I rejoiced because they said to me, “We will go up to the house of the LORD.” // Psalm 122:1

One purple candle was lit on the enormous Advent wreath in front of the ambo. The lector stood in the cold, morning church with her arm raised, and she stared out at the congregation while we incorrectly mumbled the refrain. Without a missal to guide me, I relied on lyrics of a 90s praise song based on the same Scripture, tucked way back in the recesses of my mind.

“I rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go unto the house of the Lo-o-o-o-ord!’” The chorus of daily Mass goers was fairly monotone, but in my head the refrain was super punchy, just like we sang at youth group all those years ago.

In my teen years, it was just a fun song, almost silly, and I was not at a place of spiritual maturity to understand what I was singing. I looked joyful then, but it wasn’t connected to the actual words I was singing.

As an adult, though, I shifted in my seat and checked my heart while I looked around the church. We did not look joyful, murmuring over our scarves and with arms folded across our chests to help keep us warm. But I knew, without a doubt, that all of us there knew joy in the deepest, truest way. All of us had suffered, and all of us knew the sweetness and the joy of a life lived with Christ and His Church.

Some day may we all joyfully enter the House of the Lord in Heaven, but may we all joyfully find Him here and now in the waiting.

[bctt tweet="Find Him here and now in the waiting. // Bonnie Engstrom " username="blessedisshe__"]

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