David’s life was characterised by a sense of wild abandon. When he did something, he didn’t do it halfway. He jumped in the deep end. He took risks. He felt things deeply and passionately.
When David praised God, he did it with his whole heart (see Psalms 9, 86 and 111). He didn’t hold anything back. He wasn’t calculating or cautious.
There’s a great story of David dancing for joy with all his might. Anyone who has spent time in the company of children has seen their willingness to do this. They dance and get so excited about things that sometimes they just jump up and down squealing. That’s what David was like.
Grown-ups are not prone to this kind of activity, unless it’s time for the FA cup final, or the climax to a reality series like Strictly or Eurovision. And that says something about us, doesn’t it?
David was like a little kid in his excitement over what God was doing, had done or was going to do. When was the last time you were so overwhelmed with what God was doing that you just had to jump up and down and high-five the person next to you?
You don’t want to go to your grave with a heart that is cold and calculating and protected and safe. God wants your heart to be passionate and sold out to Him with a wild abandon.
That is, after all, the kind of heart He has for you. God is not neutral about you. God gives you His heart without holding anything back (see Romans 8.32). He is for you. He cheers you on (see Zephaniah 3.17). He longs to lavish good gifts on you. It’s almost as if God can’t help Himself, He loves you so much that He’s willing to go to incredible lengths to restore you and draw you back to Himself.
But there’s another feature about David, one that is rare in people whose hearts are so wild and intense. David was also a man of deep reflection. David took time alone with God, out with the sheep, hiding in caves, allowing God to shepherd his heart.
It’s uncommon to find both traits in one person. Usually you find in a person one or the other. Either they live with a sense of wild abandon or they are deeply reflective. But David combined both.
In the very first Psalm, David uses this great image of a tree. He says that the godly man or woman is like a tree planted by rivers of water, whose roots go down so deep that producing fruit almost comes effortlessly. The tree can’t help but produce fruit because the root system is so deep and the tree is so well nourished that it just flourishes.
Regardless how much you know about gardening, most of us realise that you can’t develop a root system in a hurry. It takes time and stillness and waiting. When was the last time you saw someone whose life was always a blur, a rushing, swirling mass of chaos, and they were also deep? You can be hurried or you can be deep, but you can’t be both.
Far too many of us live at breakneck speed, squeezing the most out of each day, collapsing in a heap long after midnight, neglecting the command to be still and know that God is God (and by implication, we are not). We’ve bought into the lie that our worth is determined by our productivity. Our hearts are not often characterised by deep reflection.
Passionate living. Deep reflection. This is one of those cases when we dare not take an either/or approach. We must live in the tension of both/and, allowing ourselves to plunge in the deep end of life with all its messes and mysteries, and carve out time for solitude and contemplation.
That’s not just how David lived. It’s how Jesus lived (more on Him later). And it’s how we were designed to live as well.
Dear Father, grant me a childlike enthusiasm and wonder at all that You are and all that You have done in heaven above and earth below. Let me revel in Your many deliverances and kindnesses that You have imparted to me. You have given me vitality, hope and purpose, and I acknowledge that all of life is gift and grace. I ask that I would not merely live on the surface of life, but that I would sink my roots deep into the soil of Your love and draw my vitality from the water of Your Word. May I be rooted and grounded in Your love, and may I take the time I need for reflection, renewal and rest, so that I will know You better and become increasingly like You. Then I will be a contemplative in action, a person of depth and breadth, and one who has learned the secret of living from the inside out.
In Jesus’s name, Amen
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