Selah
April 13, 2020 | Amanda Stricker
About this post: We want to stay connected! This blog post is part of a series of daily devotionals for this season. Read them, share them, and pray that they bring God's peace and love to our communities. To sign up to receive text notification of these posts, text zpc to 39970. We welcome your comments and questions each day.
About the author: Amanda Stricker has been attending ZPC since the tender age of two and loves participating in a variety of ways, including as a worship tech team member and a current active elder. Outside of church, she recently has been wrestling the internet in order to provide e-learning and support to her students who normally attend Eman Schools, a private Islamic K-12 institution. Learning is still happening, just as worship of our glorious God is still happening!
Today's scripture: Psalm 3
Bereft of our places of worship, forced to shun the community we have built through our employment and social network, feeling lost and as if the world is ending and will never be put right. Truly, we all can empathize with King David in Psalm 3, a psalm he wrote while fleeing the kingdom which he had built and reigned over prosperously for years.
David’s son, Absalom, had led a successful rebellion, and David had to sneak out of his own capital city in the middle of the night like a guilty, scurrying rat. Many of his friends and advisors abandoned him to serve his traitorous triumphant son, and even random people on the road threw stones at him, cursed him, and called him “scoundrel” (2 Samuel chapters 15 and 16). Truly, to all that observed David’s plight, it was clear that God had abandoned him as a consequence of his sin, and he deserved to die alone and in obscurity.
But God never abandons us, no matter our sin, and God doesn’t need us to follow set rituals or worship in grand temples. David had no access to the Tabernacle or the ministry of the priests; he couldn’t offer the required animal sacrifices or incense; he didn’t have the Ark of the Covenant; however, he had the God of the Covenant! He could and did lift his hands to worship God wherever he was and however he could moment by moment. David knew God was always with him, even if he could no longer gather in fellowship at holy locations or partake in comforting communal rituals. The Lord watches us as we lay down to sleep, as we wake each day, and the Lord answers us from his holy mountain and blesses us, no matter where we are or how isolated and abandoned we feel. Selah.
ACTIVITY:
In this passage, the word Selah is repeated as a musical break in the song. It’s biblical Hebrew is often translated to “stop and listen” or “let those with eyes see and those with ears hear,” but in Arabic it means “connection.” Stop and listen to something today that makes you feel connected to God, to ZPC, or to your fellow humans around the world who are all just as scared and as isolated as you. You could stop and listen to a part of a ZPC digital worship service that has been sent out weekly, an audio or visual long distance conversation with a loved one, or one of the songs listed below which came on while I was working from home and made me think, “Oh, this song reminds me about the devotional for Psalm 3 I’ve been meaning to write! I should sit down and do that…”
Even Louder by Steven Malcolm featuring Natalie Grant
Prayer:
Lord,
You see us in our distress. You hear us in our loneliness. You heed the cries of our heart as anxiety, ambiguity, and animosity attack us from all angles. We know you surround us with a shield of grace and love. Every day, we can hold or heads high and know you walk with us and bolster us. There is nothing that you cannot overcome, and we are your blessed sons and daughters, destined to be wrapped up in your love for all eternity. You have triumphed, you will triumph, and you usher us daily into triumph. May we always stop and listen to the sound of your trumpets that continuously ring out from the victoriously empty tomb. Selah.