When we moved to the U.S. over twenty years ago, we adopted a new bible. Not one that replaced the one we took to church, but one which was added and referenced almost always when we got into the car. Not one that was meant to point us to God and help us make our way in the world, but one that pointed us to our next destination and helped us navigate the road. Not the Kings James Version but The Thomas Guide.

Anyone remember those? You were in an area you weren’t familiar with and yet you had to find your way around, and so, you bought The Thomas Guide for that region? Talk about your distracted driving as you kept one eye on the road and the other eye on that behemoth book.

What a gift our modern GPS, aka phones, are. While I may not like being told what to do, I’ll take that lady’s voice saying “Turn left in 2 miles” if it’s going to get me to where I want to go without having to have a book (or one of those multi-folded, you can never get it back the way you bought it maps) in front of my face while I try and navigate unfamiliar streets.

So, what’s got me flashing back to The Thomas Guide days of living in the greater Seattle area? What’s primed the pump of thought about the blessing of now having Google Maps on my dashboard? Something the songwriter refers to as heart highways.

How lovely is Your dwelling place,
O LORD of hosts!
My soul longs, yes, faints for the courts of the LORD;
my heart and flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young, at Your altars, O LORD of hosts, my King and my God.
Blessed are those who dwell in Your house,
ever singing Your praise! Selah
Blessed are those whose strength is in You,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion.

(Psalm 84:1-5 ESV)

Psalm 84 has got to be among my top 10 — if only because of the emotion it stirs, the intense longing it promotes to be where the presence of God dwells. A day in His courts really is better than a thousand elsewhere (84:10a)! Amen? And so, says the songwriter, “Blessed are those . . . in whose heart are the highways to Zion.“

Well, actually . . . technically . . . it doesn’t. That’s how the ESV translators have rendered the two Hebrew words found here. That’s the idea they believe we should be picking up from what the psalmist is laying down. Other translations render it a little differently: “Blessed are those . . . whose hearts are set on pilgrimage” (CSB, NIV). But literally, the lyrics of the song here say that blessed is the one with heart highways.

Blessed are those internally wired with the path to God’s presence. A deep and abiding happiness is the fruit to be realized by those programmed deep within for holy ground, that place being the halls of worship of the living God, the altar of the LORD of hosts, the One we bow before as my King and my God.

That wiring, that internal GPS, those heart highways are ours from re-birth. Baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit when we first believed (1Cor. 12:13, Eph. 1:13, 4:30), our inner man, our inner woman, was programmed for such a pilgrimage. “God’s Dwelling Place or Bust!” is the sign that was hung within our souls.

So, the map is present, the GPS address has been entered. Ours is but to desire, with great desire, the destination. The way, whether easy or hard, whether by a fairly straight path or a sometimes frustrating circuitous route, is set. Ours is to want to be where God wants us to be — with Him, abiding in Him, worshiping only Him.

Blessed are those with heart highways.

There for our good. There for His glory. There only by His grace.

Yes?