Sabbath Longing - Psalm 27:4

Today is Palm Sunday. I don’t fast for Lent but, by this point in time, I imagine that those who do are really beginning to crave chocolate. There is something about abstinence  - forced or voluntary - which makes us hunger and thirst for the thing we are lacking. As they say, ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’. The new highlight of my day is the 30 minutes exercise and essential shopping trip. In normal times we might try to avoid the menial chores  (“It’s your turn, I did it yesterday”) but it will probably not be long before my wife and I are competing over who gets to go and buy the milk! Granted this is all pretty mundane but you don’t need to be locked inside for too long before you start appreciating little tastes of the freedoms we normally take for granted.

Psalm 27 describes one of the times when David was stuck in the wilderness being hunted like an animal by his enemies. It would have been completely natural for him to start craving his bed, missing his family, and praying to God for protection and deliverance. But he did not focus on these things because his heart was set on something else. The one thing he felt most keenly was the inability to enjoy the normal spiritual and religious activities which, at that time, were closely tied to the formal temple-based worship of God in Jerusalem. So David wrote:

4 

One thing I ask from the Lord,

    this only do I seek:

that I may dwell in the house of the Lord

    all the days of my life,

to gaze on the beauty of the Lord

    and to seek him in his temple.

Not the longed-for security of his own house, but the freedom to dwell in God’s house. Not the beauty of the wife he was no doubt missing but the preeminent beauty of God. This was on public display in Jerusalem, reflected in the majestic glory of the temple, the temple sacrifices which were pictures of mercy, the reading and explanation of the Scriptures where God’s voice was heard, and the communal response of prayer and praise offered by gathered worshippers.

What do you long for most? What is the one thing you are asking from God at this time? Christians have the wonderful freedom of worshipping God in the Spirit anywhere and at any time. It is an amazing thing that we are united in Christ by the Holy Spirit even as we worship God in our own homes through services broadcast over the internet. But in more normal times as Christians we deliberately gather together to worship. We have God’s command “do not forsake meeting together”. We have a confident expectation that God will speak through His Word in the context of Christian community. And we have Christ’s promise that, ‘where two or three are gathered in His name’, He is spiritually present at the centre of the meeting.

In leading us through this experience of isolation Jesus may be teaching us some important lessons. Are we listening and learning? Three thoughts:

1. When this is over, we will have a greater felt sympathy for Christians who are prevented from ever meeting together because of political restrictions, persecution, imprisonment, or long term illness.

2. Rather than becoming content with this abnormal situation, and finding satisfaction in internet sermons etc. like David we should aim to develop a sense of longing and pray that nothing would hinder the restoration of God’s normal ‘means of grace’.

3. Realising that even the normal spiritual provisions of this life can be taken away from us very easily should stir a longing for heaven’s eternal Sabbath, where nothing will be able to prevent each Christians full engagement in the corporate praise and worship of God.

David didn’t waste his enforced isolation but turned even that into an act of prayer and devotion. What a challenging and encouraging example to follow!