Every summer the family flies home to the house in the hills. They arrive tired, find the key under the stone, and open up a place that has been shut for eleven months. The sheets smell of mothballs. The tank needs checking. A lizard has taken up residence in the bathroom. It takes two days to feel settled, and by the time it does, there are only ten days left. Then the shutters go up, the key goes back under the stone, and the house waits again.
Many families in the diaspora know this kind of house. It is loved, paid for and full of memories, but it is visited rather than lived in. Anyone who has one knows that a house you visit is not the same as a house you dwell in. You don’t know its sounds at night. You don’t know which window sticks in the rain. You are always a little bit of a guest.
The one who dwells
Psalm 91 opens with a sentence about exactly that difference: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psalm 91:1, NKJV). The verbs matter. Dwells. Abides. This is not someone who drops in on God when there is trouble, like a family opening up the holiday house for a fortnight. It is someone who lives there.
The next verse makes it personal: “I will say of the Lord, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress; my God, in Him I will trust'” (Psalm 91:2, NKJV). The psalmist speaks of God the way we speak of our own front door: mine.
The rest of the psalm is full of vivid protection: from the snare of the fowler, from pestilence, from the terror by night and the arrow that flies by day. It can be misread as a promise that nothing bad will ever touch a believer, which is not how the rest of Scripture or experience teaches us. Even Satan quoted verses from this psalm to Jesus, trying to get him to leap from the temple, and Jesus refused to treat it as a guarantee to be tested (Matthew 4:5–7). The psalm’s promise is deeper: whatever comes, the one who dwells with God is sheltered in God’s presence and not abandoned.
Visiting faith, dwelling faith
It is possible to have a holiday-home relationship with God. We open it up at Easter and Christmas, in hospital waiting rooms and on the night of a hurricane warning. We are grateful it is there. But we don’t know its rooms. We don’t know how he speaks in the ordinary evenings, because we are never there on ordinary evenings.
Dwelling faith looks less dramatic and more domestic:
- A few minutes of prayer most mornings, not only in emergencies.
- Reading Scripture slowly enough to learn its rooms: the psalms for lament, the Gospels for Jesus’ face, the proverbs for Tuesday decisions.
- Bringing small household things to God — the leaking tap, the tense conversation, the money for the school trip — as naturally as you would mention them to someone you live with.
- Belonging to a church family where you are known, not just visiting different services.
Then, when trouble does come, you are not fumbling for the key under the stone. You are already home.
Shade in the heat of the day
Anyone who has stood in a Caribbean yard at one o’clock in the afternoon understands “the shadow of the Almighty”. Shade does not stop the sun from shining. It does not make the day cooler for everyone. But the person under the tree or the verandah roof is spared the full force of it. That is a good picture of what Psalm 91 promises. The heat of life still comes: illness, loss, the bill that can’t be paid this month. But those who dwell in God’s shadow do not face it fully exposed.
If you have a house you only visit
Perhaps the psalm also invites a practical question about that house in the hills, or the flat you rent out, or the family home that sits empty. Could it be dwelt in? By a relative who needs somewhere, a young family at the local church, a caretaker who would love it? A house that is lived in stays healthier. So, often, do the people who share it.
For reflection
- Does your faith feel more like a house you visit or one you live in?
- What one daily habit could help you dwell rather than visit?
A prayer: Most High God, I don’t want to be a visitor in your house. Teach me to dwell with you in the ordinary days, so that when the heat comes, I am already in your shade. You are my refuge and my fortress; my God, in you I will trust. Amen.
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