Psalm 122

Debbie:

Psalm 122
When I was a child, I remember spending hours at the church. I would hear the first line of this psalm and know the words to be true, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” As I have re-read and heard this psalm I’ve realized that there is so much more to the joy of going to the house of the Lord. This psalm talks of peace; it talks of the tireless effort for peace. When you pray for something daily, then you will find the rest of your body joins in the process. When something is brought to mind and kept at the forefront of your mind then you move to working for that thing or person. The challenge in this psalm as we pray it is to work for peace and the good of God’s house. As Christians the kingdom of God is ours not only to pray for, but to work for. “Peace be within your walls”; that prayer doesn’t just speak of Jerusalem, for us, but it speaks of relationships—friends and enemies; it speaks of daily life, those we encounter and those we avoid; it speaks of justice for all who struggle and are lost. When I was a child, I remember hearing these words and being glad to go into God’s house; as an adult I hear these words and know that God’s house is bigger than just one place, and that peace for God’s house requires not only my prayers but my activity as well. It is as Isaac Watts penned in a hymn, “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all.”* I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the Lord.”

*When I Survey the Wondrous Cross".