Psalm Meditation 926
Fifth Sunday in Lent
March 18, 2018

Psalm 132
1 O LORD, remember in David’s favor all the hardships he endured;
2 how he swore to the LORD and vowed to the Mighty One of Jacob,
3 “I will not enter my house or get into my bed;
4 I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
5 until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.”
6 We heard of it in Ephrathah; we found it in the fields of Jaar.
7 “Let us go to his dwelling place; let us worship at his footstool.”
8 Rise up, O LORD, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your might.
9 Let your priests be clothed with righteousness, and let your faithful shout for joy.
10 For your servant David’s sake do not turn away the face of your anointed one.
11 The LORD swore to David a sure oath from which he will not turn back: “One of the sons of your body I will set on your throne.
12 If your sons keep my covenant and my decrees that I shall teach them, their sons also, forevermore, shall sit on your throne.”
13 For the LORD has chosen Zion; he has desired it for his habitation:
14 “This is my resting place forever; here I will reside, for I have desired it.
15 I will abundantly bless its provisions; I will satisfy its poor with bread.
16 Its priests I will clothe with salvation, and its faithful will shout for joy.
17 There I will cause a horn to sprout up for David; I have prepared a lamp for my anointed one.
18 His enemies I will clothe with disgrace, but on him, his crown will gleam.”
(NRSV)

We like to know our roots, what place we call home, or at the very least where our ancestors called home. We like to know we have a place where we belong. We go to great lengths to provide a place of familiar and familial comfort and belonging. Even those of us who don’t have an actual place to call home have a way of making the place where we are look and feel like home to us. Something as simple as the direction we face the opening to our tent every time we set it up, the furniture and ‘stuff’ with which we surround ourselves, or the habits we follow in settling down for the night and rising for the day can make a place feel like home.

The psalmist reminds us all that David was intent on providing a sense of place for both the people and God by finding the perfect location for God to dwell. Even though David was not allowed to build the actual house, dwelling, temple, David was able to put the tent of meeting on the spot where the temple would be built. For both tent and temple everyone knew that it was nowhere near big enough to contain any part of God. It was a place to which people could come and feel the presence of God in a special way.

Most of us have a particular place in which God feels especially present to us. It may be a church building, a place out in nature, or a place in our hearts, a place in which we had a memorably moving experience of the presence of God. Wherever it may be, rest assured that God is there. For those who feel God near it is a place of wholeness and rejuvenation, a place of comfort as well a place from which we feel compelled to go out and change the world for the better, a place of joy deeper than we have felt anywhere else, a place in which we feel honored and loved by God.

March 12, 2018
LCM