“…moreover, I tell you that the Lord will build a house for you.” – I Chr. 17:10
David wanted to build the Lord a house, but the Lord said no. Instead that He would build a house for David. David’s agenda was not God’s agenda. Would he submit to what God wanted? what He would do? It would be better, it would be different. But more glory would go out. The reason David wanted to build God a house in the first place… to honor and glorify Him, to display His greatness. Instead God would display His greatness not through a place (though he still allowed), but through a person. The place would only serve to further shed light on the person that was to come. And that person would not be clothed with extravagant curtains and furnishings but with thorns and blood, his backdrop a cross. Its never the way we think it will be. Our ideas are rarely the best.
I feel much like David in even how I prayed for Sophie and Dasah. “But Lord, your honor and glory going out for all to see would be best displayed with a miraculous healing. But it would not be that way. It would be though death, through pain, through loss that your greatness would be on display. Lord, I have lots of ideas still of how your glory could be most seen. But let me bend a knee to hear from you, to listen to your voice above my own.”
I sat at the girls gravesite the other day. I got my hands dirty as I rinsed their headstones. I wish it was cleaning dirty diapers and the exasperation that comes with the girls playing in dirt or mud or covering themselves in markers. Jaden will no doubt bring me all those joys. And I’ll have to remember in those moments that I just called them joys no doubt. But that day by the gravesite, I was missing getting to experience those moments with the girls. So, I got on my knees and used my hands and got them all dirty as I took a hose that seemed to be just placed their for me and cleaned off their headstones. I still don’t understand why they aren’t here. Why I have 2 baby girls whose bodies are buried in the ground and I know who live with Christ now. Sometimes heaven seems so far away. I listened to a song as I left that spoke of the Lord’s return, the resurrection. Sitting at their resurrection site, I’m reminded all over again that one day it will all make sense. And it will be clear how much better His plan was. And we will dwell in His house, with the person of Jesus Christ. Let us press on to surrender to His plans above our own.
“How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the path of sinners, nor sit in the seat of scoffers! But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and in His law he meditates day and night. He will be like a tree firmly planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in its season and its leaf does not wither; and in whatever he does, he prospers.” – Psalm 1:1,2 (emphasis mine)
What does it look like to mediate on God’s word, to allow it to sink into our soul and lift our eyes to who God is and what He has called us too? I often write personal responses to God’s word in my time with him and I’ve decided to invite you into those responses, some current, some from the past few years. I pray that as God has spoken to my heart through His word, so He may use some of these passages to speak to your heart, to cause you to look at His word afresh and perhaps revitalize your own meditation on God’s word. So every Monday look for a new morning meditation!
- A Time to be Silent and a Time to Speak - October 29, 2020
- Teaching Them to Hope, Birthday After Birthday. - January 15, 2020
- A Taste of Hope Fulfilled – Briella Dawn’s Birth Story - August 3, 2018
