A Place of Wonder – Psalm 84:1-7

A text – Psalm 84:1-7

¹ How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
² My soul longs, indeed it faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.

³ Even the sparrow finds a home and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
⁴ Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. 

⁵ Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
⁶ As they go through the valley of Baca, they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
⁷ They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.

A reflection:

Do you have one of those places in your mind where you find yourself once in awhile, without even intending to create a mental picture of it? I have so many of these that I have never tried to count them. A place on the bank of the Mississippi River, the harbor in Thessaloniki looking across at Mt. Olympus, a picnic blanket near the Apollo Basin at Versailles, a walk on our favorite Florida beach, a street in Münster. You have them, too. This psalm was one that the people making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, probably for a festival, might say, conjuring up how it would be to stand once again at the temple of Zion and prepare to worship the Lord. On their long walk there, they might have preferred to be the birds able to make their nests right there at the holy spot. They would have loved to be there as often as possible.

They also loved and marvelled that their one true most high God dwelled with them in their holy city. God was ever present with them, and real, alive, aware of them as people. Their God was not distant but personally connected. When the holy days arrived and everyone came to be at worship together, their God-centered community was revealed. Nothing compared to those visits. It was a community in a very big way.

Whether you love your own church sanctuary or not, whether you consider those who gather there your friends or maybe just friendly strangers, the next time you come into your church, remember the love in this psalm for the gathering place, the beauty of having a God who comes to you each day and wants you to show up too – the beauty of having a God who came to earth and lived as one of us humans – the beauty of being the beloved child of such a God who longs to gather us close, if only we would allow it.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for the psalms that united the pilgrims to Jerusalem and that still paint the picture for us of the beauty of coming together into a sacred space. Help us to remember that you still dwell with us and long to embrace us, whenever we are ready – or even when we are not. Amen.