Psalms of Comfort 10: Longing for God

Psalm 84

1 How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!

2  My soul longs, yes, faints
for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and flesh sing for joy
to the living God.

Where does longing come from? It is a desire for something we once had that we no longer have.

We may be longing for lockdown to end so we can get back to seeing and spending time with the people we love, or we may be longing to get back to work. I know that when I record my Sunday services, I look out on an empty church and I long to see the congregation back in the church.

This psalm conveys a longing for God. A longing to worship God in His sanctuary. In His dwelling place. The words of the Scottish psalter are very familiar to us, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts to me”. The psalm would be sung as the pilgrims processed to the temple to worship God. There is a longing for the Lords presence in the psalm as if it were written by a pilgrim who once worshipped the Lord in His temple but for whatever reason, they can’t do what they once did.

Verse 1 and 2 convey this feeling of longing for the presence of God but also a longing for the people of God. Each of us carry the beauty of our Creator and when we gather together and worship God together something happens
in our Spirit as we worship with like minded people. God dwells in our hearts and as we lift them together to worship God we are doing what we were created to do: worship God.

The next verse again describes a wistful longing – the sparrows have free access to the temple, they can fly in and out of the Lord’s presence any time they want. The pilgrims could only go there on a select few occasions during the year. And they so wanted to be there worshipping God.

Next we turn to the source of longing; the heart. During the tough times, times of seperation and times of heartache there is still access to the Lord because there are pathways to the presence of the Lord etched in our hearts. These pathways are described as highways of holiness.

Cultivate these pathways of holiness. We don’t need to be in church to do that. We can do that as we go about our daily lives. There may be things in our hearts cluttering up these paths and causing us to be distracted and as they present themselves, we recognise them for what they are—interruptions. Ask the Lord to show you them and help you remove them so you can get back to your walk with God. Walk with Him today and may your longing for him increase.