The reading for today is Psalm 84
As I read the title for todays reading, Home Sweet Home, I immediately started to sing…“Sweet Home Alabama” (take a few seconds to finish that in your mind:)
Now keep reading and see if any other songs come to mind…
Verse 1-“How lovely is your dwelling place” any song?
Verse 10-“Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere” any song?
The words above bring to mind a very familiar song and I have been singing it all week as I have reread Psalm 84.
In Psalm 84 we read about the yearning of the pilgrim Israelites and their journey to Jerusalem to be with God in His temple. This is the temple that Solomon built as a dwelling place for God on earth. No expense was spared in building this structure, 1 Kings chapter 6 gives all the glorious details of the ornate carvings and beautiful work that was done. This was a place like no other. The temple was the literal home on earth of the presence of God.
Is there a place that you long to be? As a child I remember in the summer we would spend a week at our Aunt’s house. I would look forward to that week with my cousins on their farm, until I actually had to go to bed. As we would put on our pajamas and get ready to slide under the covers, it would hit me, “I am not at home”. Then the longing for home (and my mother) would become intense. Unfortunately, it would get so bad that I would make myself sick. Now we can look back and laugh at that, but even now at 50 years old, I can remember that yearning of wanting to be “home”.
Psalm 84 gives us a powerful sense of being “home”.
“How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord Almighty! My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cry out for the living God.”
Psalm 84:1&2
The psalmist describes the anguish that comes from being separated from the temple courts. The temple is where the psalmist feels utterly at home. The Israelites longed to be home where they had a sense of complete belonging.
Is your heart yearning and even fainting to be in this place of complete belonging? We search for this belonging our whole life. Our immediate family is the first place we want to completely belong. We try to “fit-in” and belong at school when we are in our school years. Sometimes a sports team can give us the feeling of belonging. We want to find complete belonging in a significant other. Then we want to find the perfect career that makes us feel needed and at home. We continuously search for this longing. In all these ways we are yearning to be “home”. But do we realize this yearning is actually a yearning for the presence of God?
We no longer have a temple that we must pilgrim to and find the presence of God. The temple is now in us. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own”
I Corinthians 6:19
Our bodies are the temple of God’s presence. Are we living like this? Are we yearning to be close to God daily? Every hour? Do we yearn to tell others of his dwelling in our hearts? Do we see the beauty of Christ in our life? Is Christ at home in us? We will not find our complete belonging in anything on this earth. We have to daily/hourly find our belonging only in Jesus, then we will truly be “home”.