Thereness

Psalm 105:4 says, “Seek the LORD and his strength; seek his presence continually!”  I was trying to chew on that last phrase for a little while today.  I thought about how it relates to God’s omnipresence.  How do I seek his presence?  It’s not like there is ever a spot where He is not and that Psalm 105 is telling me that I need to play hide and seek and find my Lord behind a bush somewhere.  No, I’m not to seek knowledge of His omnipresence. 

This text is telling me to seek His good presence.  His favor.  His countenance.  It’s telling me to be like my children as they demand my presence.  “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!  Look!  Look!  Do you like my book I made?”

My son, Isaiah, is in a drawing and cutting things out of a notebook phase.  He also found our stapler the other day and is in the business of “makin’ books”.  He’ll staple together a few pages, write a couple of the words that he knows how to spell, and then squiggly lines for the rest.  But the book isn’t complete until daddy “reads” it.  He is seeking my presence, my approval, my thereness. 

That is what Psalm 105:4 is calling us to do continually.  Psalm 105 is calling us to tug on the Lord’s robe and say, “hey daddy, dad, daddy, dad, hey dad!  Do you like my drawing?”  Such a heart is precious.  It refuses to be satisfied until the object of its affection is present in complete thereness.  That snowflake that you cut out isn’t complete in its awesomeness until its also enjoyed by daddy. 

Christ makes the presence of the LORD our delight.  Though he is mighty beyond description and “no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes to whom we must give account”, even still because of Christ we are able to “with confidence draw near to the throne of grace”.  His thereness is no longer a terror, it’s a joy. 

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Of course there is also the other side to this that as we continually seek the presence of the LORD we become less concerned about our awesome snowflakes and more concerned with joining daddy in what He is doing.  But I needed to really meditate on this side of presence of the Lord today.