What/who do we make time and space for? Some thoughts from Psalm 132 and some holiday reading.

“I will not enter my house

Or get into my bed,

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”.

Ps 132:3-5

I’m not sure I have ever noticed these words before. They make me stop and think. They speak of a single-minded determination to make space for God. What are we to make of them? Are they evidence of an bygone world and mere history or are they a wake-up call for today?

The words are attributed to King David. They show his single minded determination to give priority to ‘find[ing] a place for the Lord’. David was thinking in terms of building a temple that would represent God’s dwelling place. Christians could easily dismiss these words because the significance of the Temple was radically altered for Jesus’ followers in light of Jesus’ words ‘where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them’ (Matthew 18:20). To dismiss David’s words would, however, be to miss out.

‘Finding a place for the Lord’ no longer means locating a suitable plot of land, assembling a workforce, gathering lavish materials and embarking upon a massive building project. Today it is equally demanding but the demands are different. It means finding time and making space so that Jesus can influence the decisions we make. It means deliberately forming habits which will allow the Holy Spirit to determine our ‘shape of living’ (to borrow a phrase from the title of David F. Ford’s excellent book, see below).

What strikes me is David’s single-minded determination to prioritise the business of finding a place for the Lord. David had a kingdom to run, an army to lead, a people to satisfy and a (dysfunctional) family that provided no end of trouble, much of it caused by himself. Among all this, he still determines to order his priorities in the way he describes. What about me: how determined am I to find ‘a place for the Lord’ in the business of living?

Looking at the Bible as a whole, David can’t be written off as an extremist exception. The God of the Bible is worthy of our attention and He demands that He takes precedence over everything/everyone else. (See for example Exodus 20:1-7, Matthew 16:24-26). This is a very uncomfortable idea for us today. We have become accustomed to having God on our own terms. Finding ways to allow the Holy Spirit to shape our way of living is perpetually challenging.

Being busy has become a badge of worth—whilst paradoxically we long for the ability and opportunity to be still. Being still is now a skill we have to learn: being busy is an affliction thrust upon us by default so we need to take active steps to break this pattern.

By default our priorities arrange themselves so that ‘finding a place for the Lord’ gets squeezed out. Maybe that is why neither the Old Testament nor the New Testament contains a single example of an accidental disciple (or a part time disciple come to that).

Here are some readable books that give practical advice about how to construct a way of living that ‘finds a place for the Lord’. My experience is that these books won’t do it for you (any more than reading a book on dieting loses weight for you) but they have helped me to be more clear about what I am aiming at and how it might be done. If you have other books that you have found helpful on this theme, please let me know.