I love reading the oldest psalm written by Moses, Psalm 90. My favorite verse lately is 14 where Moses writes, “Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days.”
In the morning? Oh, but I immensely dislike the morning! I’m not a morning person at all!
I focus on the little verb “satisfy” because it seems so hard to grasp for a person like me who does not like the morning. How can someone wake up and feel satisfied so quickly with God’s unfailing love? What does one need to call to mind to know this, to feel this, to put her toes on the cold floor and realize the truth of it?
I pause in the bed and let the words sink in like I’m a dry sponge absorbing water.
I think of the default state of my heart that complains instead of sings, that sulks instead of rejoices. I wonder what Moses taught his own heart each morning and how he escaped his own despair. I find the secret in his very first sentence: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place. . .”
I’ve wondered for years what it meant that we have our “dwelling place” in God and that He’s also dwelling in us. If I remember, like Moses did, that my soul rests in this beautiful refuge and fortress, I begin to think that what satisfies is this being with God and enjoying His presence here in my soul. It seems no accident that the next psalm tells us “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God in whom I trust'” (Psalm 91:1). I can wake up here, in this truth, instead of in my own moody thoughts.
I leave the bed, but I’m in a different place. I’m in a refuge, a fortress, a heavenly dwelling.