Journal Entry // March 20, 2021
For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
Psalm 84:10 ESV
I want this verse to be true in my life. I know the truth of it and my heart yearns for the presence of the lord, but there is still within me this impulse that seduces me with lies about the grandeur of elsewhere. The lies that prick at my heart. The constant barrage of sights and sounds that tempt me to lust and covet. The lies that tell me it is better to have a thousand days elsewhere than just a single day in the presence of the Lord.
It really doesn’t feel like that though. And that is the great lie of the enemy that is so seductive. A single day with the Lord in his presence is as far superior to anything else that all perspective is really lost. It’s similar to saying that I can choose between living on Earth or anywhere else in the universe. The thought of having free reign in the whole of the universe seems so attractive as it is offered. The vastness of the universe compared to the single option of the Earth. Yet it really isn’t a choice at all. The Earth is designed specifically for my life. It is only on the Earth that I can live free. It is in the vastness of an inhabitable universe that I find confinement. Confinement to artificial means of survival. Only on Earth, in the one unique place of the universe, do I find true freedom. Freedom to live as designed and intended.
The same is true with the Lord. It is only in Jesus that I find my true freedom. It is only in Jesus that I am able to live as God intended. So even if I am given a thousand days elsewhere, those thousand days are a miserable approximation of life with Christ. Elsewhere is a distortion of my true home in the presence of God. And just like I need artificial means to survive in space or another planet, so too would I need God’s grace in the elsewhere. His grace is like oxygen to my life. Without it’s presence surrounding me, I will die. Only in the presence of God will I find my life.
So how do I take this day and spend it in the presence of God? I deny myself, take up my cross, and follow him. I love the Lord with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength. I delight myself in the Lord. I cultivate the presence of God in my life and I shun the ridiculousness of living in the elsewhere.