Psalms 122:1

This verse opens one of the "Psalms of Ascent" — a collection of songs (Psalms 120–134) that Jewish pilgrims would sing as they made the uphill journey to Jerusalem for major religious festivals each year. David, the famous shepherd who became king of Israel and wrote many of the Psalms, expresses pure, uncomplicated delight at being invited to go to the Temple — the sacred building in Jerusalem believed to be the place where God's presence dwelt on earth. For ancient Israelites, this was not a Sunday obligation. It was a pilgrimage, sometimes days of travel, to the spiritual center of their entire world.

God, I want to want you — not just show up out of habit or guilt. Rekindle in me the kind of eager joy David felt, the genuine delight at the thought of being in your presence alongside other imperfect people who are also looking for you. Let going to worship feel like something I get to do. Amen.

Think about a time someone invited you somewhere you genuinely wanted to go — not an event you felt obligated to attend, but something that made you say yes before they finished the sentence. That is the feeling in this verse. David does not write that he reluctantly showed up to the house of the Lord, or that he went because it was expected. He *rejoiced*. And the detail that is easy to skip over: he rejoiced the moment someone said "let us go" — not after arriving, not after the worship experience, but at the invitation itself. That is worth sitting with, especially if your honest relationship with gathered worship feels more like duty than delight. The Psalms are brutally honest about hard emotions — lament, anger, despair — so David is not performing optimism here. Something in him was genuinely alive at the prospect of being in God's presence alongside other people. That kind of joy is not just a personality trait. It can be cultivated, tended, and sometimes honestly asked for — "God, help me want to come."