by Marissa Danney
PSALM 84
1 How lovely is
your dwelling place, O LORD of hosts!
2 My
soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and
my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
3 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.
4 Happy are those who live in your
house,
ever singing your
praise.
Lent, to me, feels like a time when we consciously pursue
the discovery of God’s presence within us, by letting go of those things in our
lives and ourselves that do not feel of God.
In order to identify those things we must develop our own self-awareness.
The criticisms from others will not determine this. Rather, this must be a
result of our own reflection on ourselves, and the way we are in the world.
In the words of Walter Burghardt, we must take a “long,
loving look at the real.” This means taking the time to look at the parts of
our selves that may feel embarrassing to admit, and to do so in a loving way.
The further we shame our selves into silence, the more difficult it is to move
into new ways of being, and so we must commit to not being another voice of
shame.
I am inspired by verse three of Psalm 84, which depicts a
sparrow laying her young on the altar of the Lord. Even her most precious and
vulnerable offspring are safe in the home of God.
So too are our deepest vulnerabilities safe in the care of
God, and so we can bring them, ready to see what happiness might come.
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