Enter His Gates

             Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalm 100:4-5) 

One day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them. The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” (Job 1:6-7) 

The first passage above was BibleGateway.com’s verse of the day, and it makes me smile. They meant it as a Thanksgiving Day preparation. But let’s do a little mental exercise. Suppose that you walked through the gates, and the courts beyond were rusted metal and mildew, with water dripping here and there and broken benches. Suppose the place you entered was, in fact, the most dismal and depressing place you can imagine, and you are herded in with twice as many people as can fit in the space, none of whom had a bath in the past month and commanded to give thanks and praise. This is the sense I think a lot of people get from commands to praise. There is nothing to give thanks for, and no reason to praise, but we’re told to do so anyway.

But what if these verses aren’t a command? What if they’re an invitation? “Come on in. You’re welcome. Dinner will be served in an hour.” Now, some might say that God only treats good people with such an invitation. Consider the third passage above, showing God treating a gate-crashing Satan well.

I won’t quote it, but in Genesis 3, part of the temptation of Eve was the possibility of being “like God.” We might work toward that goal by being a good and cheerful host.