I rejoiced with those who said to me,
“Let us go to the house of the Lord.”
Our feet are standing
in your gates, Jerusalem.Jerusalem is built like a city
that is closely compacted together.
That is where the tribes go up—
the tribes of the Lord—
to praise the name of the Lord
according to the statute given to Israel.
There stand the thrones for judgment,
the thrones of the house of David.Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
Psalm 122
“May those who love you be secure.
May there be peace within your walls
and security within your citadels.”
For the sake of my family and friends,
I will say, “Peace be within you.”
For the sake of the house of the Lord our God,
I will seek your prosperity.
During 2025, Peachtree Church is focusing on the Book of Psalms with a series called Dwell, through which we seek to deepen our conversation with God and open ourselves to hearing his response. The practice of praying three times each day will unite the voices of our hearts and souls as we seek the day when we will see the full realization of the Kingdom of God, promised in Revelation 21:3: “…Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”
We will email devotionals twice weekly with Monday’s providing an overview of the Psalm as a whole, and Wednesday’s focused on that week’s Daily Dwell.
Devotional
It is amazing to think that we have finished Dwell. We have spent the entirety of the year reading through the Psalms, studying the book that John Calvin described as “an anatomy of all parts of the soul.” Technically speaking, last Sunday we concluded that study with the most well-known of the Psalms, the twenty-third, yet since we still have one week left before beginning our new year and our new study, I wanted to share my favorite Psalm that was not covered in Dwell.
Psalm 122 is one of the Psalms of Ascent, a series of prayers that would have been sung and prayed by devout Israelites as they made their thrice-annual pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem, where they were to worship at Sukkot, Passover, and Pentecost. This section of the Psalter focused on two different modes of ascent: the physical journey upwards that led to the entrance into Jerusalem, and the spiritual journey upwards toward the Temple where the worshipper would behold the dwelling place of the Lord.
While most of us consider that physical journey to church each Sunday morning as we make our way through the Atlanta traffic which shows its face even on the weekend, we do not all consider the spiritual preparation that these psalms point us toward as we prepare to worship. More often than many of us would like to admit, we come into the halls of the church carrying the frustrations of the day upon our hearts. While many of these challenges are ones that we would like to think would not impede the manner in which we come before God, they do. They leave us distracted; they hold our hearts captive rather than allowing us to surrender all before Him who called us to church.
By the time we actually sit down in a pew and begin to focus on worship, many of us are challenged to be able to rejoice—to look toward our call to live for the Lord, to seek His good, and to offer the best of ourselves to Him. We have forgotten how it feels to desire to rejoice when we hear God’s call urging us to come to church; we have lost sight of what it means to be the children of God and have instead allowed ourselves to come into these four walls out of habit.
When the Psalmist writes about Jerusalem as a city where the Lord dwells, we are instead asked to think about our church and the Church Universal as the place to which He seeks that we would come. As we make our own ascent to church, in what state are our hearts? Where do we face the challenges to look toward the goodness of our Creator?
For Reflection
- What are normal circumstances that make it hard for you to rejoice when thinking about worship?
- How do you seek to prepare your heart to come to church?
Prayer
Gracious God, we desire to come into your presence, yet there are so many parts of our lives, of our daily interactions, and of the deep places in our hearts that prevent us from being able to do so easily. Help us to hear you call to us. Help us to listen for your voice and to recenter our lives upon you. Amen.
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Devotionals