At Home

Psalm 84

¹How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
²My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

³Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
⁴Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah

⁵Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
⁶As they go through the Valley of Baca
they make it a place of springs;
the early rain also covers it with pools.
⁷They go from strength to strength;
each one appears before God in Zion.

⁸O Lord God of hosts, hear my prayer;
give ear, O God of Jacob! Selah
⁹Behold our shield, O God;
look on the face of your anointed!

¹⁰For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
¹¹For the Lord God is a sun and shield;
the Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold
from those who walk uprightly.
¹²O Lord of hosts,
blessed is the one who trusts in you!

At Home

On Holy Trinity Sunday (observed just this past Sunday) we confess the great mystery that there are three persons, yet only one God. We contemplate deep truths about the eternal nature of the Son of God, who was begotten from eternity and has always existed as the second person of the Trinity.

This is the Sunday on which the Athanasian Creed is confessed, with all of its intricate language, and we are confronted with the reality that while we can know God, we can’t fully comprehend God.

The mystery of the Trinity is indeed great.

But on this Sunday, as we contemplate the vastness of God, as we meditate on the mystery of the Trinity, our Psalm reminds us that even though God is transcendent, He is also a real and present hope.

¹How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
²My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.
³Even the sparrow finds a home,
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.
⁴Blessed are those who dwell in your house,
ever singing your praise! Selah

The great and mysterious God, invites us to come into His presence! Even the sparrow finds a home, and if even the sparrow finds home then we too have a home in His presence!

The Lord says, For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:9), and yet this God who is so far beyond us, invites us to come to His altar where He comes to us. In a tangible way, God the Son literally comes to us in, with, and under the bread and wine. The mysterious God doesn’t simply remain beyond our understanding and comprehension, but the Son of God Himself comes to us to forgive our sins and to be a real and present God for us.

I love how the Psalmist notes not only that the sparrow and swallow find homes because of God’s provision, but that they find that home at the Lord’s altars. It reminds me that in this world, in which I all too often do not feel at home, that I have a home in the presence of the Lord.

These words of Jesus come to my mind as I read this Psalm. Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? (Matthew 6:26-27)

If the Lord provides a home even for the birds of the air at His altars, don’t you think He has a home for you as well?

The great, mysterious Trinity invites you to come to His altar, into His presence, and to know that there you are at home.