Pilgrim Heart

Clergy/Leaders’ Mail-list No. 1-187 Sunday 28 Oct 2001

Reading: PSALM 84 – DWELLING PLACE, PILGRIM HEART

(From ‘Encounter with God’ Bible Reading Notes)

‘Prayer is not asking for what you think you want but asking to be changed in ways you can’t imagine’ (Kathleen Norris, ‘Amazing Grace’, Lion, 2000).

As you reflect on Kathleen Norris’s definition of prayer above, you might choose to pray through this psalm before you read on.

In his thoughtful reflections on the psalms, Eugene Peterson points out that these poems constitute one half of a dialogue, that the psalms are ‘answering prayer’, expressing what the ‘pray-er’ knows and is discovering daily about the God with whom he talks. He spreads out his experience of life in the light of what God has already said to him. ‘What is essential in prayer is not that we learn to express ourselves, but that we team to answer God. The psalms show us how to answer’ (Answering God, Harper and Row, 1989).

It seems to me that this psalm answers ‘yes’ to God’s invitation to us to ‘dwell’ – to spend time – in his presence (anonymously, not up on the platform, v 10), experience life-bringing intimacy (vs 2,3) and learn ever-new praise (v 4).

The psalm also says ‘yes’ to God’s invitation to walk the pilgrim road with him, trust him in the dry places and find he transforms them into oases of refreshment (vs 5-7).

The psalm says ‘yes’ to a paradoxical invitation: stay and dwell; get on the pilgrim road.(Heb 11:8-10; Luke 4:42-44) We might need to battle with our preference!

‘All powerful God,/ Look in your love upon us, your pilgrim people,/ As we struggle towards you./ Be our food for the journey,/ Our wine for rejoicing,/ Our light in the darkness,/ And our welcome at the journey’s end’ (Sheila Cassidy, Prayer for Pilgrims, HarperCollins/Fount, 1980, 1994).

– Pauline Hoggarth

Copyright Scripture Union, 2001