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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”.

All of us, every day, are led and protected by God’s promises. In every struggle we face and in every trial we endure, we can carry through knowing God is close, watching and caring for us. And when we finally overcome our ordeals, all too often we forget to give God our first and foremost thanks and celebration. In today’s reading, 1 Kings 8, we get a picture of what has been a monumental hardship for the people of Israel finally being properly recognized and celebrated. And in reading this passage, we get a reminder of how glorious our God is and how wonderful (and easy!) it can be to come to Him in thanks.

King Solomon, finally inheriting the position of his father David and the promises God made to him, wants to make it known how grateful and thankful the people of Israel are to the Lord. Excited to fulfill a promise the Lord had made to his father in 2 Samuel 7: 12-15, Solomon has declared that a permanent temple should be built for the Lord, one to signify the importance of the land they had been delivered into as the Lord promised. The temple he had built for the Lord was a work of art by human standards, taking 20 years to build. Made of hand-carved stone and the finest cedar, decorated with hand-carved angels, and laid with more gold, silver, and bronze than imaginable, it was a piece of craftsmanship made by Solomon out of reverence and joy.

Once the temple was completed, it was furnished with holy furniture and finally, the Ark of the Covenant, containing the tablets signifying God’s promise of a home for Israel. After withdrawing, a wonderful phenomenon blessed the nation – an enormous cloud, full of the presence of the Lord, filled the temple, and finally God had His dwelling place within the land of Israel!

Solomon’s prayers of gratitude were full of joy that the Lord finally had a place where the Israelites could draw near to be with Him and thank Him. And in Solomon’s reflections, we gain a few reminders of our own reasons that we should be thanking God.

1. The Lord promised David that although he desired to build a temple in the Lord’s name himself, his son would be the one to glorify God in that way – and Solomon was filled with joy and awe that the Lord would use him to keep his promise. When we come to the Lord outstretch and reverent, he keeps his promise every time, as he has to Israel for centuries now and will continue to for centuries more after this and endless time to come.

2. Solomon and many craftsmen among the people poured decades of hard work into this temple as a sign of love, that the Lord would even consider dwelling among them. Solomon humbly says it himself: “But will God really dwell on earth? The heavens, even the highest heaven, cannot contain you. How much less this temple I have built!” While symbolic in nature, demonstrating how God has dwelled among His people, God by His very nature can not be contained by or within anything – that he is everywhere and everything, simultaneously greater than the universe itself yet dwelling within each of our hearts. How incredible is our God!

3. Solomon has a simple request to God for the sake of all who follow Him – that they would turn to Him always. When a promise is made, when pain and pestilence befalls his people, when we are hungry or weary or lost, and when the enemies that belong to the world show up, Solomon prays that the people of Israel would come be in God’s presence, turning to him for strength. Even as physical temples come and go, God’s presence and glory still resides within us and around us, where we can always find Him and lift our hands and bow our heads in thanks. Never must we be without the presence of God.

Ultimately, the residence of God’s glory within Solomon’s temple is an act of love and appreciation by God. He does not need a temple to rest in, nor hand-carved stone and decorations or gold and silver and bronze. But He loves us and wants to dwell within our hearts! How blessed we should feel that the Lord of all creation, uncontainable and immeasurable, would always be present for us, always there to love, guide, and forgive us! Not all of us can build ornate temples out of wonder for God’s fulfilled promises. But we can do is listen to Solomon’s prayer, and come to God in prayer no matter what troubles befall us.

When Solomon finished praying to the Lord, he finished with a prayer over the people of Israel in 1 Kings 8:56-61, one I will end with by sharing with you. May Solomon’s words be true in your hearts as well today.

“Praise be to the LORD, who has given rest to his people Israel just as he promised. Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through his servant Moses. May the LORD our God be with us as He was with our fathers. And may these words of mine, which I have prayed before the LORD, be near to the LORD our God day and night, that He may uphold the cause of His Servant and the cause of His people Israel according to each day’s need, so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the LORD is God and that there is no other. But your hearts must be fully committed to the LORD our God, to live by His decrees and obey His commands, as at this time.”

Amen!

Psalm 139

Today as we read Psalm 139, I want to concentrate on verses 7-12. I think we all are very familiar with verses 13-15 as they are quoted and bannered often in our lives, so I want to look more closely at maybe a less familiar part of the chapter but to me an equally beautiful section.

Vs 7-12 “I can never escape from your Spirit! I can never get away from your presence! If I go up to heaven, you are there; if I go down to the grave, you are there. If I ride the wings of the morning, if I dwell by the farthest oceans, even there your hand will guide me, and your strength will support me. I could ask the darkness to hide me and the light around me to become night-but even in the darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. Darkness and light are the same to you.” 

As I read this I am overwhelmed by God’s beauty, comfort, safety, protection, might, omnipotence, omnipresence, power and if I am honest, maybe a little bit uncomfortable. When I am seeking God and listening for His voice in my life, these verses are so reassuring and comforting, I can’t think of many options that are more comforting. But when I get distracted, busy or on a mission to complete my to-do list, I find my mind less focused on Him and more focused on the task at hand. Let me give an example. As I write this post, my mind is consumed with God, His promises and what He might be trying to say to us, so this passage feels comforting. I can never get away from His presence, His hand will guide me, and His strength will support me, very beautiful and reassuring that He is always there with me.

 But what about when I am being less mindful of Him or worse, choosing to do something disobedient? Then I am very uncomfortable being honest about the fact that I can never get away from His presence or escape His Spirit. I think I like telling myself that God isn’t around when I mess up. I know that my sin grieves His spirit and damages our relationship until I get honest and ask for forgiveness from Him, but I don’t like the mental picture of Him being there watching as I sin. It seems so much more ugly when I picture Perfection, the one who suffered and gave His life so I could be washed clean, standing or sitting right there with me as I choose unkind words, an ungrateful heart, selfishness, anger with others, or so many more awful things I do that I’m too embarrassed to write down. The truth is, He is there. No matter what I am thinking or feeling, He is with me and seeing everything I choose, every thought I have, and every motivation for the choices I make. My sin is not hidden. I’ve known this truth since I was a child, but looking at these verses today makes me realize how easily I lie to myself about this truth. 

God’s presence is constant. The way I perceive His presence is based on my choices. 

2 Samuel 11 tells the story of King David and Bathsheba (wife of Uriah), and David’s double sins of adultery and murder. The last sentence of the chapter is, ” But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord. ” After all of this happened, the prophet Nathan went to David and confronted him about the sin (in a subtle, indirect way) and when David realized the full weight of what he had done, he became overcome with guilt.

David had to have known that what he did was wrong, but it seems like when everything was “hidden” or had gone unnoticed by people, he was able to live with himself. But after Nathan exposed to David the gravity of what all had transpired, David was overcome.

Psalm 51 is David’s response to the weight of his own sin. David first confesses what he has done, then asks for mercy and forgiveness, then praises God’s attributes with worship, having received forgiveness.

I think it’s unlikely that anyone reading this post is carrying around the guilt of a sin equal David’s sin of adultery/murder, but I’m fairly certain that at least one of you knows what the burden of guilt feels like. I know I do.
Everyone has sinned, and one of the results of sin is guilt. We can be thankful for guilty feelings because they drive us to seek forgiveness.

I invite you today to unburden your conscience in prayer. Tell God what sins are causing you to feel guilt, ask him to forgive you, and ask for him to fill your spirit with joy.