|
Read: Psalm 84
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts! Psalm 84: 1
I love our church building. Magnificent, awesome, eye-catching, unusual – take your pick from among these or many other adjectives. Whatever description you choose for it, our church building has stood at the corner of Oak and Woodfin like a beacon to the lost for nearly a century. I feel a comfort, a sense of home, whenever I see even an image of the building.
What I feel, however, is but a fraction of the emotion our Psalmist feels toward the Temple. It’s sight wrings from him an ache in his soul and causes his very heart and flesh to long for the presence of the living God.
Maybe our view has been cheapened by having not one but literally thousands of “houses of God”. Maybe we see more clearly that God is not confined to a central space, or perhaps we have become more comfortable with the idea that God has taken up residence within our hearts, at least to that degree which we have allowed.
While our emotions may be somewhat different from the Psalmist’s, we share with him the desire to be in the presence of our living God, to feel the comfort and experience the tremendous joy of proximity to and life lived with God as our daily companion and guide. We agree that it is preferable to be a lowly servant within God’s house than to have elevated stature without and that the man who trusts in God is a blessed man indeed.
So, while we may not always express it the same, we share the joy of life lived in the outstretched arms of a loving Father, one who loved us so much that he sent his son into the world so that we might live in the glorious house of our Lord forever.
~David Hart
| 
