on change. Paul still prayed for doors to open. It is closer to a settled refusal to let circumstances rob you of today. The nurse in the small room was saving hard and looking for something better the whole time. But she also learned, eventually, to live in the room rather than merely endure it.

Making a small space a home

Some of this is practical. People who have lived well in small rented spaces often mention the same simple things:

• Keep less, and keep it tidy. A small room with a clear floor feels larger and calmer than a bigger room piled with boxes.
• Give each corner a purpose. A shelf that is only for prayer and reading. A hook that is only for work clothes. Order helps the mind as well as the room.
• Bring in something living. A pot of mint on the windowsill or a small plant by the bed makes a rented space feel cared for.
• Look after it as if it were yours. Report the leak, wipe down the damp corner, keep on good terms with the landlord. Stewardship does not only apply to property you own.
• Let someone in. One friend on the bed and one on the chair, a pot of tea, a plate of bulla and cheese. Hospitality has never depended on square footage.

Doors we cannot yet see

The open door Paul prayed for was not, in the first instance, a way out of prison. It was an opportunity to do meaningful work from inside it. That is a helpful reframing for anyone in a small season. The question is not only “When will I get out of here?” but also “What can I do, and who can I be, while I am here?”

The nurse used her two years in that room to finish a qualification in the evenings. She befriended the elderly woman in the main house, who had no family nearby and began leaving a plate of food at her door on Sundays. When she finally moved into a one-bedroom flat of her own, she found she missed that back room more than she had expected. It had been small. It had not been wasted.

If your room feels too small today

You are allowed to want more space, more privacy, a place with your own name on the lease or the title. Those are good things to pray and plan for, and there is no virtue in pretending otherwise. But you are also allowed to start living now. To make the bed, water the plant, invite a friend, read by the window, and trust that the God who met Paul in chains is not confined by the size of your walls.

Four walls can hold a life. Sometimes they hold the most important part of one.

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