Back on Lockdown Day 1 in my first blog for these strange days, I moved from the owls we had drawn in our bubble to my favourite psalm –psalm 84. And today, all these days on, I am returning to this psalm, but this time in a different way. Prior to the bit about the sparrow finding her home at God’s altar, are these words –
How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty!
2 My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.
The psalmist is writing about his yearning to be in the Temple in Jerusalem... how blessed to be able to gather together there. He writes about all those who have set their hearts on pilgrimage, in order that they might one day gather together.
In this psalm, I am reminded that we do not do this church online thing as an end in itself, but rather as part of our pilgrimage back together.
The pilgrimage is a long one for the psalmist –taking him through the Valley of the Baka –baka being a particular tree, but the meaning of the valley’s name being a place of weeping or mourning. As they pass through this dry, arid place where the only water is tears, it becomes a place of springs –the psalmist refers to the autumn pools. And so as I look at the increasing signs of autumn out my window, I pray that those autumn pools will seep into any arid ground of our beings.
For us, like the psalmist, it is also a long pilgrimage, before we can gather together. It is a journey which takes us through those arid places, where the only water is our tears. And yet, in this pilgrimage, the psalmist writes of moving from strength to strength as they draw nearer to the Temple.
Back in Day 1, I wrote of the interconnectedness between home and church. Between the place we make our nest and the place we find God’s altar. I suggested the altar is closer to home than we realise. That within our bubbles we might discover afresh that it could be a place of worship; and a dwelling place of God.
My hope is that in these days you have found strength for your journey; that you have felt the autumn rains reach the dry ground in your deepest self. That your own tables have been places where God is present, and that that will continue in the days ahead, for there is still further to travel apart before we gather once more as a worshipping community.
May you have strength for your journey.
