I couldn’t imagine a better day.

Maybe Not I, But Someone Wrote…

While it is unknown who wrote Psalm 84, in his book The Treasury of David, Charles H. Spurgeon wrote:

It matters little when this Psalm was written, or by whom. Its perfume is Davidic…It has a mild radiance that entities it to be called “The Pearl of Psalms.” …this is the sweetest of the Psalms of peace.

And yet, the author is unknown. Perhaps to give us all a chance to reflect on what would be the best day ever as individuals rather than merely reading about the near-painful yearnings of one man to be in the House and Courts of God for a mere day.

When I read the words, “How lovely is your is your dwelling place,” however, I am left to wonder if “lovely” is too weak a word. “Lovely,” I thought, seems more like something my grandmother might have called her dining room table, laid out in linen and china, bedecked with silver and crystal. Thinking on this, I realized the beauty in the word.

Imagine a place so spectacular—beyond any landscape or dining table, superior to any castle or mountain, more exciting than any theme or water park—you literally ache to see it, to dwell within it, to sit quietly or bursting in praise between its walls. Imagine a place that, when you are there and when you have returned, you feel satisfied only because of the Presence there. Imagine that Presence—like a mother eagle—spreading its wings and you, her eaglet nestled beneath their shadow.

Envision being in the place where God’s glory lives, as it lived within the courts and amongst the furnishings of the tabernacle in David’s day and in the temples built after that. Now picture yourself spending an entire day there. Just one day. What would you do? How would you spend your twenty-four hours in God’s house?

And when you left, how would you feel? How deeply would you yearn to return?

So, Let’s Say David Wrote It…

As a boy and a young man, we can assume David had gone to “the house of the Lord,” if at no other time during the appropriate feasts and with his family. As a young man, warrior, and son-in-law to King Saul, David was driven out of his home and away from his family by the mad king, unable to enter in to the tabernacle. At one point during his years of hiding, David lived in southern Israel. 1 Samuel 23:29 reads: And David went up from there and lived in the strongholds of En Gedi.

Anyone who has been to En Gedi knows of its splendor. Within the text of Solomon’s Song of Songs we find: My lover is to me a cluster of henna blossoms from the vineyards of En Gedi.