Seize the Moment – Day 1252
A Prayer to Come Home!
Good morning! This is Pastor Jerry Ingalls from New Castle First Baptist Church and today is Monday, August 21.
Is your home a place of rest where you and others can find peace? Today, we start a fifteen-day journey through the Songs of Ascents (Psalms 120-134), which are pilgrimage psalms used when people would travel to Jerusalem for one of the prescribed Jewish feasts – Passover, the Feast of Weeks, and the Feast of Tabernacles. Whereas people would ascend to Jerusalem because of its higher elevation, this term has a spiritual meaning because of what Mount Zion represents to the people of God. It was here that God established His temple where people would pilgrimage to find peace with Him through the atonement of their sins.
For the ancient pilgrim, to be away from Jerusalem was to be away from the presence of God. Just as Jerusalem was the center of Jewish life, the temple was the home of God’s presence on earth. The psalmist writes of his desire to come home to this place of peace in Psalm 120:5-7, “Woe is me, for I sojourn in Meshech [northwest of Canaan in modern Turkey], for I dwell among the tents of Kedar [southeast of Canaan in northern Arabia]! Too long has my soul had its dwelling with those who hate peace. I am for peace, but when I speak, they are for war.”
Home should be a place of peace. How do you make your home a haven from life’s tribulations? By inviting the Prince of Peace to bring His peace into your heart so that He may dwell wherever you may be. Jesus promised in John 14:27, “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Do not let your heart be troubled, nor let it be fearful” (cf. John 16:33).
Seize the moment and pray Psalm 120, meditating upon the presence of God in your life through your relationship with Jesus Christ. May the Prince of Peace make His home in your heart.
God bless you!
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YOUTUBE:
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