Better is one day...

It's been a few days since I've read my Bible.  Between being sick, and sleep deprivation, and having to work lots of extra hours at work, I have had neither the energy nor the time.  But this morning I woke up and realized just how much I missed spending time with the Lord.

I can give you testimonies of times in my life when I have been really close to God.  We talked every day, He was moving in my life, I was trusting in Him in everything....man, we were tight.  I can also, however, give you plenty of other examples of times when we were not so close.  I ignored Him, I put other things ahead of spending time with Him, I made every excuse I could think of to not read the Bible and pray and talk to Him.

And there really is such a huge, stark difference between those two times, between days that I spend time with Lord and the days that I don't.  Take this morning, for instance.  After I woke up and realized how much I missed God, I made a point to sit down and really read His word, really talk to Him, something I hadn't done in nearly a week.  And it's amazing the difference that just a little bit of time with the Lord can have on your day.

Last week I was stressed, exhausted, grumpy, and short with everyone around me.  But today, everything seems so much easier.  Students struggling make me want to help them, not fuss at them.  Teachers not communicating with cause smiles of resignation, rather than endless frustration.  And today, even my most difficult classes seem to be behaving so much better than usual.

I wonder if the Psalmist had had a similar experience to mine, when he said that a day in the house of the Lord is better than a thousand days without Him.  Because it seems to me, that spending time with the Lord not only makes your time with Him better - it even makes the time that you are away from Him better.  Indeed, especially after the week I've had without God, I'd take a day with Him over a thousand without Him in a second.

Psalm 84:10-12

10 Better is one day in your courts

    than a thousand elsewhere;

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God

    than dwell in the tents of the wicked.

11 For the Lord God is a sun and shield; 

    the Lord bestows favor and honor;

no good thing does he withhold 

    from those whose walk is blameless.

12 Lord Almighty blessed is the one who trusts in you.

Dwell in Him

It's amazing to me how God's word lines up with what's going on in my life.  My friends' loss of their home has been laying very heavy on my heart.  And today, I opened up my Bible to Psalm 84.  The first verse says, "How lovely is Your dwelling place, O LORD Almighty."  Verse four then follows that up by saying "blessed are those who dwell in Your house."  A little bit later, in verse 5, it says that "blessed are those whose strength is in You."  To me, that really hit home.  Even if we have lost our own home, we can find strength in God and rest in His home.  He will take care of us.  That's hard to believe when I look at photos of the devastation in Alabama.  Entire neighborhoods are completely flattened, reduced to piles of rubbish and strewn lumber.  Hundreds of people have been killed, sometimes entire families.  How can God take care of someone through that?  The simple answer to that is....I don't know.  But He can.  He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it (Philippians 1:6).  Even though life doesn't make sense, that's a promise that we can take to the bank.

Psalm 84:1-7

How lovely is your dwelling place, LORD Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, 

where she may have her young—a place near your altar, 

LORD Almighty, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they are ever praising you.

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, whose hearts are set on pilgrimage. 

As they pass through the Valley of Baka, they make it a place of springs; 

the autumn rains also cover it with pools.
They go from strength to strength, till each appears before God in Zion.