A Day In God's House

For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
Psalm 84.10

I think for most people visits to God’s house are confined to Sundays. Some add Wednesday evenings. Some choose to limit their visits to a few special days (Think Christmas and Easter). And, if the Psalmist is correct, even those who stop by God’s house only once or twice a year reap a thousandfold blessing. But surely God keeps his house open 24/7. Which means even the faithful who show up every Sunday and Wednesday are missing out on five other days each week when they could visit God’s house. Of course, I am talking about something more than the house of worship you attend, for surely God’s house is something much more than bricks and mortar, and stained glass and tall steeples. I mean, I have been in some beautiful sanctuaries, but I can’t say that the buildings were so fabulous that I could say they were a thousand times better than other places I’ve been to. In fact, I would have to say that I could name several places I would rather be than in any building: A quiet beach at sunrise. A mountaintop as the sun sets. Beside a babbling stream, pretty much any time of day.

Jacob spent a night in a place which he only realized after the fact was the house of God. And he spent that night in what was to his eye a wilderness sleeping on the ground and using a rock as a pillow. Yet, primitive as his campsite was, if he had been asked if he would have traded that night for a thousand nights in a soft bed in an opulent palace, I believe Jacob would had preferred his night under the stars, and of dreaming of stairs. (See Genesis 28.22) Even so, in declaring that place Beth-el (The house of God), Jacob nevertheless moved on. Did he move on and leave the God of Abraham and Isaac behind at his house? No, not at all, for God was with him on his journey to Paran, and throughout his fourteen long years of serving his uncle Laban.

The thing is, if we believe that the kingdom of God is within us (Luke 17.21), then we don’t need to go anywhere special to be in his house, we take his house with us wherever we go; which means we are in God’s house at the beach, and on the mountaintop, and beside the babbling stream. We can even be in God’s house when we are sitting in a pew, though it should never be assumed that all pews are in God’s house.

But God’s house can also be found in an intensive care unit, or a prison cell, or a bunker under attack. And the thing of it is, in that ICU or prison, or on that battlefield, one can experience a day worth ten-thousand times more than a day spent elsewhere, if God is present. This is why it is not uncommon to find people who are far happier and blessed in a poor hovel than those who live in a penthouse.

If we are having a bad day, or perhaps have had a week, or even a month, full of bad days, perhaps it is because we have been spending our days away from the courts of God. The good thing is, wherever we are, whatever kind of day or week or month we are having, we can make it a thousand times better without having to travel any further than down on our knees. If your day could use some improving, why not go to God’s house right now, the door is open and he’s waiting for you.