Sélah

We live in a generation where we desire instant access to everything: instant delivery (Prime), instant service (Uber), instant films (Netflix), instant music (Spotify) and instant information (Google), all our questions must be answered immediately. But life is a journey with its own pace. The biblical word ‘selah’ is one of the most mysterious and magnificent in all Scripture. You don’t often hear or read people talk about it. In fact, few people know exactly what it means, although it occurs seventy-one times in the book of Psalms alone. Either the writer was addicted to the word (like Londoners are addicted to ‘innit‘, and Nigerians are addicted to ‘abi? ‘), or the word holds some significant value which we should all take note of.

‘Selah’ is a musical direction to pause, to stop and listen, to reflect on what has just happened, and prepare for what’s to come next.

Sometimes the Spirit whispers ‘Selah’ to our souls. Selah to our plans, Selah to our dreams and aspirations. We all want to jet off and be a billionaire, jet off and marry the love of our lives, or start a successful business as quickly as possible. We all want to reach our destination so quickly that we forget to stop and think. We just want to get it all and get it all now! Next-day delivery is no longer fast enough; we want same-day delivery.

But the Spirit sometimes wants us to pause, to wait. He puts us in a season of Selah. Such seasons of waiting rarely feel like a blessing at the time. They may seem like demonic interruptions in the divine trajectory of our plans. Perhaps that is because it is not the instant access we desire. Four-four time feels natural; jazz takes work. We wait to resolve ambiguity, to find explanations, to extract meaning, to roll up our sleeves and get busy.

The word ‘selah’ was adopted and adapted by German opera to instruct singers to be quiet while the orchestra crescendos.

Selah demands that we stop, that we fall silent when God thunders. Selah can be one of the most important things we never want to do.

How do we know when God is calling us to a season of Selah? Take a journey with me as I explore the seasons of Selah in a sequel to this post.