One of my favorite passages in the bible centers around David. I love stories about David. He seems tangible to me. I love his passion and his on-again-off-again excitement/enthusiasm/belief/reliance on God. I love that the ageless God told Samuel that he was going to anoint a man after His own heart while David was still a boy. I love that David surrounded himself with a ragged group of outcasts who became his mighty men of valor -warriors of the highest skill and magnitude. I love that David was the kind of guy who the down and out were drawn to and followed. I love that David was courageous enough to step into the ring with giants, and humble enough to be dissuaded from killing a man by a contrite woman's offering. I'm encouraged by Old Testament typology, because David gives me a handle to wrestle with the humanity of Christ. Not in his egregious sins, but in his loyalty, his passion, his heart...
One day David was contemplating how he could serve the Lord. The young king David filled his days with dreams of how he could do something for this God who had set him apart and called him out.
"I know," effuses our boyish monarch, "I'll build him a house!!" For the Lord of heaven had chosen to dwell in a tent. The creator of stars and galaxies, the dreamer-maker of Leviathan and the majestic cedars of Lebanon had condescended to live among His people in a purple tent so that He could be near them and hear them when they cried in the night. The guileless David, innocent and pure before God, somehow understood that such a great majesty deserved a home, a true, beautiful, elaborate home. An edifice that would speak of the grandeur and glory of the God who was among His chosen ones. But alas, David could not be that man. For he was a man who had spilled blood. A home and a temple for the God of the ages couldn't be built by a man with destruction in His past. (aside: this bothered me for awhile. Especially as a young man, David did God's bidding. He killed the enemies of God at God's behest. It seemed a cruel twist of fate that God would somehow hold this against David. As we find out, God makes it up to him.)
Through a trusted friend and God listener, God passes the word on to David, "I have been with you wherever you have gone, and I have destroyed all your enemies. Now I will make your name famous throughout the earth..." God honored David.
David responds in what seems like the only appropriate way, glorious in its authentic simplicity. Samuel simply notes that "David sat before the Lord..."
In light of what God was doing, in the presence of God's denial of David's dream and implantation of one far greater, David sat. He took a posture of rest and adulation.
I've never really understood the idea of resting in the Lord. I don't know how to rest and move at the same time. I don't know how to be on a mission, and hide in the shadow of His wings, yet I'm confronted with just that charge. My constant tendency is to be on the go, figuring that I'll get what I need as long as I'm heading the right direction... so sitting before the Lord is a luxury that I haven't often enough afforded myself.
But with a new baby who doesn't sleep much... I'm captured by this metaphor of rest. I have dreams for my little man. I dream that he will someday be like Samuel when the scripture says, "The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground." There's not much that I can do to further that purpose right now. Jackson's still more at the puke on my hand as I burp him phase. But in the morning hours, when my heart hurts with the lack of sleep... I find myself being drawn to the stories of people sitting before the Lord.
I'd like to sit with the rest metaphor for awhile. I need to spend a little bit of time in the shadow of the wings of the Almighty.
"Resting in your presence, is all I really long for... and I, want to be more like you."
- Rita Springer, "Resting"
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