God's Heart Is Our Home Address

REFLECTIONS
October 26th, 2008

What is your first consideration each day? What is important, even essential to you as you move through time and space? Work, bills, money, love, satisfaction, security? I am certain each of us has some sort of list. The author of Psalm 90 (Moses) is concerned with the central issues of human location in relation to God and perhaps more importantly human response to the love of God. The prayer opens with the words; “Lord you have been our dwelling place in all generations,”v1 Then later in the Psalm the author writes “make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us...”vv15-17a. Moses is praying first to remember himself that he is not the center of the universe, and also to show those he is called to serve that their true home is with God.

Moses knew the importance of relying on God and not oneself, for when he followed his lead rather than God’s trouble ensued. So for Moses faith is rooted in relationship. A Holy relationship with God which is active, vital and close at hand. Creatures need a sense of awe at the creators’ knowing and caring for them. Furthermore it means knowing that as creatures we are not the point, God is. Our spiritual strength and stamina come as a gift from God manifest in doing what we are called. To live toward God is to be in that dwelling Moses writes of. While to live for oneself is to live out of bounds. Even in the lament portion of the Psalm where Moses writes of how in broken behavior and bad choices God is still present available to guide those willing.

As modern people we are so self reliant that the words of the Psalm might seem not simply dated, but moreover antiquated. A curiosity to see and poetic to read, but without value because after all this is the 21st century and we possess the technology to be self reliant. We have what Moses needed namely Global Positioning Satellites, cell phones, and don’t forget the Microwave. What Moses in fact shows us is for all our technological power we at times lack the ability to step back and be awe struck by the power of the Holy. If our focus is only on the press and pull of each day we miss the opportunity to experience the beauty, grandeur, hope and holy happenings around us.
What this Psalm teaches us again and again is that we must be willing to make a conscious effort to consider the notion that God’s heart is our home. It at least seems worth considering.

Dr. Joey K. McDonald
First United Methodist Church
4832 Tujunga Avenue, North Hollywood, CA 91601