“Blessed are those who dwell in your house;
they are ever praising you.”
~ Psalm 84:4
The notion of the beauty of the house of the Lord (the temple) and dwelling in it are common themes in the Psalms. How do we pray these Psalms? If the house of the Lord is the temple, then is it for us the equivalent of the church? In an ideal world would we all live in a church, praising God all day, every day?
In the Old Testament, the temple is literally the place where God lives -- the “house of the Lord” or God’s “dwelling place.” The temple, and the tabernacle before it, was a visible, tangible representation of the presence of God with the people of Israel.
The presence of God with his people is a key theme throughout the Bible: God walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the garden; God’s presence in the pillars of cloud and fire during the Exodus; God’s presence in the tabernacle and the temple; Jesus, God among become man; the Holy Spirit, God in us; and in the future when God will dwell with us again in a visible, tangible way, the whole earth will his “temple.”
So we, too, can sing, “blessed are those who dwell in your house” and “better is one day in your courts than a thousand elsewhere,” because these are words not exclusively about a particular location, but about the beauty and joy of living in God’s presence wherever we are.
This week's readings: Isaiah 1:10-18; Psalm 32:1-8; 2 Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12; Luke 19:1-10
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