“O Lord, who may abide in your tent? Who may dwell on your holy hill?”

Psalm 15:1

As a child, I looked forward to my home church’s annual Vacation Bible School (VBS) program. Usually that took place somewhere around late-June to mid-July. It was nice because it wasn’t right after school was done for the year, so we had a little break. It was also nice because it came at a time when we were starting to miss our friends from school, at least a little. Getting to spend every day together for a full week doing fun activities and learning more about God’s word was a great way to solve that problem. I loved VBS at my home church of St. Peter Lutheran.

Unfortunately, that one week of VBS seemed to come and go way too quickly for me. And that was a problem that I did not like. Yet, even as a child, I was never one who liked to live in the problem. Instead, I like to find solutions to the problem. And, thankfully, there was indeed a solution to this problem.

I grew up on a 100-acre farm about 10 miles outside of my hometown of Hallettsville, Texas. One of our neighbors who shared a fence with our farm happened to be my Great Aunt Maurine Spies. I never met her husband, my great uncle, Leonard. He had died several years before I was born. But I got to know Aunt Maurine and her children and grandchildren very well over the years. I admired her and loved spending time with her.

She went to a different Lutheran church than the rest of the Spies family. Her church was a wonderful country church named Zion Lutheran Church in a community called Sublime, Texas. Because most of the families that went to her church were farmers and needed everyone to be on the farm during the daylight hours of the summer, Zion Lutheran Church had a Vacation Bible School for all ages in the evening every night of one week later in the summer. Aunt Maurine would pick me up in her pickup truck, and take me to join her church each night of the week. We started the evening with a potluck meal in the fellowship hall of the church and then separated into our different age groups for the classes.

One year we were encouraged to memorize a Bible verse each night and come back the next day and share that Bible verse out loud in front of our class grouping. I don’t remember the other four verses that we memorized that year. But I remember this one – Psalm 122:1 – “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’” In fact, I never forgot it. I think that the main reason why this verse has stood out for me for all of these decades is because it is so me. This verse describes me. This verse conveys the feelings that I have whenever I enter the house of the Lord. This verse is me. It was written thousands of years before I was born. But I feel like I could have easily written these words.

It’s hard to know the full context of the Psalm when it was originally written. That took place thousands of years ago. So, some of our thoughts about such things are truly guesses. But scholars believe that Psalm 122 was a Psalm of the Ascent. That means it may have been used by pilgrims on their journey to the Temple in Jerusalem as they made the pilgrimage to God’s dwelling each year. And, most likely, Psalm 122 was said when the pilgrimage had come to an end, when the long journey was complete, and the feet of those pilgrims finally had a moment to rest and stand in the majesty of the Temple made to honor God’s presence in the world and in the lives of the people. The faithful had arrived!

And when they arrive, they pray – in particular they pray for peace, they pray for prosperity, and they promise to do good things – good things for the holy city and good things for those who dwell in the city. It’s an uplifting Psalm. It’s a Psalm that begins in gladness and remains in that state for its entirety. It’s a Psalm that the pilgrims from thousands of years ago needed to hear and to speak on their pilgrim journey. It’s a Psalm that the pilgrims of today need to hear and need to speak on our pilgrim journey.

In the midst of the tough questions of life and faith, we all need places where we can go to find the divine and be reminded of that emotion of gladness. And, thank God, we have such places where we go and pray for peace in our world, for peace in our churches, and for peace in our lives. We have places to go where we can do good things for our neighbors in need. And one of the places that taught me this important lesson was Zion Lutheran Church, my Aunt Maurine’s home church – a place where I knew gladness, a place where I prayed for peace, and a place where good things were done for neighbors in need.