Not sure I’m going to be able to adequately capture in a few words what I’m chewing on this morning. It’s one of the those “contrast” mornings where there’s conflicting, maybe even colliding observations from two of my readings.

First, I get a bit high-centered on a verse in Exodus — pausing, hovering, and meditating on the verse for a bit before regaining traction to move on.

At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.

(Exodus 12:29-30 ESV)

There was not a house where someone was not dead . . . Got stuck there. Finished the chapter and then went back to try and wrap my mind around that phrase.

Not a house! Not one, in all of Egypt, that didn’t have someone they would need to bury. How awful. It’s way too easy for me to focus solely on the deliverance of God’s people and skip over the judgment of His enemies. Too easy to think of those who walked away and forget those washed away. What was it to hear that “great cry” in Egypt that night? What was it to be one of the criers? Heavy sigh.

Then, after reading in Matthew and then Acts, but with Exodus 12 still in mind, I close my readings in the Psalms. And it’s a line in a song of David that creates the dissonance in my deliberations.

One thing have I asked of the LORD,
       that will I seek after:
that I may dwell in the house of the LORD
       all the days of my life,
to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD
       and to inquire in His temple.

(Psalm 27:4 ESV)

To gaze upon the beauty of the LORD . . . That’s the phrase I want to run with. That’s the one I want to settle into. To contemplate His beauty. To behold His delightfulness. To fix the eyes of my heart on His pleasantness.

Yet, I can’t shake not a house where someone was not dead. Can’t disassociate the beauty of the LORD from the LORD who struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt. Can’t compartmentalize the call to delight in the LORD while still reeling from the implications of the deliverance of the LORD. How do those two things go together?

Seems to me, it comes down to where you’re going to anchor your soul, and which verse is going to provide context for the other. To cast the LORD’s beauty in the shadow of Egypt’s judgment, or Egypt’s judgment processed in the prevailing truth of the LORD’s beauty. In light of the truth of the gospel, I’m going with the LORD’s beauty as the faith anchor for my soul.

Though hard to reconcile in the details, the same holiness that emits a gaze worthy beauty, is the holiness that demands payment for evil. The wonder of deliverance can only be realized against the backdrop of an enemy’s defeat. The Exodus horror must be viewed in light of the Psalm’s beauty. Right?

Isn’t that how faith works? Isn’t that what it means, at least in part, to trust in the LORD with all your heart (Prov. 3:5-6)? Believing that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek. 18:23, 32; 33:11)? Resting in the incomprehensible reality that while God calls the wicked to forsake his ways, and though God is slow to anger and ready to wait, God, if He is God, must eventually judge the wicked when they persist to harden their hearts? That His thoughts and His ways are so much higher than ours (Isa. 55:7-9)? Isn’t that what quiets the dissonance? I’m thinkin’ . . .

So, while I can’t get evict the mental picture of Egyptian households on Passover night from my mind, it is eclipsed by my God’s beauty, the splendor of holiness (Ps. 29:2).

And so, I gaze.

Makes sense?

Because of grace. For His glory.