The holy dwelling places of the Most High.
God is in the midst of her, she will not be moved;
God will help her when morning dawns.
Psalm 46: 4-5
Sometimes God reveals the most marvellous things. Last week He drew me to Psalm 46, which contains some of the most beloved passages in scripture (here's the rest of the Psalm). I was drawn to two quiet verses, 4 and 5. As I was reading, I remembered that in the Bible, water is often symbolic of the Holy Spirit. I hesitated briefly at the wording "the city of God," but then I recalled that Jesus Christ's bride, the Church, is referred to in Revelation as the New Jerusalem. God put these two thoughts together for me, and verse 4 suddenly became alive: We, His city (His holy dwelling places) are made glad by the Holy Spirit's vital, growing, unhampered presence and authority in our lives.
Verse 5 seems pretty quiet as well, and it is. But it, too, is rich with meaning. As we learn to rest in His presence deep in our midst, He teaches us that He is the immovable and eternal I AM. As we learn to trust Him to be our I AM in everything, past, present, and future, He gradually steadies us: we will not be moved.
"God will help her when morning dawns": Even though He's always there for us, He still lets us endure the night, and often makes us wait before He answers.
I find it interesting that the original Hebrew words for river and city are both masculine. How, then, did the psalmist arrive at the feminine pronoun her, which I presume refers to "city"? I'm not a Bible scholar, and I can only speculate. But perhaps this is the Holy Spirit's way of telling us that when He inspired this psalm, He was looking ahead to our deep, life-enriching union with Him in Christ. God had already foreseen us as His bride and eternal holy dwelling place. Perhaps He even thought of us as He formed the first drop of water.