Monday, March 5, 2018

Lenten Walk - Part 13

Monday, March 5, 2018
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies.  I long, yes, I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord.  With my whole being, body and soul, I will shout joyfully to the living God.  Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow builds her nest and raises her young at a place near your altar, O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, my King and my God!  What joy for those who can live in your house, always singing your praises.                      Interlude
What joy for those whose strength comes from the Lord, who have set their minds on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  When they walk through the Valley of Weeping, it will become a place of refreshing springs.  The autumn rains will clothe it with blessings.  They will continue to grow stronger, and each of them will appear before God in Jerusalem.  O Lord God of Heaven’s Armies, hear my prayer.  Listen, O God of Jacob.                                                Interlude
O God, look with favor upon the king, our shield!  Show favor to the one you have anointed.  A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else!  I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.  For the Lord God is our sun and our shield.  He gives us grace and glory.  The Lord will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right.  O Lord of Heaven’s Armies, what joy for those who trust in you.  Psalm 84:1-12(NLT)
The city of Jerusalem is certainly Scripture’s central focus of history.  And God’s house, the Temple, is the ultimate center; it is the place where God was rejected.  The Apostle John recorded that very fact:
He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him.  He came to his own people, and even they rejected him.  John 1:10-11(NLT)
This seven weeks of Lent certainly focuses in on that rejection of the Man of Sorrows, the one who would die for our sins just outside the Holy City of Jerusalem on Golgotha’s hill.  But according to many of the Bible’s prophecies Jerusalem is also the place where Jesus will someday return and once again call the place home
For the serious student of Scripture, this is the over-arching atmosphere of all the law, prophets, poetry, history, and Gospel we read in God’s Holy Book.  In this book we experience a dense cloud of imminence, an expectancy that it will happen, must happen, and could happen at any moment.  A trumpet will sound, the dead in Christ will rise, and those who are alive will be caught up in a moment to a reunion to beat all homecomings![2]
With this as a backdrop – that all of history and humankind’s experience has a purpose – that one day we will be together in eternal joy and fellowship with our God – it is no wonder the Psalmist gushes forth his love for the place of God:
A single day in your courts is better than a thousand anywhere else!  Psalm 84:10(NLT)
I sometimes mull over how that is hardly the case in most churches.  We call it God’s house, and we worship, and we proclaim a lot of stuff…and then we go out to eat, and go on home to prepare for the real life of going back to work or school on Monday. 
And yet, there are times…times when the presence of God makes the church house HIS house!  And the place becomes a thin place between heaven and earth, and the worship becomes all about Jesus, and it really is better for those few moments in that place, no matter how big or small, crowded or sparse, denominational or independent, it is better than thousands of years anywhere else.
For You Today
Largely, the difference between the ho-hum ritual-rut that is the usual experience of many churches on any given Sunday, and the on-fire breakthrough of God’s holy presence is whether there is an eagerness for God’s house in the heart of the people.  How did it go in your church yesterday?  And how was your heart when you walked through the door?
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road; have a blessed day.

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[1] Title Image:  Courtesy of Pixabay.com
[2] See 1 Corinthians 15

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