Fearful Joy
Worship the LORD with reverence and rejoice with trembling. Psalm 2:11
Trembling – What a strange combination? Joy is supposed to be accompanied by contentment and peace, not a protective adrenaline rush. We tremble when fear grips us. But the Biblical accounts paint a different picture. “Woe is me” says Isaiah. He trembles before the Lord, but not from joy. He trembles in fear of his life. Daniel is struck by fear in the presence of God. Peter, James and John experience the same dismay at the Transfiguration. Bravado is replaced with fear for their lives. There is no rejoicing here. So why does David, a man who knew well the power of the Almighty, mix these clashing colors? How can he say, “My canvas is covered with exuberant well-being and terrible dread”?
We worship an all-too-familiar God, a God tamed by proper etiquette, sanitized by spiritual correctness. We don’t enter into His gates in terror, afraid to die if we should accidentally glimpse His face. We come boldly. We are instructed to do so. But our boldness too often gives way to presumption. The fact that we are no longer afraid to die is not because we have the earned the right of an audience. Lest we forget, a holy God is not a familiar God. A God of majesty, power and wrath still occupies the throne of heaven. David was perfectly right to choose ra’ad, the Hebrew word for earthquake trembling.
Jesus gives us privilege, not priority. It is on His standing that I enter the throne room of the Most High. He vouches for me, not because I have now appeased the God in whom there is no darkness but because He chooses to love me in spite of my inner disgrace to the Father of Creation.
What would worship be like if God ever pulled back the veil? Would His dazzling brilliance blind us? Would His radiance burn away our flesh? Would we despair of lives lived so disobediently, even after grace? Would we, at last, tremble with joy because we would finally see how wide is the gap that the Son crossed to bring us into the presence of the One we cannot bear to face?
