Yesterday, Saturday, I had a new pastoral experience. I prayed over the Cub Scouts Pinewood Derby in the Fellowship Hall! The Cub Scouts who meet at Bethany had been working hard building their model cars, the dads had built a brand new track, and they asked if I would pray to open their day. I said I’d love to. I did have the thought, however, that this falls under “things they never talked about in seminary”: Prayers for Pinewood Derby races. Great fun.

It also started me thinking yet again about prayer, since we have been looking at these prayers we call psalms as “Honest conversation with God.”

Why do we pray? For results? Miracles? Complaints, to get God’s attention, anger, to express trust? To ask for help? Praise? To confess? So far in the psalms, we’ve prayed all of these things. Today we will read yet another kind of prayer. But why do we pray? John Calvin, the 16 th century reformer said “the most important reason to pray is so our hearts might be filled with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love and serve God.” Prayer for the burning desire, the longing, to be with God.

So this morning we’ll sit with Psalm 84 a bit. A prayer of longing. Now, as we read it, I want to recruit your help. As with 38 of the other Psalms, this one uses the word “Selah.” [SEE-luh] (not the town near Yakima). Two times it has this word, and I think a third time may be implied at the end.

“Selah” is one of the great mysteries of the Bible. I’ve researched to death what people think it means, and the bottom line is: we don’t know. Many people think it is a liturgical note of some kind, a worship instruction that means a choir sings, or an “amen” is spoken, or (my favorite) a pause for reflection is taken.

We don’t know. All we know for sure is that it is a sign that these Psalms were used by the faith community- people together doing something together. So as I read Psalm 84, I’d like you to follow along. And the two times I come to the “Selah,” let’s speak that all together. Then I’ll pause for a moment to reflect, and proceed. Let’s practice one time- just try saying the word. SEE-luh.

Reading: Psalm 84

I often think that I was a late bloomer. That’s the nice way to put it, I guess, since “slow to grow up” may be more descriptive and accurate. By that I mean it seemed to take me a long time to come to a conscious understanding of what I was passionate about. What I longed for.

As I was struggling through college, and into a business career in my 20’s, I would run across friends my same age who just seemed way more in touch with the things they felt deeply about, with longings that they had. They were full bore into politics, one friend was restoring an old wooden boat, another was starting a business and seemingly throwing themselves into these things.

Meanwhile, besides basketball and my wife Anne, I felt like I was sort of plodding along, out of touch with the deep stirrings of my soul. I had majored in finance, and for me at least, I was a long way away from being passionate about numbers.

It wasn’t until we started to have kids that I discovered what I was really passionate about was Jesus. I felt most alive in talking to people, studying and especially seeing God working in peoples’ lives- regardless of what I was doing for a living.

It was around this time that I first read St. Augustine (4th century church father), who had all sorts of issues but also had this deep longing, thirst, for the Lord:

“How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling him INTO myself? Is there any place within me into which my God might come? Is there any room in me for you, Lord, my God?...O Lord my God, tell me what you are to me. Say to my soul, I AM YOUR SALVATION. Say it so that I can hear it. My heart is listening, Lord; open the ears of my heart and say to my soul I AM YOUR SALVATION. Let me run toward this voice and seize hold of you.”

A deep longing.

What are you thirsty for? Honestly, deep down, What do you long for? Whatever you thought of, I’m betting there is something deeper. Whatever you thought of, good or bad: time, peace, achievement, rest, power, titles, things, relationship, healing, I’m betting there is something even below that. Sometimes we can’t name it. Sometimes we have to go looking for it. Some thing, some word that will make sense out of a very confusing life. What do you long for?

My soul LONGS, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. The temple courts of the Lord in Jerusalem, on top of the hill called “ Zion” are where the Lord was to be found. The Psalmist’s longing isn’t for a building, it is to be in the presence of God. A yearning, like a physical thirst, to be with God.

When N.T. Wright wrote his little book Simply Christian, he started by talking about four deep thirsts, four longings that we all have- for justice, for beauty, for relationship, for spirituality…but he said even those ultimately weren’t the thing itself that we longed for. They weren’t the deepest. He called them “echoes.” Echoes of a voice that calls us. That sometimes tantalizes us because we want more. We long for it.

C.S. Lewis described it this way: “ But if it should really become manifest- if there ever came an echo that did not die away but swelled into the sound itself- you would know it. Beyond all possibility of doubt you would say “Here at last is the thing I was made for.”

We perhaps hear the echoes- the desire for justice, beauty, relationship, spirituality, and we respond, we pursue these things with all we have yet there’s still something else. Deeper. The Psalmist says “the something else” is God: My soul LONGS, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God. And it’s coming into touch with our longing for God that motivates us to pursue those good things of God- like justice, beauty, relationship.

Selah. Let me pause and invite you to reflect for a moment. What do you long for?

Blessed are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion…as they go through the Valley of Baca…

The whole Bible is full of people taking highways- journeying, longing, searching, looking. Interestingly, most of them end up in the desert- the patriarchs, Moses, the Hebrew people, Elijah, David, John the Baptist, Paul, Jesus all went to or ended up in the desert to find God. Some of them went intentionally to the desert to strip away all the distractions and false gods and noise that the world layered on that kept them numb or distracted. Others looked up one day to find themselves in a dry and difficult place that felt dead, like the desert. Probably you have been in such a place in your life.

The Valley of Baca. We’re not sure exactly where this valley was geographically, this is the only place it appears in the Bible, but it’s undoubtedly on a pilgrim’s route to Jerusalem. But its meaning is clear: “valley of tears.” It’s apparently an arid place, dry, difficult terrain, it’s difficult circumstances. The Valley of Tears.

Sometimes we’re stuck there. It comes because someone is sick, or we feel like we don’t know where we’re going in life, or we’re in a place we never wanted to end up nor imagined ourselves being. We end up in a valley of tears because we think we are all alone. And we long for God to show up.

The interesting thing about this Psalm is, that for the one traveling towards the temple, towards God’s presence, seeking God, longing for God, that dark Valley is transformed. The wasteland becomes a place of springs. The early rains make pools in the dry earth. And the valley eventually leads them into God’s presence.

Psalm 23 seems to tell us that as well, doesn’t it? “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil…for you are with me.” It’s not that we never enter the valley, only that we don’t travel it alone. Hardship, difficulty are still clearly part of life but the presence of God, even the anticipation of the presence of God ,changes everything.

Selah. I’m going to pause again and invite you to reflect again. What hard place are you in, or is someone around you in. Look to see if God might be there in a way you haven’t seen.

“For the Lord is a sun and a shield.” This writer is passionate about his longing. Do we ever let ourselves go there? Do we ever take the time to ask what we are truly passionate about? The Psalmist’s longing is so strong, he rolls out a string of passionate poetry phrases. He’s off the deep end. Gone God crazy. One of those religious fanatics.

Just one day in your courts, your presence, oh God is better than a thousand days somewhere else. One day, that would be better than 3 years anywhere else!? That must be a truly marvelous thing, to long to just be in the presence of God when it is so costly.

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God- a very menial job. Maybe we’d say I’d rather work for minimum wage and get to be in God’s presence than all sorts of things that look better, that make more money, that have more status. That must be a truly amazing thing, to long to be near to God at the cost of all the world offers.

...the Lord God is a sun and a shield. Now, the shield I understand. The Psalmist sees God as the great protector. But God as a sun, s-u-n? What’s that about? I understand more of that since we went on vacation. I told you we were on Maui for a week in February.

One morning, my daughter Dana, her friend Catherine and I woke up at 4:15 AM (note: these are teenagers- 4:30am!), climbed in the car, and started driving. Uphill. An hour and a half to get up Haleakala, the volcano that dominates the island. From sea level to 10,000 feet.

When we arrived at the parking lot at the top, it was pitch black. And cold. It was sort of eerie. People had flashlights, or headlamps on, scooting around, getting cameras. We stumbled up a trail until we were on top of a little peak, on top of the volcano. And we sat and waited in the pitch black, 5:45 am.

About 6:15 am, it seemed as if the sky lightened just a tad bit. Still dark. At 6:20 am, a light glow began to appear. At 6:25 am, no doubt- oranges and pinks began to shoot off of the eastern horizon. They grew brighter and more colorful. The crater of the volcano which was a barren wasteland, was transformed, the rocks we were sitting on began to light up.

Just when you thought it couldn’t possibly get any more beautiful, it did. The light utterly filled the sky, chased the moon and stars out of the way, dominated the whole world. And at 6:47am, the orb of the sun that was causing all the commotion broke into view over, quickly rising to a place of honor and began its daily quest to change the entire world.

All the rocks, all the shadows…gone. Amazing. Breathtaking. I was struck by the sheer beauty, by the power of the light, by the heat it quickly began to give off, that it was responsible for helping things grow and by the fact that there wasn’t a single thing I could do to bring it about or change it. It simply came to us, there was nothing we did. We actually were insignificant. This was about what God was doing.

For the Lord God is a sun and shield…worthy of our longings to worship, to lean towards, to simply be in the presence of. And it is that presence that empowers us to carry him into all the world, all of our world.

C.S. Lewis once marveled about the Psalm writers (Old Testament, pre-Jesus) that “these poets knew far less reason than we for loving God. They did not know that he offered them eternal joy; still less that he would die for them to win it. Yet they express a longing for him, for his mere presence, which comes only to…Christians in their best moments.”

In Jesus, we have not the echo of a voice, but God’s very Word itself. Not information about God, but God Himself. In Jesus we have evidence in his life, death and resurrection (portrayed on the artwork on these walls) that however strong our longing is to be in God’s presence, it is nothing like God’s longing to be in ours. “If anyone is thirsty,” Jesus said, “let him come to me…And let the one who believes in me drink.”

Selah. Let’s pause another minute and reflect. Have you ever let yourself be overwhelmed that God would love you?

Friends, deep down inside you, is there a longing? To turn towards Christ for the first time, to give your life to him? Why not today? Or deep down, is there a longing to return to him, or simply be in his presence? Why not here?

This table is one of the places, the sacred places, where God has consistently shown up. Where we experience again his presence, in his broken body and shed blood for our sake.