Even the Sparrow Found a Home

The family of Korah worked in God's house in Jerusalem.
Some of them led the singing.
Some kept the gates,
and swung the big doors open every morning.
(Keeping the gates was early work.
Somebody had to be at the doors before the first priest came,
with the keys in his hand
and sleep still in his eyes.)

One of them made a song for the road,
for the long walk up to Jerusalem at feast time,
when families came
with dust on their sandals and babies on their backs.

"How lovely is the place where you live,
LORD of armies!" the song began.
"I want your courtyards so much it aches.
My heart and my whole body
are shouting for the living God!"

Then the singer remembered the birds.
High up, right beside the altar,
a sparrow had built her nest,
and a swallow had tucked hers into the next crack over,
with peeping babies inside.
(They paid no temple tax and brought no offering.
They just moved in.)

"Even the sparrow has found a home," he sang,
"and the swallow a nest for her young,
by your altar, my King and my God.
How happy are the people who live in your house!
They are always praising you."

Then the song went back to the road.
On the way was a dry valley called Baca.
(Baca sounds like the word for crying.
Nobody planned a picnic there.)
But the travelers sang their way through it,
and the autumn rain came down,
and the cracked ground filled with pools.
"They go from strength to strength," he sang,
"until each one stands before God in Zion."

"Look at our shield, O God," he prayed.
"Look kindly on the face of your anointed one."
(Our shield meant the king, whose job was to guard the people.
Anointed means marked with oil, the way a king was.
That word would grow bigger than the singer knew.)

"One day in your courtyards
is better than a thousand anywhere else.
I would rather keep the door of my God's house
than live in the tents of wicked people.
The LORD God is a sun and a shield.
He does not hold back one good thing
from the people who walk the right way."

But the sparrow got to stay,
and the people had to leave.
After every feast, the families
walked back down the road home.
Even the priests went home when their week of work was done.
So the families kept coming and going
and kept praying for the anointed king.

Then one spring a family from Nazareth
walked up for Passover,
and on the way home their boy went missing.
They found him in the temple courtyards,
as much at home as a bird in its nest.
"Why were you looking for me?" he asked.
"Didn't you know I had to be in my Father's house?"

Grown up, he told his friends,
"My Father's house has many rooms.
I am going there to get a place ready for you."

The boy in the courtyard was Jesus,
the Anointed One the singer had prayed for.
He went on ahead to open his Father's house,
the way Korah's family went up early
to unlock God's doors for the day.