My Dwelling Place
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Psalm 90:1-2
1. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations. 2. Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting thou art God.
Psalm 91:1-2
1. He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High, who abides in the shadow of the Almighty, 2. will say to the Lord, "My refuge and my fortress; my God, in whom I trust."
I suppose that opening first thing this morning to scripture about a “dwelling place” is not really that surprising! We have been in our new house 1 week plus a day as of this morning! We are certainly enjoying our new house, yard, garage, but most especially we enjoy our new deck. It’s right off the kitchen and we’ve had breakfast there more than once – and lunch and dinner several times, too! I sat out there this morning, in fact, as my new “space” isn’t quite ready for me to go “live” yet. The sun was up, and rising in the sky, it was just the right temperature, and our back yard is like a park—lots of birds, squirrels, trees, and bushes. Did I mention I really love our deck?!
We’ve learned some lessons through this process, too. We’ve discovered, much to our dismay, that we have accumulated way, way too much “stuff.” And we’re not even sure what a lot of it is! Our new garage is more than ½ full of “stuff.” Last night after I planted some flowers, I walked into the garage and immediately came up with three boxes slated for the dump! Really, three! My daughter sat out there for several hours sorting through the boxes that hold her memories and treasures and discovered that she, too, had a great big trash box! Even our son, who is very sentimental and hangs on to absolutely everything, declared last Saturday, after about 10 hours of non-stop packing and moving, that he didn’t want anything else left in the house or his room! He was tired of moving and no wonder he had such poor organizational skills! Who could be organized with all this stuff!?
I also read quite a few verses about idol worship this morning! But I decided to focus on the idea of God being our true dwelling place. No matter where we live, no matter if we sit on a deck early in the morning, or at the kitchen table in our efficiency apartment, our one true dwelling place is God and His love! His shelter is spacious and expansive! It’s miles and miles of woods without mosquitoes; it’s hours and hours of wandering over mountains with no jagged rocks to cut your feet, it’s perfect in every way – with enough room for everyone. We love our new house. But more than that, we love our Lord. We thank him every day for placing us in this new home that was filled with love by the previous owners.
Our dwelling place is our Lord. We have been reminded of that truth throughout this past week. His love never breaks, never gets scratched or dented. His love is true and sure, and never fails us. All this stuff is just “stuff” and it gets in the way of living. We’re doing a lot of unburdening ourselves of stuff as we go through boxes. We’re getting rid of a lot of stuff. We don’t want any more idols in our lives! We don’t want anything to get in the way of dwelling in the shelter of the Most High. (O.K., honestly, we will keep some stuff we don’t really need . . . we’re not that far along in the process yet!)
It feels good to be back on track! It feels good to share my life lessons with my friends. It feels good to be reminded that God is my dwelling place throughout all eternity!
I hope today as you leave your earthly dwelling place, you’ll remember that the dwelling place of the Lord is ever present and sure. And that you’ll invite some guests in to His house today.
Mary
