Every follower of Jesus Christ will undoubtedly have a signature passage or verse from Scripture that is of utmost value to one’s Christian life.  I know that I do.  I draw upon the heart and pen of King David:

“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).

This is a text with which I first became conversant one spring day in 1978 when I received a prayer card from the pastor of my first fellowship at First Baptist Church in Everett, MA.  The words of the Bible verse leaped off the page and have remained embedded within me from that moment.

I; too, have had one over-arching desire for my life, at least for the preponderance of it that I have lived.  “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek.”  Each of us has some goal or desire, both fundamental and ultimate, that motivates or drives who we are and what we do.  It can be any number of things, from fatherly affirmation to professional fulfillment to sexual satisfaction to comfort and convenience.  It can be anything.

King David was a man who had everything, from power to comfort to fame and prestige to personal satisfaction.  But he wanted something still more – He wanted God!  The portion of the Psalms that he is credited with writing speak volumes to his heart’s desire, as they pour forth praise and petition on the one hand and lament and conviction on the other; always, his life was lived unto God from the heart and, even when he strayed, his sooner-or-later prostration before God’s throne of mercy and grace was both profound and from the heart.

I share a similar desire, with a heart that I trust is being shaped by the operative power and presence of the Holy Spirit.  I want to know my God and to be more like Christ and to be led of His Spirit than anything else … Or do I?

So many other realities vie for our attention and correspondingly compete for the attention that we should otherwise be giving to Him.  Idolatrous yearnings will endeavor to populate our minds and hearts, animate our bodies, provide content to our proclivity towards fantasies, as well as make meaningful consequence to our use of time, energies, talents and relationships.

It may be money that creates conflict in our hearts, or power or fame or comfort and security or pride, setting up within us the need for a decision, all-too-often painful, as to whether we put God or these idolatrous desires first in our lives.

It can even be good things that become obstructive to our spiritual welfare.  The desire to be free or to be healthy or to be well-connected or to have purpose or even to be loved – All good things unto themselves, but easily given over to idolatrous purpose within us.

It is why, if one wants to put God first, to honor Him with one’s life and to know the “rightness” of proper rapport with Almighty God, that we follow suit with King David:  “One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek:  That I may dwell in the House of the all the days of my life.”

David asks for this and seeks after this.  He places Himself in God’s hands, knowing full well of his own sinful tendencies and desires, but also reckoning with his personal need to apply himself to God and the things of God.  But one must discover how best to do this.

Well; it is quite simple.  One must live one’s life in God’s Presence, surrounding oneself with God’s people and immersing oneself in holy devotion, activity and service.  Such an ambience will prove critical and critically effective to one’s active commitment to our God and Savior.

“To dwell” is to place oneself, – both lock, stock & barrel, as well as hook, line & sinker – in a settled condition.  Where one dwells is where one eats, sleeps, bathes and finds constructive & refreshing engagement.  The Christian is one who finds such a home in God’s Presence and with God’s People.

It is instructive as to where we live, as we tend to assume the characteristics and prevailing attitudes and behaviors of our settlement.  Our manner of living becomes instinctively ingrained with the texture of life around us.  Live with foul-mouthed people and you will be foul-mouthed.  Grow up with table manners and you will exhibit them as an adult.  Observe your parents to be racist or philanthropic, and you will no doubt be one or the other or both.

But take residence in the Presence of God and live with fellow believers and odds are that you will grow spiritually, both in terms of depth as well as breadth, as the Presence of Christ deepens within you, thus giving new shape and definition to your character, thus bearing more of a Christ-like deportment and disposition which will, consequently, take you beyond your immediate borders, whether of nose or of conception.

The Psalmist declared, “I love the house where You live, O Lord, the place where Your glory dwells” (Psalm 26.8).  I love it; too, as within its “borders” my life has assumed new meaning and significance, my mind has been enlarged and stretched, my heart has been healed and newly-shaped, my body has been given refreshment, both in terms of the healing power of God’s Presence but also by way of its application to new, more fruitful endeavors.

How we live is determined in large measure by how we were raised and nurtured.  I thank God that I have been raised up in the Presence of God and been brought amongst His people with whom I can both share & serve Christ.  A fairly-new congregant tells us how grateful he is to have found our lovely, little fellowship, as he finds a “healthiness” amongst us – Yes; it is God’s holy, life-giving and loving Presence!

King David goes deeper; still.  There is a reason why he wants to invest the entirety of his life, both in terms of investment as well as time.  All the days of his allotted life can’t even begin to take in or encompass the pearl at the core of his devotion.  But all the days of his life constitute a very real and meaningful start as one who would give himself over to the “study” of divine aesthetics: 

“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.”

I believe that one of the most destructive pitfalls to contemporary life is the lack of appreciation for true beauty.  So much of everything has been commercialized, materialized, sexualized, idolatrized – Denuded of soul; if you will, and denigrated in appearance, no matter how much of spit and polish is applied.

Anglican scholar N.T. Wright highlights the quest for beauty as one facet of Christianity’s value.  Contemporary, godless, so-called progressive man produces little if anything of beauty.  There is very little if any beautiful music being composed or art being drawn.  Poetry seems more unduly technical or schmaltzy; narcissistic, even.  Femininity has been horribly disfigured by being reduced to sexual expressiveness.  Masculinity (and I’m one of those rare birds who will describe a fine man as a “lovely” man!) has been emasculated, leaving behind a gross caricature, whether chauvinistic or effeminate.  And children aren’t given the time to learn appreciation for the blue sky and white clouds or the charm of rain pattering on the roof, as they are overrun with schedule. 

There is a reason why Christianity has served as spawn for so much beauty in the world.  God Himself created the heavens and the earth, and all contained therein – He is the Master Aesthetician!  But Christians down through the ages, or those imbued with the ethos of a Christian ethic or aesthetic, have produced astounding expressions of beauty – Think only of Handel’s Messiah or Rembrandt’s Madonna with Child or Shakespeare’s power with verse.  Consider; too, the legion of philanthropic enterprises that have sought to relieve human misery, redeem human depravity and give honor and meaning to human lives.  What else can one say?  How very, very beautiful!

It all emanates from God, who is Himself beautiful:  “Let us worship the Lord in the splendor (or beauty) of His holiness” (Psalm 96.9).  All of the beauty that adorns and permeates the fullness of the created order is expressive, but dimly, though effectively, of God Himself – Our God is beautiful!

Don’t you think that Christ, of whom it was prophesied that there was “nothing of comeliness to His appearance,” exhibited a heretofore rarely, if ever, seen before beauty as cast in a man’s disposition or deportment?  I believe that many of the women who followed Him were undoubtedly in love with Him, as He treated them as feminine subjects of beauty to be honored and cherished, not sexual objects to be exploited and abused.  Mary Magdalene was a case-in-point, but her love for Jesus was pure.

I love how 18^th Century Divine Jonathan Edwards has cast the Beauty of Christ in language both theologically descriptive and devotionally appreciative:

“True saints have their minds, in the first place, inexpressibly pleased and delighted with the sweet ideas of the glorious and amiable nature of the things of God.  And this is the spring of all their delights, and the cream of all their pleasures; it is the joy of their joy.  This sweet and ravishing entertainment they have in the view of the beautiful and delightful nature of divine things, is the foundation of the joy that they have afterwards, in the consideration of their being theirs …. The first foundation of the delight a true saint has in God, is his own perfection; and the first foundation of the delight he has in Christ, is his own beauty; he appears in himself the chief among ten thousand, and altogether lovely.  The way of salvation by Christ is a delightful way to him, for the sweet and admirable manifestations of the divine perfections in it:  the holy doctrines of the gospel, by which God is exalted and man abased, holiness honored and promoted, and sin greatly disgraced and discouraged, and free and sovereign love manifested, are glorious doctrines in his eyes, and sweet to his taste, prior to any conception of his interest in these things.  Indeed, the saints rejoice in their interest in God, and that Christ is theirs:  and so they have great reason, but this is not the first spring of their joy.  They first rejoice in God as glorious and excellent in himself, and then secondarily rejoice in it, that so glorious a God is theirs. – They first have their hearts filled with sweetness, from the view of Christ’s excellency, and the excellency of his grace and the beauty of the way of salvation by him, and then they have a secondary joy in that so excellent a Savior, and such excellent grace are theirs (taken from Religious Affections).

King David simply put it with greater succinctness and tautness:  He wanted nothing more than to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord, a beauty that had adorned his life, that adorns my life and – It is my fervent prayer! – radiates outward to at least cast the shadow of its beauty upon the lives of others, especially those who dearly need a healthy dose of therapeutic and restorative beauty to their otherwise aggrieved lives.

“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.”

Where is God?  He is in His temple.  Where is His temple?  His temple is where His people are.  Where are His people?  They are where He is to be found, His Word is to be preached, His love and truth to be lived, His witness to be borne forth – In short:  He is to be found amongst any local fellowship that is endeavoring to be faithful to its high calling of honoring God with everything it is and has … They are where God is to be found.  King David knew this salient truth some three thousand years ago.  A more modest man like myself some three thousand years later can so attest, and can and do declare that Our God Is Beautiful – Praise His Beautiful Name!

Bradley E. Lacey

January 6, 2021