Don't Leave Yet
What Psalm 104 keeps showing me every time I sit still long enough to listen.
There’s something that happens when you read the same passage of Scripture over and over. The text doesn’t change, but you do. And in changing, you begin to see it differently — new colors of who God is, new angles on who you are.
Psalm 104 has been that passage for me lately. One chapter among 1,189 chapters in the Bible. And it has been more than enough.
It’s filled with gold. God causes grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for humans to cultivate. But notice what He designs those plants for: wine that gladdens the heart. Bread that sustains the heart. Oil to make the face shine. That’s not a survival list. That’s a God who thought about delight — who didn’t just give us calories but gave us flavor, the process of it, and a reason to sit at a table together.
One chapter. This much color. And I’ve barely scratched it.
We learn by sitting, not striving
In The Wild Robot, Roz arrives in an ecosystem she has no language for. So she sits. For days. Maybe seasons. Plants grow up around her, flowers come and go, and the animals live their lives unbothered and unhurried. She doesn’t force comprehension. She stays present, and the environment teaches her — the language of the animals, their habits, their rhythms — not by chasing after them, but by letting the world be what it is and watching.
This is exactly what the Bible invites us to do. Stay in a chapter long enough and the land starts to reveal its conditions. Patterns emerge. A recurring word surfaces. A name for God you’d never noticed. The way a nature lover eventually knows where the deer walk at dusk — not because he hunted the knowledge down, but because he kept showing up.
The Holy Spirit works in the slow spaces — the silence, the uncertainty, the not-knowing-yet. Those are the exact spaces we’re often most tempted to skip over. Your slow process isn’t wasted time. That’s where God does His work in you so His work can flow through you. — Grant Herbel
The temptation is to shortcut the slow spaces. Reach for a faster answer. Outsource the wondering. But the wondering is where the color starts to show. The Holy Spirit is not in a hurry, and He tends to work in the quiet — in the sitting, not the sprinting.
The God Psalm 104 is describing
The God of the universe — the creator of nitrogen and pine needles, galaxies and E-minor — loves us with a radical, unconditional, self-sacrificing love. And what is our typical response? We go to church, sing songs, and try not to cuss. — Francis Chan
That quote lands differently after a few days in Psalm 104. Because Psalm 104 is a portrait of exactly that God. Nitrogen and pine needles. Springs in the valleys. The moon marking the seasons. Young lions roaring for their prey, seeking their food from God. Behind every system is a Someone who delights in what He made.
We experience God at the degree to which we pursue Him — not the degree to which we know about Him. There’s a difference. One is familiarity. The other is presence.
This world is all incarnation. Words made flesh. Words. God has seen and God has said. His imagination is bone-shaking and soul-shivering, and He has never groped for words to capture (and be) those things. — N.D. Wilson
Bone-shaking. Soul-shivering. That’s the language of someone who stopped treating the Bible like a resource to mine and started treating it like a place to inhabit.
Stay until the language opens up
When you inhabit the text long enough, the imagination, creativity, kindness, and love of God stop being theological categories. They become the actual texture of reality you’re living inside.
Psalm 104 is one chapter among 1,189 chapters in 66 books. And I haven’t left yet.
Sit long enough, and God will show you colors you didn’t know were there.