DECEMBER 4 - DAY 6
Psalm 16
Gwenfair Adams
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…you will fill me with joy in your presence. Psalm 16:6 & 11
How would you define a pleasant place? Would it be a cozy cottage by a burbling brook? A ski lodge on the side of a winter mountain? What if, instead, a pleasant place is not so much about a geographical location as about the heart’s location?
Anne Bradstreet, the American Puritan poet, wrote, "Oft have I thought, were it hell itself, and [I] could there find the love of God toward me, it would be a heaven. And could I have been in heaven without the love of God, it would have been a hell to me; for, in truth, it is the absence and presence of Godthat makes heaven or hell.” Perhaps a bit extreme, it captures an important biblical idea: what matters to the joy of our soul is not where we are, but where we are in relation to God.
In this season, we celebrate the coming of the one who left the ultimate Pleasant Place, to come and be with us. Emmanuel. Wherever we are, if he is with us, there our lines are truly drawn in pleasant places.
Psalm 16
Gwenfair Adams
The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places…you will fill me with joy in your presence. Psalm 16:6 & 11
How would you define a pleasant place? Would it be a cozy cottage by a burbling brook? A ski lodge on the side of a winter mountain? What if, instead, a pleasant place is not so much about a geographical location as about the heart’s location?
Anne Bradstreet, the American Puritan poet, wrote, "Oft have I thought, were it hell itself, and [I] could there find the love of God toward me, it would be a heaven. And could I have been in heaven without the love of God, it would have been a hell to me; for, in truth, it is the absence and presence of Godthat makes heaven or hell.” Perhaps a bit extreme, it captures an important biblical idea: what matters to the joy of our soul is not where we are, but where we are in relation to God.
In this season, we celebrate the coming of the one who left the ultimate Pleasant Place, to come and be with us. Emmanuel. Wherever we are, if he is with us, there our lines are truly drawn in pleasant places.
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