Peter preached Pentecost,
to explain those strange happenings
tongues of fire, winds and men in ecstasy.
He quoted Joel who told of the coming
outpouring of the Spirit.
But Peter told another passage, overlooked
and not comprehended,
not of future but of a long since past.

Peter linked two passages as the
fullest explanation of that unprecedented event.
The outpouring of the Spirit in Joel 2
and the living vision of David in Psalm 16.

Joel spoke that that which would happen, entirely future.
David wrote of that which he experienced in a distant past.

David spoke of the Lord as always before him, as
continuously seeing Him.
And Peter explained that the Lord of which he spoke
was not the Father, but amazingly,
Jesus, the Christ.

Long before the incarnation, centuries before the cross,
David lived in the Actual Presence of the Son of Glory.

David, poet-prophet, knew the ecstasy of the Lord,
through the nearness of His Being.
It was an experience . . . and more,
a continuous one.

How much more should we,
the New Testament recipients,
experience the Literal Nearness
of our Savior?

Our sordid memory holds on to David's adulterous failure.
But for the Eternal Record, the New Testament memory,
God remembers him as one who "saw the Lord
constantly before him."

David stands for actual awareness of God and out of that
Presence flowed his worship and adoration,
his volumes of poetic praise and song. 

How tragic that there are only
a rare few who live in His Realized Presence
and they are so rare as to be considered an oddity,
outside the norm . . . .

His presence is transfiguration. (II Cor. 3)
To behold Him is to drop your self
by sheer disinterest
and to be unconsciously melted into the mold
of His image.

The outpouring of the Spirit was the gift of power.

The gift of the Spirit there at Pentecost,
was also the outpoured privilege of
Jesus' Realized Presence.

That living experience of Emmanuel,
God-With-Us
is for every believer . . . no longer the
rare touch of God to a single David.

Copyright © 2002 Martha Kilpatrick