Thank you for helping to support Peace Devotions through your prayers, likes, and shares.
If you’d like to support our ministry financially, you can donate here.
It is Awesome to be Here!
We all have those places where we want to go and think it would be awesome if we were just there. Have you ever felt this about church?
Psalm 84:10
As a kid I would go to a Milwaukee Brewers game each year, and I found myself wondering what it was like to be sitting in the dugout with all of those players. And I remember thinking to myself, it would be so amazing if I could just be there in the dugout. Recently, I was in Saint Louis for a pastor’s conference, and during some free time before the conference, I went to Busch Stadium and did a tour of that stadium. Part of that tour was an opportunity to go in the dugout, and so I was able to go down there and walk through it and even sit where the players sat. I have pictures to prove it.
The players weren’t there and I wasn’t in Milwaukee, but I was that kid again who wanted to go in the dugout. And as a baseball fan, it was awesome to be there. We all have those places where we want to go and think it would be awesome if we were just there. When the writers of Psalm 84 thought about places they really wanted to go. The sons of Korah, these Levite musicians, thought about the temple, the temple in Jerusalem. The temple was the place where the Lord was present among his people. It was there the High Priest would stand in his presence and offer up sacrifices on behalf of the people. In that way grace was dispensed to the people.
And so the faithful among God’s people love to be in his house and be in the presence of their faithful, compassionate, and merciful God. The temple was so special that nothing compared to it. Toward the end of Psalm 84 the Sons of Korah expressed that
Yes, one day in your court is better than a thousand elsewhere. (Psalm 84:10)
Makes me wonder sometimes if these Levites would have said as they stood in God’s house of the temple, it is awesome to be here! Would you say the same about gathering in God’s house for worship? One day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. It’s awesome to be here! Maybe that’s not the first thing that comes to your mind on Sunday morning, but it truly is awesome to be there.
It’s there in God’s house where we gather with fellow believers in his presence. It is there that his grace through Christ Jesus our Savior is dispensed to us as we gather together around Word and Sacrament. In the word Christ, and the forgiveness he won for us on the cross is proclaimed to us. Through baptism sins are washed away in those waters, sins that Jesus paid for. Through Holy Communion, receiving the body and blood of our Savior, given and shed on the cross for us, we are again given the wondrous gift of forgiveness of all our sins.
Gathering in God’s house the Holy Spirit through those means strengthens our faith, and we are refreshed to go out into the world serving our Savior God in our life. A life that is lived out of thankfulness for his grace which has saved us.
Later that day in Saint Louis, after being at Busch Stadium, I was able to gather with fellow pastors from all over Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri for worship in God’s House. As awesome as it was to be in that Major League Baseball stadium and the dugout earlier that day, it was so much better to be there and worship in God’s house. There was nowhere else I wanted to be that night. It was awesome to be there. After all, could there really be anything better, then to be in God’s house?
Yes, one day in God’s house, even just for an hour or two, is so much better than a thousand days anywhere else in this world. Amen.
