Capacious

Often a word I hear catches my attention and kind of rolls around in my brain for days, like a marble that keeps spiraling around a bowl. The latest roll-around word is “capacious.” I heard it in Krista Tippett’s interview of Kate DiCamillo, a children’s book author. Krista says:

When you won your second Newbery Medal, in 2014, in the acceptance speech, you talked about the word “capacious.” And it feels like a word we need right now — maybe always, but certainly now, and that we should be teaching our children the word “capacious.”…  So you said, in that roomful of librarians and, I’m sure, writers, readers, for sure: “We have been given the sacred task of making hearts large through story. We are working to make hearts that are capable of containing much joy and much sorrow, hearts capacious enough to contain the complexities and mysteries … of ourselves and of each other.”

When I heard it, I thought, if indeed God holds us all in his hands, what capacious hands they must be. I thought of the image you often see with the song, “He’s got the Whole World in His Hands.” 

Capacious means roomy, spacious, capable of holding much, having a lot of space, and able to contain a lot, according to various sources on Google, synonymous with big, generous, vast, huge, immense. Once again, the hugeness of God and the smallness of me makes me marvel at his love.

God’s love is big enough to absorb whatever you’re feeling, generous enough to take it if you’re sad, disappointed, or angry, vast enough to encompass anything that comes your way, huge enough to hold you and everything and everyone that touches your life. May you know, feel, and be comforted by his infinite, immense, capacious love.