Where does God live?

The next few chapters of 2 Chronicles are all about building the temple, ‘the dwelling place for the Most High’ – a place for God to live.

How is that even possible?

Where would you even start?

Solomon recognises the enormity of this task –

The house I am building has to be the best, for our God is the best, far better than competing gods. But who is capable of building such a structure? Why, the skies—the entire cosmos!—can’t begin to contain him.  2 Chronicles 2:5-6

And so Solomon’s temple is the biggest and the best. Its vastness reflects the glory of God. Its riches reflect the glory of God. Its intricate creativity and workmanship reflect the glory of God. Read chapters 2-5 to get a real sense of this.

Only the best materials are good enough.

Only the best craftsmen are good enough.

Only the best designs are good enough.

And yet it is not enough to contain God. Of course it isn’t. The entire cosmos cannot begin to contain Him!

God said he would dwell in a cloud,
But I’ve built a temple most splendid,
A place for you to live in forever.  2 Chronicles 6:1-2

Solomon knows that no building can contain God but he also knows it was his job to build this temple and make it the best it could possibly be for the God that led the people of Israel through the wilderness by dwelling in a pillar of cloud. Now the people of Israel are no longer travelling. They are settled. The cloud is not necessary. Now God will dwell in this temple and people will come from all over to visit God in this temple and worship God in this temple.

That’s mind-blowing in itself though. How can a God that cannot be contained dwell in a temple?

Can it be that God will actually move into our neighbourhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn’t large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I’ve built.  2 Chronicles 6:18

What a great way of putting it! ‘The cosmos itself isn’t large enough to give you breathing room.’

God is vast, way way way beyond our understanding and our words and our experience and our buildings…….

How often do we make God small by fitting Him into our neat little boxes and limiting what we expect Him to do and describing Him in fixed limited ways and assigning to Him prescriptive limiting labels?

We will never fully know God. We will never fully understand God. We will never fully be able to describe God. Not this side of heaven anyway – and then we’ll have all eternity to find the words!

So God cannot be contained. So how come when you go into a vast cathedral, there is a sense of the divine there? This is a holy place. This is a dwelling place of the Most High. Because the vastness and magnificence and awe-inspiring craftsmanship all point us to the glory of God. They give us a glimpse of His vastness and His magnificence and His inspiring craftsmanship. They have a place. God can be found in these places.

But not just in these places. We all know that. God cannot be contained in our places of worship. He bursts out into the whole world, into the whole universe, beyond the cosmos……… God can be found anywhere and everywhere – in places described by Celtic Christians as ‘thin places’ –

‘They are locales where the distance between heaven and earth collapses and we’re able to catch glimpses of the divine, or the transcendent or, as I like to think of it, the infinite Whatever’  (Man seeks God, Eric Weiner)

And in us too. In each one of us. Remember Namaste? – ‘the divine in me bows to the divine in you’. We are even described as a temple –

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?  1 Corinthians 6:19

I am a temple, a dwelling place of the Most High. God lives in me.

You are a temple, a dwelling place of the Most High. God lives in you.

Which takes me back to where we started today –

The house I am building has to be the best, for our God is the best, far better than competing gods.

We have to be our best (whatever that means for us – our best, not the same best as anyone else), for our God is the best, and our God lives in us.

I suspect it will take us a lifetime to work out what that is and get even close to achieving it, but God has all the time in the world…..maybe even just taking on thinking this way is a great place to start for today.

May you find God as you go out into the world today.

And may you find God as you live out your life as a place where God lives today.