our dwelling place

"Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations." Psalm 90:1

From the beginning of time, God has been present for all of humanity. He has been and continues to be our place of refuge, habitation, dwelling. No matter how much wickedness, horror, violence we see out there; no matter the secret sins or the internal struggle to simply do and think right, the triune God wants people to know that there is a place to dwell, to rest. 

"Be thou my strong habitation, whereunto I may continually resort: thou hast given commandment to save me; for thou art my rock and my fortress." Psa. 71:3 

It's my job to remember this- to go to Him. 

When I was a very young child, I remember learning that a woman plunged from an open window, falling to her death from a twenty-story apartment building adjacent to ours. My parents had moved our family to live among the Cantonese speaking people in a very congested city. Who was that woman, and why did she die in such a horrific way? I wondered. There was no way I would have understood suicide then, and that statistically, jumping from a building was one of the most common methods for females in our city at the time. Could my parents have reached her with the love of Christ before her fateful end, and could she have lived a better life? Could she have already known the Lord, but succumbed to the clutches of mental illness? What if someone pushed her out against her will, or she was severely disabled, not knowing what she was doing, neglected by her caregivers? 

There are no answers this side of eternity. All I know is, for every individual who has ever lived across the face of this planet, a place of rest has been provided by an eternal God who made all things and by whom all things consist. (Colossians 1:17) Jesus provided access to this grace. John chapter three unfolds the mystery of it all so beautifully.