Day 22 - Watching and Waiting

The journey of the pilgrim is towards, not away. 

Towards the Destination

Towards the Person to meet

Towards the desired purpose – what do I hope by going on this journey?

Several years ago I took a journey with my wife – an anniversary trip.  We went back to the place where we first lived 35 years before.  Even though 35 years had passed since we left, many things looked familiar.  But there was enough changes that at some point I couldn’t figure out where I was.  I stopped and asked the person at the station, “Where am I?”  He said to me, “Where do you want to go?”

The journey of a pilgrim has those two parameters – where you are right now and where you want to go.

The pilgrims walk towards Jerusalem in the Psalms of Ascent gives us something to think about in relation to this:

Psalm 123:1-4

¹  To you I lift up my eyes, O you who are enthroned in the heavens!
²  Behold, as the eyes of servants look to the hand of their master, as the eyes of a maidservant to the hand of her mistress, so our eyes look to the LORD our God, till he has mercy upon us.
³  Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.
⁴  Our soul has had more than enough of the scorn of those who are at ease, of the contempt of the proud.

Two significant things to remember in our pilgrim’s journey:

•       Our focus must remain on the outcome – we are going to God.
•          Our steps must be ordered around the principle of serving God.

The Psalm is a song, not a commandment, not a set of rules.  The focus on God is to remind us that we are seeking a Person, not a set of ideas, or rules to obey.

Because it is the person of God that we seek, we must come with a view of knowing Him and not just our view of Him…or even worse, our expectations of Him.

This then brings us back to serving.

Mark 10:42-45 ⁴²  And Jesus called them to him and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
⁴³  But it shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant,
⁴⁴  and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.
⁴⁵  For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

We’re tempted to think… “Ah, now I get it, Jesus came to serve…” and he’s our model for what he desires of us.  That is only partially correct.

Jesus didn’t serve as an act of duty in order to fulfill a purpose assigned by God the Father.  Jesus’ character is to serve.  It is His Deity and Godhead that give him authority, but it is servanthood that describes his character.  

Jesus became a servant so that our serving would become a part of His redemption.

We come to God with a laundry list of desires.  Some of them may even be good and noble, but they nevertheless represent our wants.  But, it’s here that we learn the nature of God.  He knows about us, he knows our needs, he knows our problems, he knows our desires, and he also knows exactly what will comprehensively be for our best purposes.

 “To you I lift up my eyes, you who sits enthroned in the heavens.”

While we worry about car repairs and paying our credit cards or mortgages, and cry out for trivial and even noble things, we come to God who sits enthroned.

 

He’s the God who said, “Let there be….” and there was creation. 

He’s the God who told Moses, “Go tell Pharaoh to let my people go…” and he made it happen.  

He’s the God who sent His one and only Son into the world to die for the sins of the world…and death could not hold him. 

We come to the enthroned one…and that’s why we lift our eyes.

“Have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us”, the Psalmist prays.  It is not a plea for “please don’t hurt me”, it’s a plea for the ability to watch and wait upon God as he serves, and we learn how to serve alongside of Him.  

Watch…wait upon the Lord.  

-Peace