Psalm 84
One of my favorite worship songs, Better is One Day, is based on this Psalm and it is a song and a Psalm with a great message, but I think that by focusing on the truth of this Psalm we may miss the Truth.
This Psalm is a song of gladness about being able to worship in the temple, and through the course of years we have lifted up the church as a new temple, calling and believing it to be God's house. Don't get me wrong, I love being in church buildings, everytime I walk into a new one I look around to see how they are set up, to see what each section of Christianity does in order to usher people into the presence of the Lord, but the church building is not God's house. Holding to that belief is forgetting a central fact of Jesus's crucifixion, the veil was torn. We are living in a world where the veil was torn, God tore that veil to finally and completely show that God does not dwell in a place, but all places, God does not dwell at a certain time, but at all times, God does not dwell in a certain way, but in all ways.
Better is one day in God's courts, but we need to recognize that it is all God's courts. Jesus makes [Matthew 5:34-36] this point when he says that we shouldn't swear by heaven nor by earth because heaven in God's throne and the earth is God's footstool, which is also found in Isaiah 66. The fact that it can be found in Isaiah goes to the fact that God never dwelt in only certain places, but that we needed the cross for a multitude of reasons, to show us God's love, to show us God's power, to show us God's omnipresence, which is a fancy way of saying that God is present everywhere. It is not that we need to be in a special place for God to speak to us because God can speak at any time in any place, what is needed is for us to realize that and listen for God's voice no matter where we are.
+ How has God spoken to you in places that are not "spiritual"?
+ In what ways have you boxed God into the church building?
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