As I continue my trek through the Psalms, I find myself falling deeper in love with the words of praise and adoration I find there. Beyond the praise Psalms, some of the Psalms of desperation resonate with me as pleas for the intervention of God NOW, cries for justice NOW. Many of the Psalms have no use for a God of tomorrow…their imediacy demands His presence today. Yancey likens reading the Psalms to eavesdropping or “reading over the shoulder” of someone else. He’s right; reading the Psalms is very much like reading someone else’s spiritual journal. I find comfort in the knowledge that the Psalmists experienced the same things I experience in relationship with God: joy, doubt, fear, elation, agony…the Psalms run the full gamut of human emotion and expression. I believe they may well be our greatest treasure in written form.
Psalm 84 is passionate petition for the presence of God. Hear some of the words of this beloved hymn:
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord Almighty!
My soul yearns, even faints,
for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh cry out
for the living God.
Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.
Blessed are those whose strength is in you,
who have set their hearts on pilgrimmage.
Better is one day in your courts
than a thousand elsewhere;
I would rather be a doorkeeper
in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of the wicked.
O Lord Almighty, blessed is
the man who trusts in you.
If only these words were the daily cry of my heart! My soul yearns for one second of you, O God; one morsel; one fleeting moment in Your Divine Presence. As we sing, Better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere. I long for the day when faith becomes sight, when the already meets the not yet, when the Kingdom of God is fully consumated and we bask in the presence of Father, Son & Spirit for all eternity. Until that day comes, we must not lose heart. As the Psalmist says, we have set our hearts on pilgrimmage. The NASB & NRSV render this phrase …in whose heart are the highways to Zion. May we tread each day on that upward highway as pilgrims bound for glory until He comes to take us home.
already & not yet 
I love Psalm 84:2…one version reads, “I long, yes I faint with longing to enter the courts of the Lord!”The very idea that one would long for God like kids longing for Christmas morning inspires me to discover what about God is so wonderful that an individual would faint with anticipation to be with God.
Rob Bell tells the story of little Jewish kids begging and screaming to be chosen to read Torah in their classes. That kind of hunger for God is lost upon us. But the words of the Psalmist resonates with some deep part of me that innately knows and scarcely comprehends the greatness of God. To be in the presence of such beauty, such majesty…Can’t you feel it, too?