3rd Friday of Advent (December 16) David sat

​Prepare to Listen.  Light the pink with two purple candles.  Prepare to listen with this reminder: Great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised.
 
Prayerfully Read 1 Chronicles 17:16-20
16Then King David went in and sat before the LORD, and said, ‘Who am I, O LORD God, and what is my house, that you have brought me thus far?  17And even this was a small thing in your sight, O God; you have also spoken of your servant’s house for a great while to come.  You regard me as someone of high rank, O LORD God!  18And what more can David say to you for honouring your servant?  You know your servant.  19For your servant’s sake, O LORD, and according to your own heart, you have done all these great deeds, making known all these great things.  20There is no one like you, O LORD, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears.
 
Prayerfully Wonder
David’s desire was to build a house for God in Jerusalem.  The prophet Nathan gave him the green light.  But that night the word of the LORD came to Nathan, a word that surprised him.  It was also a word that made clear that the LORD, not David was Israel’s true King.  God declared that David wouldn’t build God a house, instead, God would build David a house that would become an eternal kingdom.  David was so awestruck he “went in and sat before the LORD.”
 
He sat.  “This,” wrote Peterson, “may be the single most critical act that David ever did, the action that put him out of action.”  It was critical, because how David reacted to Nathan’s message would “either qualify or disqualify him from the kingwork” to which God had appointed him.[1]  By sitting, David humbly placed himself before the one and only King.  He trusted God even though he didn’t fully grasp what God had promised him.  His trust qualified him for kingwork.
 
Perhaps it’s time for God’s people today, you and I, to go in and sit before the Lord; give up control of our lives; stop telling God how to run the world; let God be God in ways God chooses to be God.  And to do this even when we don’t understand, like, or agree.  That takes humility, lots of it.
 
Prayerfully Reflect
Sit before God and put yourself out of action so that God can work.  Remember that doing nothing is often the most critical thing you can do.
 
Respond in Prayer
Lord, forgive me when I’m too busy to recognize your greatness and thus fail to go in and sit down before you.  Help me carve out time to sit down and do nothing but worship you.  Amen.
 
Live Obediently.  Sit down before the Lord and do nothing.
[1] Peterson, Eugene.  Leap over a wall.  HarperSanFrancisco.  1997, p. 162.