There is a particular kind of unsettledness that comes from not knowing where you will be living in six months. The lease is ending and the landlord has not said whether he will renew. The job might move you to another parish, or another country. Your parents are talking about selling the family house and you are not sure whether you will be going with them. Every decision seems to depend on another decision that has not been made yet, and the boxes in the corner never quite get unpacked.
People in that position are often told to pray for direction, and they do. But direction can be slow in coming, and in the meantime there is still rent to pay and children to get to school. Psalm 84 is a good companion for that in-between place.
A bird’s nest in the temple
The psalm was written by someone who longed to be in the house of God. “My soul longs, yes, even faints for the courts of the LORD,” he writes (Psalm 84:2, NKJV). He seems to be far away, perhaps travelling, perhaps prevented from going. And then he notices something almost comic: the birds have got there before him.
“Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young — even Your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.” (Psalm 84:3, NKJV)
Anyone who has watched birds build under the eaves of a Caribbean church will know the picture. Small, unremarkable creatures, finding a safe corner in the very place the psalmist yearns to be. The point is not that God cares only about birds. It is that the house of God has room even for the smallest and most easily overlooked. If a sparrow can find shelter there, so can you.
A heart set on the road
The psalm then turns to people on a journey: “Blessed is the man whose strength is in You, whose heart is set on pilgrimage” (Psalm 84:5, NKJV). Pilgrims in ancient Israel travelled up to Jerusalem for the feasts. The road was long, and much of it was dry. As they pass through the Valley of Baca, the psalmist says, they make it a spring (Psalm 84:6).
Nobody is quite sure where the Valley of Baca was, and the name may carry a sense of weeping. What matters is that it was a place of passage, not a destination. The blessing is not reserved for those who have arrived. It rests on those still walking, whose strength is in God while the road is uncertain.
That is good news for the renter between leases, the family in a relative’s back room while they save, the student in a hostel far from home, the returning resident staying with cousins while the house is finished. In-between places are not wasted places. Pilgrims can dig wells in them.
Making a spring in the valley
What might it look like to make a spring in a temporary season of housing? A few ideas that people in this situation have found steadying:
- Unpack something. Even if you may move again soon, hang one picture, put your Bible on a shelf, plant something in a pot. A home is partly made by deciding to live where you are.
- Find a church and go. The psalmist’s longing was for God’s house. A congregation can be a stable point when your address is not.
- Do the practical next thing. Direction often comes as the next step, not the whole map. Ask the landlord a straight question. Look at two listings. Talk to the bank about what you could borrow. Speak to an attorney if the tenancy situation is unclear.
- Be kind to others in transit. The new family on the road, the co-worker who has just arrived from abroad, the young person sleeping on a friend’s settee. Pilgrims recognise each other.
Sun and shield
Near the end of the psalm comes the line many people know best: “For the LORD God is a sun and shield; the LORD will give grace and glory; no good thing will He withhold from those who walk uprightly” (Psalm 84:11, NKJV). A sun lights the path and warms the traveller. A shield guards them from what they cannot see coming. Both images belong to the road, not to the safe house at the end of it.
This is not a promise that the ideal house will appear by next month. “No good thing” is measured by God’s wisdom, not by our wish list. But it is a promise that the person walking uprightly through an uncertain season is not walking unseen or unprotected.
Better a doorkeeper
The psalmist also says he would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of his God than dwell in the tents of wickedness (Psalm 84:10). It is a striking thing to say in a conversation about housing. A doorkeeper had no grand quarters. He stood at the threshold. Yet the psalmist counts it a better lot than the comfortable dwellings of people who have forgotten God.
When we do not know where we will live next, it is easy to think only of the house: its size, its location, whether it is ours. Psalm 84 gently widens the frame. The deeper question is whose presence we live in. A small rented flat where God is honoured can be more of a home than a mansion without Him. That does not make the practical questions go away. It does put them in their proper place.
So if you are between homes right now, take heart from the sparrow under the temple eaves. There is room for you in the house of God, strength for the road, and a sun and shield over the whole uncertain journey.
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