The Yearning | Ed’s Inspirations
Psalms 84: 1-4, NLT:
“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 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.”
Have we had a glimpse, a small taste, a tantalizing whiff or hint of a sweet place that draws us towards itself with anything from a muted longing to a full on intense desire? We can scarcely absorb the loveliness of God's dwelling place and of His presence. Lovely because His seen creation is lovely, but mostly because He is lovely!
If the seen creation is His footstool and a poignant signpost to the transcendence of the unseen realm, then yes I long to enter His courts and yes I faint with longing to enter His presence! I am allowed, even beckoned to come.
We might say the altar is a point of redemptive connection between God and His human family. If the sparrow and the swallow find their homes and build their nests near God’s altar, how much more value can we attribute to man's pursuit (and of course God’s enabling) of proximity to God. We may think of the nearness of the swallow and the sparrow to the physical altar as a measure of physical distance but surely and more profoundly also a reference to the intertwined existence of the physical to the spiritual.
George MacDonald--”To cease to wonder is to fall plumb-down from childlike to the common place, the most undivine of all moods intellectual. Our nature can never be at home among things that are not wonderful to us”.
Ok. Some days….no most days life has its distractions. The mundane, the tyranny of the unimportant, the daily grind, these things often leave us satisfied to pick the low hanging fruit, and leave us pursuing lesser and temporal things. Then there is hurt, pain and disappointment that flood our lives with a limiting veil. Much of life though, reveals the truth that we are destined by God’s good grace to live lives that are acquainted with the wonderful. When we struggle we are aware of a better place to be. When we settle for less than the sublime we feel dissatisfaction. This is a holy longing and the Psalmist seems to be connected to an extreme version of it. We can ask ourselves not to forget this! Our lives may not be wonderful, but very near is a place of wonder!
The swallow in question could have been a Barn Swallow or a Red-rumped Swallow, both in existence in Israel in the day. Today we sometimes knock down the mud nests of Barn Swallows that are built in porches, garages or the rafters of milk houses, often over a doorway or on a light fixture. If you happen to notice a Sparrow or one of these Barn Swallows may they be a reminder to search for the sacred and to harness any desire you can muster to pursue this wondrous being we call God. God has never lacked in intentionality and purpose...perhaps there is room in our lives to be more intentional about our search for the courts of the Lord. He is near and He enables us!
How lovely is your dwelling place!
How lovely is your dwelling place?