All right now, if we're honest, reading the Bible consistently can be a challenge, but it's never too late to start and we're in this together.

This is the Join the Journey podcast.

Thanks for joining.

My name is Lauren Atkinson and I get to serve on our Join the Journey staff team.

And today we are reading Psalm 120. And and so psalm 120 is a psalm of assent

which commentators assume were sung by jews as they made their pilgrimage to jerusalem to

worship during one of three major festivals these festivals would have been passover in the spring

pentecost and early summer and then the festival of tabernacles in the fall.

Psalm 120 is the first of these Psalms of a sense and in many ways highlights the state of Jewish pilgrims that felt like they were in an alien or foreigner setting.

And in a few short months, we will be at Christmas, which is crazy to think about.

And one of my favorite Christmas memories is going to Christmas Eve services at our church

and being given candles and the hymnal booklets with a collection of Christmas worship songs that

we'd get to sing to celebrate the king who had come. And those Christmas hymn books are similar in many ways to what

this group of Psalms of Ascent that we see here would have been for Jews as they made their ascent

or journey to Jerusalem. And although we are not making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in many ways,

we as believers in this broken world are still living as foreigners in a land,

hoping and waiting for eternity with God. And so in many ways, these Psalms of Ascent, we can

understand what that would feel like. And for me, I recently moved to Dallas about six

months ago from North Carolina, and God has used

this massive transition in my life to teach me so much about the meaning of home. When home

becomes the place that you visit via a multiple day drive or a long flight, it puts in perspective

what Hebrews 1314 says, for we do not have an enduring city here but we seek the one to come

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