With the Lord

Being Away

Being a Pastor can be tough. We are professional christians who only work one day a week.

You get a call sometimes across the country from where you grew up. My first call was to Georgia and now I’m here. It’s a 27 hour drive to visit family, and even thats hard because we work holidays. We are like the opposite of a government employee. So its been over 10 years since I celebrated Christmas with the rest of the family. Grandma passed 5 years ago and my uncle’s family moved to Australia 8 years ago so its gotten a little easier knowing its not like it was when I was growing up. But I still miss grandma’s homemade cinnamon roles and I miss the games we would play, skating on the Wapsie river. the laughing and the fun. Usually a few days before Christmas with the pressure of all the services, it hits and I long to be walking into the house and see everyone there.

This is a little bit of the tone in which this psalm is written. To be away, to not be able to see that familiar place and experience all the love, the joy and the peace that comes with being home. Where your story began.

Absence of the Lord

Psalm 84:1–2 ESV

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

A deep yearning from the heart, to be back in the presence of God. To walk in the courts of his house to practice the sacrifice and know you have here love, joy, and peace.

Paul talks about this not in view of the temple but the presence of Jesus. To be with Jesus where he is. He sees the bigger picture unfolding and realizes that this entire journey through our mortal lives is absent from the full presence of being with the Lord. In his glory.

2 Corinthians 5:6–8 ESV

So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.

Sin entangles

I’ve felt this deep desire when I am going through a season of particular sin. Habitual. When my decisions are separating me from everyone I hold dear. To feel lost and out of control like I’m losing myself in the process. Feeling a sense of losing everything, helpless with no way out.

Isaiah 59:2–3 ESV

but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear. For your hands are defiled with blood and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies; your tongue mutters wickedness.

Presence of the Lord

Psalm 84:3–4 ESV

Even 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. Blessed are those who dwell in your house, ever singing your praise! Selah

A lot of times you may feel like life is hopeless, but here. In the house of the Lord you know there is help in times of need and a place for you, so you are never lost. And that sense of belonging, brings a joy that bursts out in song. For great is the host of this home.

Notre Dame: to know its burned down, and it will never be the same again.

Next summer to go to Jerusalem and see that gold dome, and know there is no way to walk into the colonnade to see where outsiders would congregate to offer sacrifice and practice worship. To see where God’s people would offer sacrifice and the Levites, Aaronites, and Zadokites would practice obedience to God’s Law. But it wont be there. but we are not without hope.

Jesus is where we meet God.

Matthew 12:42 ESV

The queen of the South will rise up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon, and behold, something greater than Solomon is here.

John 2:21 ESV

But he was speaking about the temple of his body.

Revelation 21:22 ESV

And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.