1 Samuel 21:7

"... detained before the Lord." 1 Samuel 21:7 .

Such words are to be used simply by way of accommodation, either for private meditation or for public preaching. There is a detention before the Lord that amounts to imprisonment, the accused having a sense of being arrested and charged at the bar of heaven. Men are detained before the Lord in various ways, as, for example, (a) by conscience, when some moral charge presses its claim upon us; ( b ) by gratitude, when we stand in the act of counting the divine mercies we have received, and numbering the divine blessings which surround us, our hearts all the while overflowing with a sense of thankfulness to the Giver of all good; ( c ) by religious contemplation, when wonder is excited at the greatness of the universe, when amazement seizes the mind because of the minuteness and beneficence of providence, when events so shape themselves as to prove superior to human direction, and yet to be tending in a course filled with blessedness to the human family; ( d ) by loving and exultant devotion, as when the heart is bowed down with pure emotion, and the soul is lifted up in high and unselfish expectation because of the conscious nearness of God and his evident willingness to create for himself an opportunity in our life that he may enlarge all his former gifts in one supreme blessing. Then there is a detention before the Lord that involves the exercise of patience; we do not get an answer so soon as we want it; we think we have an urgent petition, demanding an instantaneous reply, and yet we are kept waiting day by day. Who can tell the meaning of all these detentions? Blessed are they who are detained before God because the Lord has much to say to them in the way of instruction, comfort, and stimulus. Who has not felt the words rising to his lips in many an hour of glowing realisation of the divine presence "Abide with us"?