When Someone Asks, 'Where Are You Going?'

 

When Someone Asks,

‘Where Are

You Going?’

Blessed are those

whose strength is in you,

in whose heart are

the highways to Zion.

Psalm 84:5

 

Virologists have become very current. It’s almost impossible to watch a news broadcast now without one being interviewed. This week, one mentioned a very interesting concept called Baader-Meinhof.

I went looking for it, and basically it’s the bias that you see more of something because you are alert to it, not necessarily because it is really occurring more often.

You know how a song catches your attention, and you start to hear it everywhere for days, or a favourite writer or poet keeps being mentioned.

What caught my attention was the idea, that although an increased awareness of something can be explained by this, that you are simply more alert to it, the blurb also acknowledges that another aspect of this could be that something is happening more often, and might even have a Divine / supernatural (their term) cause.

As Christians, we do believe that something can be happening more often because there is a Divine cause. The Living God speaks, and He can be prompting, nudging, teaching, inspiring, rebuking you, through the repeated awareness you have at times, of His Words.

I love the idea that he can alert us to something, and then keep on saying it, to help us learn and grow.

This is a very long introduction for saying that I am repeatedly tripping over one idea in scripture, at this time. Everywhere I read, or listen, I seem to be met with the strong theme on the Old and New Testaments, of God’s people on a pilgrimage home.

It you see me reading a book, with raised eyebrow or knowing smile, it’s happening again.

I’ve met it in Isaiah 35, Isaiah 51, Isaiah 60, Isaiah 62, Psalm 84, last week in the Bible Study commentary The Names of Jesus, from Warren Wiersbe p7, yesterday in the great read from Esther De Waal, The Way Of Simplicity p93,  and again this morning in an e- Prayerletter from a missionary friend I’ve known now for 30 years.

Is it a bias now because I am alerted to it, that I notice it in everything I lift to read? No, I don’t think so. I’m opting for what I know of God already, that in all probability He is wanting me to pay attention to this teaching in scripture. And shouldn’t I ‘Read, Mark, Learn and Inwardly Digest It,’ anyway.

God’s people, promised to Abraham, emerged to possess the promises God had made to them.

Despite their waywardness, forgetfulness, thanklessness and unconcealed idolatory, God kept His promises to them. ‘Your sin I will remember no more.’ Isaiah 43:25

Even in exile He promised to bring them home to Zion/ Jerusalem. Much of their journey home is narrated in Isaiah, often described as a fifth Gospel, because it holds so much that foretells of the path taken by Jesus, and the Household added through Him.

Jerusalem or Zion was and remains a city at the heart of the Jewish and Christian story. Yet it holds greater weight in scripture beyond even its physical presence. It is also a pointer to the great and eternal city, the Heavenly Jerusalem, Zion City of our God.

In 1779, the Christian hymn writer John Newton, wrote a favourite hymn, Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken.  The lyrics are extraordinary in their ability to sum up the Hope of every believer, then and since. Its words include: ‘Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken, Zion city of our God… Saviour, if of Zion’s city I, through grace, a member am,’

Scripture reminds the faithful, that even in wilderness, desert, distress and exile, a faithful remnant will be maintained, to bear witness to God’s saving and keeping grace. His early people would travel home on an earthly path to an earthly city; those of us added later, would look to the same themes and story to remind us, that like them, we too are going home.

In Isaiah 35:10 the ransomed of the Lord would make their way on the Highway of Holiness and enter Zion with singing,  in chapter 51 it is described as a place where sorrow and sighing will flee away, in chapter 52 we’re told that when the Lord returns to Zion, we will see it with our own eyes, in chapter 61 those planted there will be called Oaks of Righteousness as a display of the Lord’s splendour.

The Psalmist King David knew also of this great hope. In Psalm 85:13, a closing translation can be: ‘The Lord will indeed give what is good… and will make His footsteps our pathway.’ 

This helps our understanding so much. When we get to Hebrews 11 and 12, remembering all the faithful who have gone before us, and keeping to this great hope of a heavenly city and home,  we are reminded that it is in the Lord Jesus that this hope is realised and made possible. We are to make His footsteps our pathway.

I wrote recently that one of the items left to me after my maternal grandfather passed on, was a copy of The Love of God, by St Bernard of Clairvaux. Regretably it sat gathering dust for many years, but in recent months I have been reading it. Esther De Waal comments on Bernard’s Christian ministry and influence, and how he described fellow pilgrims as those ‘who run toward joy.’

And that when they did, ‘their faces shone with joy, they had they face of one going toward Jerusalem.’ De Waal p 93.  I could write on today, but in closing, I take great heart from the journey we are called to. It is a path intended and prepared by the Lord God. He has provided the Gate, and the Door and the Way. He gives its Joy and its Hope. It is a pilgrim way, and a great many have gone before us.

In these days, when someone asks ‘Where are you going?’ or ‘why your hope, ‘or why your joy?’, we are able to say, with confidence, that we are going home.

Amen.   Precentor Hanlon