One Thing I Ask: A Meditation

Most mornings, right after getting the coffee started, I do some stretching and pray Psalm 27:4.

One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.

A few weeks ago I was drinking my coffee and meditating on this little Psalm section, and I jotted down a few overlapping thoughts that came to mind as I prayed.

ONE THING
The one thing. Not one thing among many things. The one thing necessary, as Jesus told Martha. The better thing. Which one thing would you take to a desert island? This is the most important thing: learning to dwell with God.

ASK
Asking and receiving is the dynamic of the kingdom. Which is very different from tyrannical demanding. It is also very different from deserving, earning, or manipulating. We are not dealing with capricious gods here, but a loving Father who longs to give us good things. We simply ask him, trusting that he is good and will give us what is good.

LORD
We ask a specific person: the Lord. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. We’re not looking for a generic, impersonal spiritual experience, we are seeking a Person, asking for a gift from this God, the Creator of all things, the Lord of heaven and earth, our Father in heaven.

SEEK
Not only do we ask, we seek. We put our energies toward a goal. We arrange our lives in such a way so as to be undistracted in our pursuit of the one thing. We make ourselves available to God to answer our prayer by positioning ourselves to receive what he gives.

DWELL
We seek to dwell with God all our days. Permanent lodging is what we are after, not a pleasant vacation. We seek habitation, not merely visitation. Incarnation, not merely intervention. We are seeking a permanent situation of dwelling with God.

HOUSE
We seek to be in his house. His kingdom, where his will is done. We don’t seek to make him “part” of our lives. We don’t invite Jesus to help us with our autonomously-developed goal. We abandon our own “house” and surrender all to live in his house. We leave our nets and follow him, and he prepares a place for us, in his house, with his rules, in his will.

BEAUTY
The Lord we seek to dwell with, the God we ask of is not a fickle deity, but a beautiful Lord. We do not seek out of forced obligation or strained requirement, nor our of fear of punishment or in exchange for favors. No, we seek out of love and desire, for he is beautiful. What is best for human flourishing also happens to be best for human aesthetics! We gaze because we love. We ask, seek, and knock out of desire to be with him who is Beauty. We worship because our hearts have been made alive by him who is Life itself, have been wooed by him who is Love.

Now read it again:

One thing I ask from the Lord,
    this only do I seek:
that I may dwell in the house of the Lord
    all the days of my life,
to gaze on the beauty of the Lord
    and to seek him in his temple.

Selah.