MERRY MONDAY BY PARRIS BAILEY-
“Birds find nooks and crannies in your house, sparrows and swallows make nests there. They lay their eggs and raise their young, singing their songs in the place where we worship. God-of-the-Angel-Armies! King! God! How blessed they are to live and sing there!” (Ps 84: 3&4 Message Bible)
Twenty years ago I still remember coming across Ps.84 in the Message Bible, and it has kept me all these years. For years we would have services night and day and twice a day for weeks at a time, we all just couldn’t get enough. Each song just seem to take us deeper, each speaker brought us closer to intimacy with Christ. On our property at Airline we have approx.18 acres-hard to believe! There is this hawk and it’s mate that have made their home here and yes I can sure guess why (lots of acreage, lots of rabbits). David when he was running for his life, yearned to be like a sparrow living off of the goodness of God spending their days in worship before their King. In an age where the church tries to have a speedy drive by service, David yearned for more…..in fact it was in those many services that God was definitely putting Frank and my lives back into his order.
Spurgeon agreed with David by saying, “To come and go is refreshing, but to abide in the place of prayer must be heaven below. To be the guests of God, enjoying the hospitalities of heaven, set apart for holy work, screened from a noisy world, and familiar with sacred things — why this is surely the choicest heritage a son of man can possess.”
Revival causes the pendulum to swing a Godward direction. Hungry hearts want more and they yearn to live as simply as the sparrows. Calvin gets his preach on by saying-“that he would rather relinquish the whole world than continue in a state of exclusion from the holy tabernacle; that he felt no place delightful at a distance from God’s altars; and, in short, that no dwelling-place was agreeable to him . “Although all men,” as if he had said, “should vie with each other in their eagerness to afford me shelter and entertainment, yet as thou art my King, what pleasure would it afford me to live in the world, so long as I am excluded from the territory of the Holy Land? And again, as thou art my God, for what end do I live but to seek after thee?”
Let’s join in with David and those precious birds. Get your lives down to simple living and yearn for more. Go to church and seek his presence and ask him to pour himself upon the hearts of man.