Word Live: Coming Home
‘You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’* Bring your restlessness and longing to God.
*Augustine of Hippo, The Confessions, written 397-400 in Latin, later translated into English
Bible passage
Psalm 120
A song of ascents.
1 I call on the Lord in my distress,
and he answers me.
2 Save me, Lord,
from lying lips
and from deceitful tongues.
3 What will he do to you,
and what more besides,
you deceitful tongue?
4 He will punish you with a warrior’s sharp arrows,
with burning coals of the broom bush.
5 Woe to me that I dwell in Meshek,
that I live among the tents of Kedar!
6 Too long have I lived
among those who hate peace.
7 I am for peace;
but when I speak, they are for war.
Holy Bible, New International Version® Anglicized, NIV® Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Explore
This is the first of 15 psalms known as ‘Songs of Ascent’. These psalms may have been used by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. Or, perhaps they were recited on the 15 steps between one courtyard and another in the temple. Either way, they are associated with travelling closer to God. As the pilgrim made his way to Jerusalem, he would be consciously moving towards the City of Peace and to God’s ‘shalom’ (see, for example, Psalm 76:2).
This psalm expresses a sense of alienation. Meshek and Kedar (v 5) were places far from Jerusalem. Whether literally or metaphorically, they describe where the psalmist has been living. These places were distant from the goal of life and creation, which is ‘rest’ or peace, symbolised by the seventh day of creation on which God rested.
The psalmist is at odds with the society in which he lives (vs 6,7). He is particularly damaged by an environment of deceit (vs 2,3), which destroys trust. His instinct, like a child turning to a parent for comfort, is to cry out to the Lord. This is the first step of coming home to God: an honest and heartfelt expression of need, and a longing for ‘home’ (v 1).
Author
Steve Silvester
Respond
Sometimes our restlessness and longings are diffuse and unfocused. Try to rest in God’s presence and to focus on the ‘one thing’ that your heart really longs for (see Psalm 27:4).
Deeper Bible study
‘My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord’.1
My travels have sometimes taken me to very remote places, far from home, where the sense of being cut off has been emphasised by the very strangeness of the culture surrounding me and by having no means of communicating with home. The feeling of isolation is echoed in this psalm, the first of 15 psalms sung by pilgrims on their way to the festival in Jerusalem.
The psalmist voices his distress, crying out to God for deliverance from an environment that is hostile to a worshipper of the Hebrew God. He describes the hostility in two ways. First he accuses the people around him of lying, deceiving and hating peace. Second, he speaks of living, at least for a time, in Meshek and Kedar, place names chosen for their symbolic power rather than their literal geography. They are both far from Jerusalem, inhabited by nomadic tribes. Meshek is probably in the far north, part of East Asia and the kingdom of Magog, whereas Kedar, in the south-east, is populated by warmongering Arabs. Neither is hospitable to true believers. Yet, without lessening his angst, the psalmist is confident that God will answer his prayer and that those who are corrupt and violence-prone will face justice one day. He longs to resume his pilgrimage and arrive at his true home in the Temple in Jerusalem.
Today, Christians find themselves in equally hostile environments, whether because of a culture of secular unbelief or outright persecution. The way to face such circumstances is to pray for God’s intervention, like the psalmist, but also to long for the day when we will enter our true home and receive our inheritance in full. The time to worry is when we are no longer disturbed by our surroundings and feel at home already.
How does your true home, ‘kept in heaven for you’,2 influence how you live? Does it bring joy and hope? Does it encourage perseverance and a longing for God?
Author
Derek Tidball
