I was just thirteen when I first encountered this verse. About a fifth of the way through my first read of Psalms, I stopped, because the Psalmist's perspective on the majesty of God puzzled me.

At first it seemed awfully pretentious of the author to say that God's existence was so magnetic that he was continually drawn to the house of the Lord at all times, "to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and seek him....". One thing changed my mind.

Our first visit to the South Rim of Grand Canyon National Park was breathtaking, almost before we started on the trails above the cavernous gorge. I walked slowly through the great dining hall which fronts the first cut alongside the enormous rock display. Outside the west balcony door, you find the torn landscape and unconsciously cease breathing. It's impossible to take in the entirety of the view which sweeps away perhaps fifty miles before fading in the morning haze!

Realizing the scope of what had forced these rocks to the surface, about eighty miles from the entrance to Zion National Park, I could not at first raise my camera to my eyes to begin snapping the 500 or so images which I would take home on memory chips. And when I look at them today, the feeling of my insignificance returns and again, I can't breathe! It's just under a mile from the ground on which the Park dining hall was constructed to the river bed below. A tortorous mule and horse ride down precipitous switchbacks to the tumbled rocks which have fallen from the walls rising almost razor like out of the millenia old upheaval. Yet, this Grand Canyon, breathtaking though it may be, was not what the God of the galaxies chose for his home.

The Tabernacle He commanded be hand-built from wood, animal skins, bits of gold and held together by beams and rope is where God dwelt. A cloud covering the burning brilliance of His presence. And there, in my poor drawing of the countenance of his being, the Lord stayed with the people of Israel, for hundreds of years until they disobeyed beyond God's patience to dwell with them, and departed about 400 years before Jesus was born.

Now in those moments on the sun splashed concrete of the back porch, I would remain transfixed by the glory of the passion of God's hand upon earth in the form of this gorge in the western United States. And I saw that to gaze on the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple would be the ultimate bucket list of my life. There is no higher aspiration.

Lord, please melt our pride, forgive our arrogance, and help us to see and repent from our mean spirited anger against You and one another, to seek Your face in this raking anger we lavish in cruelty, man upon man. Bring us to Your presence to relish in that clean-ness of heart and joy!