This One Thing
I will not give sleep to my eyes
Or slumber to my eyelids,
Until I find a place for the Lord,
A dwelling place for the Mighty One of
Jacob." —Psalm 132:3-5
The first hundred days of a leader's
tenure are closely scrutinized, for they establish his or her priorities.
David's first act as Israel’s king was to search for the Ark of the Covenant for,
he said, "We did not seek it in the days of Saul" (1 Chronicles
13:3).
Saul was a secular man. He cared nothing
for the ark, but abandoned it, left it to rot for forty years in an overgrown
field. David, however, could not rest until he retrieved the ark and brought it
up to Jerusalem and placed it in the little tent that became it's
"dwelling place" (2 Samuel 6:1-15).
The ark, as you know, was a little box
about the size of an army footlocker. It had no intrinsic value, or magic power, Raiders of the Lost Ark, not withstanding. It was merely a symbol—a
visible reminder of the invisible, enduring presence of God, the reality of
which dominated David's thoughts and prayers.
David wrote in another place, “One
thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: That I may dwell in the house of
the Lord all the days of my life, that I might gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him
in his tabernacle” (Psalms 27:4).
Obviously, David didn't plan to spend
the rest of his life sequestered in a little tent, staring at a box. No, this was his
way of saying that he treasured God and His love above all else—above mother, brother, friends, money, health, love or life itself. God was the "one thing" necessary—indeed the only thing. This was the measure of his greatness—and ours.
David Roper
5.14.17
