Taken In

One of the Bible’s highlights for me is Psalm 27 – it contains some the most beautiful verses anywhere in its pages. I’m thinking of sweeping, lyrical crescendos like verse 4, “One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”

Another verse that stuns me, particularly because of the brokenness I constantly see in society where families  are often fractured or fully broken, is verse 10, “Although my father and my mother have forsaken me, yet the Lord will take me up [adopt me as His child].”

The ESV (The Especially Sound Version – chortle) puts David’s reflection like this, “For my father and my mother have forsaken me, but the Lord will take me in.”

The Lord will take you in! Imagine being ‘taken in’ by the God of the Angel Armies! Imagine being hosted by the Lord of Hosts!

The hard facts of life to accept are that we live in a hurrendously unprincipled, corrupt and immoral world where people will regularly attempt to ‘take us in” or treat us like fools. Sometimes this can be in customer service matters, serious or trivial, but sometimes it can be closer to home than that, much closer.

David knew what it meant to hide in the shadow of the Almighty (Psalm 91) from rogues, from foes, from evil men that advanced against him. He knew what it meant to seek refuge and solace from people who had betrayed him. But ultimately David really knew what it meant to be taken in, adopted, accepted and finally home with God, his creator, his Daddy – this place was his dwelling place of safety, even when abandoned by those closest to him.

See some of Jesus’ words on this in Luke 13:34.