Do you ever stop and “Selah?”  Well you really should. It’s in the bible, God deserves it and you need it.  Look at the words of the Psalmist,

“I cried to the LORD with my voice, and He heard me from His holy hill. Selah” Psalms 3:4

“Salvation belongs to the LORD. Your blessing is upon your people. Selah” Psalms 3:8

“You have given him his heart’s desire, and have not withheld the request of his lips. Selah” Psalms 21:2

Selah was a musical interlude in which the congregation was supposed to pause and consider the blessing of the words they just sang.  You see, we need to build in pauses to ponder the wonderful way that God just expressed himself through us and those around us.  What is it about human nature, that we always have time to stop and vent when things go wrong, but then we race right on to the next event or task when God has just blessed us?  Have you noticed that we always have time for an argument?  What’s up with that?  We will even have a great praiseworthy moment and talk about, what went wrong or what could have been better.  It’s a little “Selah” we are craving when we say, “give me a break!”

One of the meanings of the word Selah is “weigh.”  Think about it.  It’s so important to stop and “weigh” the praiseworthy deeds of God.  It’s no coincidence that the Hebrew word for “weight” means glory (Kabod).  We are supposed to go through life with regular pauses to “weigh” the glory and the goodness of God in our lives.  What is with this fear of celebration and affirmation that some of us have?  Every day of Creation in Genesis records God pausing at the end of the day and reflecting on how what he had made was good.  Take a lesson from that.

Now all of life can’t be the Selah zone.  There is a time to evaluate, review and improve performance, but I just think in our present circumstances most of us are starving for times off affirmation and praise.  Paul said it this way in Philippians 4:8, “my friends, fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honorable.”

If you don’t ever slow down and weigh out the glory of God in life, the pressures of life will overburden you; negativity will clog your soul with spiritual sludge and some very good people will start avoiding you.
Selah!