Hello friends.
This is Mark Gladman,
Also known as Brother Frederick James,
Your friendly neighbourhood monk in dogs.
Welcome back as we come to the last psalm in these songs of ascents,
These psalms of pilgrimage that we followed over the last 15 days.
As we begin,
As always,
Let's just take some time to become still.
Allow yourself to settle into a comfortable position.
Feel the support beneath you.
Let your hands relax.
Your shoulders soften.
And let your breathing just take a nice slow rhythm.
Become aware of the quiet presence of God around us in this moment.
This God who's accompanied you through every step of the pilgrimage.
The God who is present in your longings,
In your questions,
In your joys,
In your sorrows.
Present in every moment of grace along the way.
Today we arrive at the final song.
For generations of pilgrims,
Psalm 134 marked the end of the journey to Jerusalem.
It's the shortest of the songs of ascents,
But it leaves us with an important truth that the destination of every pilgrimage isn't a place per se.
It's praise after all the questions,
The struggles,
All the prayers that we whisper along the road.
The pilgrim finally stands in the presence of God.
And discovers that gratitude is the language of home.
And so as we listen.
.
.
For the first time to Psalm 134,
Just let the words sit with you,
Allow them to settle gently,
And just see which word or phrase finds you as we reflect in the silence that follows.
Psalm 134.
Come,
Bless the Lord,
All you servants of the Lord,
Who stand by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord.
May the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Bless you from Zion.
Some beautiful phrases there.
I wonder which one has captured your heart.
Maybe come bless the Lord,
Lift up your hands.
May the Lord bless you.
Just let those words sink into the soil of your heart and become your prayer as we reflect on this psalm together.
Now,
As you read through all of these psalms of pilgrimage,
These songs of ascents,
There's something about the way.
They all culminate at the end here.
We began in Psalm 120 with distress.
The pilgrim was weary,
Longing for peace in a world that seemed to be filled with conflict.
And along the way there were mountains and valleys,
There was trust and waiting,
Joy and sorrow,
Blessing and hardship.
Questions and silence.
And then,
At the very end of the journey,
There's blessing.
And the problems that the Pilgrim had brought to the road.
Haven't disappeared or been answered necessarily,
But.
.
.
Something's changed and the thing that's changed is the pilgrim themselves.
Pilgrimage is a journey that transforms our hearts.
And so the destination of a pilgrimage.
Well,
In these particular Psalms,
It's not necessarily Jerusalem.
And in our own lives,
It's not necessarily the place we're pilgrimaging towards.
Whether it be a physical place.
Or whether it be perhaps a particular place in our minds as we spend time in retreat,
For example.
But the final destination is always.
.
.
A changed heart,
And that change is about depth.
Deeper trust.
Gratitude.
Deeper communion with God and with others.
This,
As you'll notice,
Is true of every journey that we undertake.
Begin by asking God to change our circumstances but quite often.
By the end of the pilgrimage road.
The circumstances are often the same.
We come home.
And nothing's different per se,
But what has changed is us.
What's different?
Is us.
Let's listen to the psalm again and this time just notice the movement within the psalm.
And we'll chat about it after you've sat with that for a moment or two.
Psalm 134.
Come,
Bless the Lord,
All you servants of the Lord.
Who stand by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord.
May the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Bless you from Zion.
Now you'll see that within this psalm the pilgrims are invited to bless God.
And then in the final verse,
God blesses the pilgrims.
Which means that the blessing has flowed in both directions.
Love is received and love is returned.
And I think this is important.
I think this is the rhythm of prey.
We awaken to God's goodness and we respond.
To God's goodness.
We allow gratitude to shape the way we see the world and Maybe this final lesson.
Of the Pilgrim's Path is that every ending is also a new beginning.
The pilgrims who reached Jerusalem,
Well,
They'd eventually,
After they'd done what they needed to do in Jerusalem,
Return home to their ordinariness,
Their ordinary work,
Relationships,
Their ordinary responsibilities.
But they would not return unchanged.
So the purpose of pilgrimage,
Again,
Even though you do remove yourself from ordinary life for a season.
.
.
You never get to escape from that ordinary life,
But when you come back to the ordinary life,
Oh boy.
You see that ordinary life with brand new eyes and maybe this psalm is an invitation to you as well to return.
To return to your work with greater compassion.
To return to your relationships with greater patience,
To return to yourself.
Maybe with greater gentleness.
The journey doesn't end here,
It just takes on a new form.
And we begin to live into the change.
Let's listen one final time to this final song in these songs of ascents and this time hear these ancient words as both a blessing and as a sending out and just sit with those words and allow them to fill you to overflowing in the silence.
Psalm 134.
Come,
Bless the Lord,
All you servants of the Lord,
Who stand by night in the house of the Lord.
Lift up your hands to the holy place and bless the Lord.
May the Lord,
Maker of heaven and earth,
Bless you from Zion.
Let's pray.
Faithful God,
We thank you for this journey,
For every moment of peace,
Every unanswered question,
Every joy and every sorrow,
For every place where your presence has surprised us.
Thank you for walking beside us,
Even when we didn't recognise you,
As we leave this time of prayer.
Help us carry the wisdom of the journey into our ordinary lives.
Teach us to bless you in moments of gratitude.
That teach us to trust you in moments of uncertainty.
Teach us to recognise your presence in the people we meet and in the work we do.
May the peace that we've discovered become the peace that we now offer to others.
May the love that we've received become the love we share and may this pilgrimage continue within us long after these songs have ended.
And may grace,
Peace and love remain with us,
Sustain us and flow through us as a result of our pilgrimage together today and always.
Friends,
Thank you so much for being with us for these past 15 days.
We have one more reflection tomorrow.
We're going to pull them all together.
And look at a historical moment where this pilgrimage comes to an end.
So until then.
May the Lord,
The maker of heaven and earth,
Bless us and keep us.
And may we walk forward with humble hearts,
Trusting that wherever the road leads,
God will already be there.
Until tomorrow.
Bye for now.
