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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