Where Do I Live?

As I begin this new series on Psalm 91, I’m reminded that I love words. It must be related to the writer’s heart God has placed within me. I have had this strange relationship with words even as a child. I would learn a new word or focus on one I already knew and see how many words I could make out of the letters. Then I would use the word in as many ways as my young mind could conceive. Even now, sometimes, I meditate on a word and its meaning for a few hours.

As I matured, this habit stretched itself to where I find myself reflecting on a word for a few days. In one instance, I spent some of my quiet time for a few weeks concentrating on the word “pressed” from Paul’s writing in Philippians 3. For the last few days, I have found myself meditating on the term “Whoever.”

In a culture that claims it wants unity and inclusiveness, I find it ironic that more and more, it seems folks are marginalized into categories. Society demonstrates interest in whether I am right or left, white or black or Hispanic, or non (whatever that implies). The pandemic has also fostered this. We find ourselves masked or unmasked and certainly, vaccinated or non-vaccinated. (By the way, I am vaccinated. And no, I don’t feel it was a renunciation of my faith in Christ to take it.)

But what a refreshing for my spirit to rise above these mere mortal temporal challenges and allow myself to be engulfed in the all-encompassing invitational love of God as He speaks in Psalm 91.

The Lord starts with a beautiful word that I have come to love, “Whoever.” Not only is it a lovely word, but it is an important one. It appears in other forms like ‘whosoever‘ and comes up over 500 times in 12 translations of the Bible. This means inclusivity! He, in His very nature, is a come one, come all God. His desire is for all, not just a chosen few, to experience a relationship with Him. That relationship is through Christ when we ask and receive His love and forgiveness.

When I am overwhelmed by the categories the world tries to place me in, or when I struggle with feeling left out or left behind in the rat race, I find renewal knowing God has called to me personally. Especially when He says, “Whoever.”

The 91st Psalm offers a view of what assurances and security we have with a God who has as His mission statement “Whosoever believes in Him shall not perish” (John 3:16). God clarifies His promises in the Psalm by using the word “Dwells.” The Hebrew word is “Shakan.” The word “dwell” means to live continuously or to live with purpose. Dwell is different from” abide.” Abide can be interpreted as enduring but not yielding. Dwells gives the connotation that it is a place that is lived out from the deepest matters of the heart. It reflects permanent residence. This changed how I understood the assurances and securities God offers to the “whoever dwells.” Often I find my peace lacking not because God has withdrawn it but because I changed where I live. I moved away from dwelling with Him to residing with worry or lack of faith. One of my favorite addresses is Fear, and right next door is control. After all, living is different from visiting.

I have been married for a long, long time. My marriage to Jim could not have survived if we had not “dwelled” together. Neither Jim nor I would have embraced visiting each other from time to time. I could not have parented my children effectively and shown the love I had for them if I could only visit them. I can grasp this concept so clearly in terms of my own family, yet when applied to my relationship with my Maker, I prioritize my energies and commitments elsewhere and then wonder why I haven’t rested in the Shadow of the Almighty as promised in the Psalm.

Perhaps, it is because I spend too much time away from my home with God. Instead of dwelling with Him and His promises, I fill my mind with news from talking heads and or rattle around the attic of my own vain imagination. The unfaithful world would lead me to believe that it is savvy and intellectual to be overinformed by its troubling crises. When I cater to this idea, I come away overwhelmed and depressed. A pastor friend once shared with me that he would read three promises of God from scripture for every tragic headline he read. My friend said this helped him increase his odds of keeping his focus, of maintaining his dwelling place with God. I totally understand the mathematical impact on a body who watches the news for 1-2 hours or reads the entire newspaper and then turns to the scripture for a 5-10 minute daily devotion. I am far better at investing in God’s words that bring life and are eternal as opposed to those that are temporary at best and kill my joy and rob me of peace.

When both my children started school, one of the primary tasks was to learn and remember their address. Thus far in my life, I have lived at ten different physical addresses and yet may live at another. My dad used to say the only permanent residence of a follower of Christ is in heaven. Though my home in heaven is secured and guaranteed by grace, I have unfaithfully wandered away in my daily existence from the place of peace God has offered me. Despite being a prodigal daughter, even now, the invitation from the Father in this life is to dwell with Him.

“Whoever dwells with the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

Come back to the vineyard where the 5 o’clock worker spends time with worship through words of “The Most High” as the series with Psalm 91 continues.