How are you spending your quarantine time? Are you knocking out your to-do list like nobody’s business? Are you catching up on the to-do’s of months (or years) past? Are you enjoying extra free time by watching a new TV show or brainstorming ways to help out the frontline?
It seems like there’s so much pressure to produce in this season. To do what we can to fight. To work harder than we would in the office to prove we can work outside of the building. To double our bible study load and read all the books we’ve piled up for months. But what if we just took a moment to sit? To sit in the midst of our battles. To sit in the presence of our to-be-read stack without glancing at a single page. To put down the rag we were about to use to clean our baseboards and sit with our Sovereign Lord.
It seems counterintuitive, but that’s exactly what we’re called to in Psalm 23:5 —“You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies. You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.”
This verse just makes me light up like a firework on the Fourth of July, because here’s the thing: the feast isn’t prepared to get you ready to fight before you go out and meet your enemies, and it isn’t prepared after your enemies are defeated in celebration of a job well done. The feast is prepared for you in the presence of your enemies. When you’re surrounded by an army trying to attack, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies invites you to share a meal with Him. He prepares a fully stocked meal so you can sit with Him, all while enemies swarm and arrows fly.
Admittedly, I have plenty of time to sit during this time because I have no children and no spouse and fewer work days than usual. Yet even I find myself making extra efforts, sometimes grueling efforts, to keep myself busy and productive for fear of looking back and calling this time “wasted.” So can we just agree to give ourselves grace today and this week and for as long as we stay cooped up in our homes?
When you feel guilty for sitting when you should be working or cleaning or cooking, let’s remember that there is nothing wasted in sitting with the Lord. The battle rages on, the fears rise up, the anxiety and depression knock louder every day, but in the midst of all of this, the Lord invites you and me to sit with Him, to feast with him. What happens when we take the good Lord up on His offer? Our cup overflows with blessing.
I’ve always found it curious how this verse begins with recognizing the presence of enemies and ends with recognizing an overflow of blessings. The more I allow myself to sit with the Lord as the struggles swirl around me in this season, I’m beginning to understand by the grace of God how this perspective can shift so quickly.
When we focus on the presence of our enemies, we all know too well how that ends. But y’all, when we accept the Lord’s invitation to sit with Him in their presence our enemies don’t disappear, we just stop looking at them. Our focus is shifted to the God who has already declared victory. Our position is shifted from someone who is scared and only somewhat ready to fight to someone who feels safe as we sit down to feast with the Defender of our hearts. And our hearts, oh our hearts. As we sit in the presence of our Creator, we experience the unmistakable shift of our hearts moving from the worries of the unknown to the unshakable promises of the One we know. Therein lies the blessing.
In the midst of our enemy, may we sit with the Lord and witness our cup overflowing with blessings as we reflect on the unfailing promises of our unchanging God.
– Courtney Watson
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