Walk about Zion, go all around it, count its towers, consider well its ramparts; go through its citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever. He will be our guide forever.
--Psalm 48:12-14
We mentioned summer vacations earlier this week. For the child of God in Bible times, there were no vacations as we know them today. But there were pilgrimages. What joy it was for them to make that pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the holy city. And at the heart of that city was Mount Zion, the temple mount, the footstool of God on earth.
These pilgrimages were not for sight-seeing as we understand it, as the psalmist makes plain. The child of God is encouraged to walk around, to "take it all in", to all but absorb it. Why? So that the next generation can be told of God's everlasting guidance.
Our Christian congregations are outposts of heaven; they are snippets and prefigurements of the ultimate Zion that is yet to come. Do we "put in" our hour on Sunday, or is it possible to walk around, take it all in, and absorb it? What conclusion might the next generation reach if they saw that?
PD
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