The Beauty Is on the Inside

When our daughter Arla was dating Kris (her future husband), they talked on the phone every night they weren't together. One evening when it was almost time for us to go to bed and for Kris to call, I reminded her of her finals the next day. "It might be better if you would get a good night's sleep rather than talk to Kris for two hours."

Arla sighed, "Oh, Mom, you don't understand."

There can be something in our loving encounters with the Lord that others just wouldn't understand. Others won't necessarily appreciate our passion, our desire to sacrifice other things for God's fellowship. Perhaps we reorder our schedules or deliberately choose the best over the good because our spirits hunger for those times alone with Him.

In the Old Testament, the Israelites met God in the tabernacle, but it was not a place of beauty to those who did not enter. The outside was covered with unattractive badger skins. The people around them may have wondered why the Israelites were attracted to it.

But the beauty was inside. Inside there was a chest overlaid with pure gold with a gold molding around it. Cherubim made out of hammered gold with their wings stretched over the mercy seat. God said, "And thou shalt put the mercy seat above upon the ark... And there I will meet with thee, and I will commune with thee from above the mercy seat" (Exodus 25:21, 22 KJV).

The place of communing with God did not appear attractive until they were inside.

That is the way it is with our communion with the Lord. It's not until we discover the joy of the "sweet hour of prayer" that we willingly forfeit lesser things.

Thank You, Jesus, that You reward every effort we make to spend time in Your presence.

"One thing I ask of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple" (Psalm 27:4).

 Memory Verse for June   

"Ah, Sovereign LORD, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm. Nothing is too hard for you...O Great and powerful God, whose name is the LORD Almighty, great are your purposes and mighty are your deeds" (Jeremiah 32:17-19).