One Thing

Most lives are crowded by many things. David's was no exception — armies, exiles, betrayals, the politics of a small kingdom always within reach of a larger empire. And yet at the center of this Psalm there is a quiet sentence about a single, undivided desire: "One thing have I asked of the LORD, that will I seek after: 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 inquire in his temple." Not many things. One. In the middle of a many-thinged life he names one thing he refuses to live without. Not victory, not security, not a son to succeed him on the throne. To dwell. To gaze. To inquire. To be where the beauty of his God is unveiled, and to keep looking, and to keep asking. That is what he wants more than anything else, and the Psalm puts the request in writing so we cannot forget what he chose to want.

The beauty David glimpsed in tabernacles of cloth has been shown to us in flesh. The temple he longed to inquire in has become a Person we now live in. To gaze on the beauty of the LORD is, for the church, to gaze on the face of Jesus Christ — the same face the Father looks on with love, the same face that turned toward Jerusalem and toward us. And the one thing we ask is granted in Him. We dwell in His house because we dwell in Him. We gaze on the beauty of God because we gaze on His glory. We inquire because He has invited us into the deeper rooms of His Father's counsel. So at the end of the Psalm, when David tells himself, "Wait for the LORD; be strong, and let your heart take courage; wait for the LORD," it is a word for any heart still looking for the one thing in many places. Wait. Look at Him. He is the one thing, and He has already given Himself to you.