Solomon built a temple, because he knew he couldn’t contain God.
Ironic as it is….
The Temple is empty, except for the 10 commandments, so that all the priest, and elders and leaders and everyone important can come into the temple for its dedication.
And the moment they call on God (we would call this the Prayer of Illumination) God’s Cloud fills the entire temple
And when the priests came out of the Holy Place,a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. 1 Kings 8:10-11
God is all that is in the temple! The temple wasn’t big enough to hold God, yet God filled it! That’s why it wasn’t about limiting God, but noticing how infinite God is.
This is (one) story of how God came to dwell on Earth.
Another is Jesus
Another is Communion
Another is baptism
Another is us–the people, the body of Christ, Christ’s promise that whenever we gather in his name, he’ll be present.
With Christ, God was invited to be present in church, but not just in the building but in our very relationships.
Author: katyandtheword
Pastor Katy has enjoyed ministry at New Covenant since 2010, where the church has solidified its community focus. She now works at Capital CFO plus as the Non Profit Director. All opinions expressed on this blog are her own and do not reflect those of Capital CFO plus. Prior to that she studied both Theology and Christian Formation at Princeton Theological Seminary. She also served as an Assistant Chaplain at Trenton Psychiatric Hospital and as the Christian Educational Coordinator at Bethany Presbyterian at Bloomfield, NJ.
She is an writer and is published in Enfleshed, Sermonsuite, Presbyterian's today and Outlook. She writes prayers, liturgy, poems and public theology and is pursuing her doctorate in ministry in Creative Write and Pittsburgh Theological Seminary.
She enjoys working within and connecting to the community, is known to laugh a lot during service, and tells as many stories as possible. Pastor Katy loves reading Science Fiction and Fantasy, theater, arts and crafts, music, playing with children and sunshine, and continues to try to be as (w)holistically Christian as possible.
"Publisher after publisher turned down A Wrinkle in Time," L'Engle wrote, "because it deals overtly with the problem of evil, and it was too difficult for children, and was it a children's or an adult's book, anyhow?" The next year it won the prestigious John Newbery Medal.
Tolkien states in the foreword to The Lord of the Rings that he disliked allegories and that the story was not one.[66] Instead he preferred what he termed "applicability", the freedom of the reader to interpret the work in the light of his or her own life and times.
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