Psalm 24:7
Lift up your heads, O gates; be lifted, you ancient portals, that the king of glory may enter.
No assembly required! Those words are key when doing Christmas shopping for the kiddos. Last year I got my boys Big Wheels, and what was I doing Christmas Eve night? Yep. Snapping those puppies together. Have you ever started one of those projects and realized 4 steps in that you missed a step and have to disassemble everything. It stinks, but if you don't, the toy just isn't going to work right.
The asterisk next to this verse from Psalm 24 says, "the literal meaning would involve disassembly of the gates, since a gate that moves up and down was unknown in the ancient world." Can you imagine building or constructing something that would have to be taken apart if an important enough reason arose? If the right person wanted to enter?
That's what happens to us sometimes. We invite the Lord in, but in order to grant access, we have to come apart a little. We have to be opened up. Sometimes this happens through a softening of our hearts towards someone we are angry with or need to extend a handy of mercy to. Sometimes we are completely disassembled and don't realize until much later that God wasn't pulling us apart to leave us in pieces, but rather to rebuild us in a new way.
In these final days of Advent as we await the entrance of the king of glory, let's all think and pray about what we can do to let down our guard, open our hearts and accept that sometimes the disassembling is exactly what we need in order to be put back together and be the gift God wants us to be.
