Advent Devotional by Jason Edwards

Psalm 122

Our feet are standing in your gates, Jerusalem. (Psalm 122:2)

With our charter bus ascending toward the city, our guide inserted a CD and turned up the volume, so we’d hear these words just as the skyline came into view:

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem!
Lift up you gates and sing
Hosanna in the highest
Hosanna to your King!"

My heart beamed. The person next to me whispered, “I’ve been here six times and somehow every tour guide always knows just the right moment to turn on that song.” It was a pilgrim ritual. Both planned and powerful.

Psalm 122 was used in similar ways. It’s one of several Psalms of ascent, used by pilgrims as they journeyed to and through Jerusalem. Content and context suggest this Psalm was sung upon arrival. Jerusalem, Jerusalem! “Our feet are standing in your gates.” (Psalm 122:2)

Pilgrims who’d been moving toward the city gates were now flooding in, praying their journey to and through sacred spaces would hold encounter. They moved forward with hope the Holy was waiting for them.

I entered Jerusalem accompanied by this kind of expectation. Its fruition was felt through moments planned and not. It’s difficult to pray in places like the Gethsemane’s Garden, near a 2000+ year-old olive tree, without feeling magnitude in the moment. Jerusalem is charged with spaces like these. This is why multitudes annually move through its gates. The place prompts divine encounter. You can plan on it. Though you can’t plan the when, the what, the why or the how.

Getting COVID-19 in Israel added a layer of struggle. There were issues of balance and fatigue. There were some sites I missed. There was unexpected time in my hotel room, on the balcony, overlooking the holy city. There were extra days spent in quarantine.

At some point, I felt God asking me to receive COVID as my teacher. This opened me to the holy that is often only experienced amid struggle as struggle opens new kinds of awareness. I hadn’t planned for my sense of the sacred in Israel to become more acute through illness, but that’s what happened.

Advent is a pilgrimage. Charged with holy space and practice, we move toward it annually with anticipation. We’re now entering its gates. If we’ll do so as pilgrims, seeking out the sacred, we’ll find it. You can plan on that. Though you can’t plan the when, the why, the what or the how. You may experience God this season through a ritual, song, service, or prayer you’ve come to expect. You may experience God through unexpected celebration or struggle. You really can’t predict exactly how or when this will happen. But you can decide to be open to it.

With hope,

Jason Edwards, Senior Pastor