A Place to Start

Sometimes the most necessary place to begin is in the misery and brokenness. It's here, in the pig pen like the lost son of Jesus' parable that the realization of our squaller and dissatisfaction with the status quo of pain and helplessness is birthed. 

Have you been there? I have. I have been in places where I realize that my journey needs to begin because where I am, stagnant and frustrated doesn't cut it. Have you been there?  Have you been a place and space that demands change because it has driven you to the edge of yourself, it has taken you to the hardness and brokenness of your own soul and pulled open the curtain?

The Psalmist that begins the songs of ascent was there. He looked around himself and found that there, where he was, was corrupt and rotten and he was finding himself lost in it.

This psalmist sings the first of 15 Psalms of Ascent. They were sung and recited as pilgrims journeyed from home and town, from where they were to the Jerusalem community to worship. They would use these songs to begin, move along the difficult journey and finish to worship and celebrate with their people. Beginning with Psalm 120 in the brokenness and hardship of the psalmist that would become a pilgrim, they conclude with Psalm 134 in the worship and praise of God in the sanctuary. 

These songs begin with the psalmist that has been there, realized and knows all to well his hardship and plight in a land that he is sojourning through. He writes and will sing: 

He cries out to God because of the woes of his experience in a distant land away from the home of his ancestors. Meshech, in present day Turkey, is far from Jerusalem, a great pilgrimage to the temple. He lives among those whose lips and tongues speak lies and deceptions. He lives among those hostile to him and his way of life.

We live in places and spaces like the psalmist. We sojourn in these dark places too.

What we don't see is the vision of where he will go, we don't see the end in sight. Have you been there? Have you been there in the place where anything is better than where you are? Where those living around you are fighting against the very nature of your passions and soul work, making war against your morality - your heart cry for peace. The psalmist looks around himself and sees a world destitute and broken and the beginning of developing him into a pilgrim for the journey has come. Because he sees the need. His eyes are open.

Pilgrimages don't often begin with the fully realized end in sight but a desire to move from the brokenness and pain. Salvation happens when we realize our inability to save ourselves, when we realize that we really do need to make a change. To start, to realize the need, to recognize our own inadequacy is where repentance begins and we can begin to follow after the call to journey with Jesus.

I look around today and see the world in pain and struggling through brokenness. Neighbour at war with neighbour, anger and bitterness are common ingredients in the days recipes of life, families at odds because of subtle disagreements and past hurts. We can see the lies and deceit that rages through our own communities, the dishonesty and distrust. And it is all at our fingertips, in our hands on tablets and screens and behind remote controls. We can wage war against one another and live in the deceptions of this world, or, we can begin to see our eyes open to the truth of our need to pilgrimage.

The pilgrim, you and I, first needs to see, to open our eyes, to begin to touch the edges of the corners of our life maps. Look past the uncertainty of the blank canvas and turn to face the possibilities of the journey that lay before you and I. When we do, when we take those first steps, we find ourselves on a road, not to a sudo better life, but a full Jesus journey as we ascend with the songs to the Holy.