One Thing

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,

to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord

and to seek him in his temple.

Psalm 27:4, NIV

I call that my “life verse;” the thought upon which I hang all of my hopes and dreams, by which I measure my successes and failures, and through which I know I will find the thing we are all looking for: true happiness.

But what does it mean? Does it mean that I aspire to find a church someplace where I can sit 24/7/365 and stare at some image – physical, mental or spiritual – of God? Of course not. And I don’t’ think it meant that to David, either. What it means is that I have come to understand that God’s greatest gift to me – to all people – is not a gift of stuff, or wellness, or friends and family, or even salvation. Rather, it is that through all of these things, God has built a way for me to experience His greatest gift: Himself.

It means that, for all the days of my life (which, if I count heaven, will be forever!) I will seek after and treasure and adore and cherish and behold and experience the One who is, Himself, the fulfillment of all my deepest desires. Augustine said it well: You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You. Not in things, not in painlessness, not in people, not in anything but Him. Period. That is His greatest and foremost gift, and it is my purpose to pursue that gift will all I have in me.

That does not mean that I shun His other gifts; I just see them as ways to lead me to behold Him through them. Some examples:

I love waterfalls. Whether the immense power of the Niagara that screams of Him amazing power and strength, or a tiny fall of a mountain stream along a ledge of the foothills of Rainier, that reminds me of the simple intricate beauty of his flowing sweetness, they remind me of God.

And oh, do I enjoy a good storm. The lightning and thunder, the winds, the swirling clouds and even the tornadoes. I think of that line in the movie, Twister (I think), where someone asks what an F-5 tornado is like. After a pregnant pause, one of the storm-chasers says, with appropriate awe in his voice, “That’s the Finger of God.” Exactly!

But even more, I love the faces of the nations. An old Afghani Tajik man. A little Miao boy from southwest China. The Fulani peoples of West Africa. A Kazak woman from northern Xinjiang, China. A little Kalasha girl from the valleys of the Hindu Kush mountains in northern Pakistan. I look at their pictures and I see the Image of God in the diverse beauty of His creation. And I am filled with joy. But, at the same time, I am filled with sorrow, because I know that the face I see in those pictures is likely one that does not know Christ. And I sense again the real purpose of my life on this planet – to do whatever I can to see heaven populated with people from every tongue, tribe, people and nation, so that the glory of God will shine all the more fully through those who surround Him with eternal praise.

Oh, how I long for that day when my faith will be sight, when God’s glory will be revealed in all His fullness, and I will be joined with the millions upon millions of the redeemed, beholding the glory of God in the Face of Christ, and reflecting that beauty back to Him.

As the deer pants for streams of water,

so my soul pants for you, O God.

My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

Psalm 42:1-2a (NIV)