Look up - by John Foley

Over the last fortnight we have had 2 Latvian students as house-guests. The are members of a prize winning choir which has been visiting Adelaide as part of an Australian-Latvian Festival.

Their singing was superb. During one song, a prayer for their land, ravaged over the centuries by so many invaders,their conductor was seen to be weeping. All of us who are migrants probably hold our home country in a place of special love.

“By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept. If I forget
you, O Jerusalem may my right hand forget its skill.”
Psalm 137

Do we so long for the heavenly Jerusalem? There is a sense in which we are exiles, or pilgrims to better country. We travel through a landscape ravaged by sin—our own, and that of others.

Abraham and those before him longed not for the country they had left—but for the better one. God is not ashamed to be called their God – he has prepared a city for them—for us! We come to-- “the city of the living God, to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful array, to the church of the firstborn…..”

Look up

Originally Published in January 2007