Listen

How lovely is your dwelling place, Lord of heavenly forces! My very being longs, even yearns, for the Lord’s courtyards. My heart and my body will rejoice out loud to the living God!

Yes, the sparrow too has found a home there; the swallow has found herself a nest where she can lay her young beside your altars, Lord of heavenly forces, my king, my God! Those who live in your house are truly happy; they praise you constantly.

Psalm 84:1-4

Think

The prophet Jeremiah and the tax collector in Jesus’ parable both called out to God, longing — yearning — for God to show mercy. The psalmist also yearns for God’s mercy, and he describes God’s mercy as a joyous homecoming. To the psalmist, God’s mercy is where we find ourselves fully at home. Just as the bird finds a safe nest, we can dwell in God’s presence. In the protected courtyards of God’s house, we are always welcomed, accepted, and nurtured so we can grow.

What do we yearn for? What would it be like to feel at home? To trust that we can be ourselves and still be welcome? To feel safe and cared for in heart and body? To rest and to rejoice?

When we are honest about who we truly are, and when we are humble about how we need to be lifted up, we yearn for mercy. We yearn to find our way home, and God yearns to welcome us.

Nikki Finkelstein-Blair

Pray

I want to rejoice, God. I want to praise. I want to feel at home in myself, in my community, and in you.

Thank you for the promise that your house is full of joy.

I yearn to find my place — and true happiness — there.

Amen.

Go

When we say “Amen,” we are saying, “Yes, truly.” We are saying, “Let it be so.”

In our silences — in our unspoken requests and questions — we hold the “Amen.”

In our stops and starts — in all the ways we move through life — we act out the “Amen.”

In our hesitations — in our uncertain ideas about ourselves and God — we remember the “Amen.”

In every silence, in every stop and every start, in every hesitant thought, God goes with you.

Yes, truly. Let it be so.

Amen.