Fairhaven Shorts 4-7-2024

Unity and Doubt in Faith

So Psalm 133 is one of the Psalms of ascents. That is one of the Psalms that was set to music and was sung while the people of Israel were walking up the hill to Jerusalem to worship in the temple. And you may have heard me say this before, but the temple mount is very high up. It's over 2,400 feet high.

And today, if you're driving it from the valley to the top of the mountain, takes about a half an hour, driving 60 or 70 miles an hour. So when people were walking this journey, it would take at least a day to get to the top of the hill. And so people would sing to keep their spirits up as they were traveling. And these were called songs of ascents and songs to climb by, you might say.

And so that's what this particular Psalm is. So songs of ascents were songs of joy because they called to mind what it was like to be close to God, to stand in God's presence, to lose oneself in the glory and majesty of God. And it's not an experience that people had very often, not back then, and unfortunately, not today either.

The Mission to the Border

I'm traveling with a group of women to the border, the southern border at El Paso. You know my interest in immigrants and refugees and things like that, so I'll be heading down to the border. And I do understand that we'll be meeting both with the security folks down there in Texas but also crossing over and meeting some of the folks who are waiting to come in Mexico. So please keep us in prayer on that.

It's not exactly dangerous, but it's not exactly safe. So just keep us, it's going to be, they're going to be very long days. And just pray that I keep my energy up and manage to keep up with the team as they move.