As a teacher, I love for everything in my class to be in its place: my materials, my lesson plans, my schedule, my reading list–you name it! I want it to be perfect. I strive so hard to have everything as perfect as it can be, but as you can imagine, COVID-19 threw a complete wrench in my perfectly organized teaching world, and made me try new things all over again every day.
At times, last year reminded me of my first year of teaching, where I was figuratively smacked in the face with my inexperience and inadequacy. So often that first year at the end of the day I’d feel like there was no way I could get up the next morning and face the inadequacy I knew I’d be displaying, but I still got up every morning; I had to consistently push through the messiness that was my inadequate self, and it was because I realized that the good things that come from teaching just couldn’t be had otherwise.
This kind of “pushing through the messiness” that I experienced reminded me of a kind of messiness seen in David in Psalm 132. If you’ve spent any time studying the life of David, you know that his life was messy. His faith was messy, his relationships were messy — in short, he just frequently didn’t have it together. And yet, he’s called a man after God’s own heart. In fact, it’s in Psalm 132 that I think we see the interplay of these two disparate Davids. On the one hand, David passionately asserts that he won’t even sleep until he builds a temple for God to dwell in; on the other, he brazenly declares to God what he’s going to do for him: “Alright, God, this is how things are going to go down…”
It’s clear David desperately wants to do something to honor God, but the way in which he goes about it in this psalm doesn’t necessarily scream “reverent.” What’s interesting is that God doesn’t seem to have any problem with David’s approach or attitude. Sure, he doesn’t give David the opportunity to do what he wants, but he actually gives him something better: a legacy that will live on way beyond the lifespan of any temple.
So, let’s take a moment to learn from David. He came to God and maybe asserted himself in a way that was “not quite right,” but ultimately God doesn’t care about “how” we come to him, just that we do. If we wait to go to him till we have everything in its place (our life, our sin, our heart), then we’re gonna miss out on the best things God wants to give. And that’s what I love about David. I love how he shows us that even the most broken and messy amongst us can come before the throne of God.
Ashley Carr