meditation on Psalm 122 for Advent midweek evening prayer

Where do you meet God?
church
within its walls of brick or clique?

where do you meet God?
within the city, teeming with life
as you jostle with, encounter,
or maybe try to avoid the other children of God who fill its streets?

where do you meet God?
upon the mountain,
which beckons from across the plain
promising divine encounter?

where do you meet God?
in quiet retreat,
listening through the
wind, earthquake, fire of life
through the silence
to God's still small voice

wherever you meet God
the spirit of God is present in community
where two or three gather together
so when they call to me and say
"let us go to the house of the Lord"
I do not go alone
two or three
twenty or thirty
one hundred or one thousand
we go together
God in our midst
and we in the midst of God

and though so often we fight
or skirmish
or bicker
or disagree
still we yearn for peace within the walls of
our family
our community
our world
within the walls of the advent of the new Jerusalem

yet though we long for peace
we stymie ourselves by our sin in thought word and deed
and we cannot free ourselves from this bondage

we long for peace, so we sing and pray
o come, o come, Emmanuel,
come and save us

where do we meet God?
where God has promised to meet us
in the world, incarnate, enfleshed
Emmanuel, God with us.

Amen.