“The
House of the Lord” by Melanie Rigney (@melanierigney)
 |
| Gustave Doré [Public domain] |
“Let the governor and the elders of the Jews continue the
work on that house of God; they are to rebuild it on its former site.” (Ezra
6:7)
Let us go rejoicing to the
house of the Lord. (Psalm 122:1)
“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the
word of God and act on it”. (Luke 8:21)
Piety
Lord, rebuild my house so that
it may be more pleasing to You.
Study
Solomon’s temple was destroyed. It
was about 588 BC, and it is difficult to even imagine the sorrow and anger of
the people of the kingdom of Judah. Life as they had known it came crashing
down. All they had was their faith.
It took decades, almost fifty years
in fact, for deliverance to come in the form of the Persian conquest of
Babylon, which resulted in the people’s return to Jerusalem. It would be about
515 BC when the new temple, on the same site, was completed. Did it look
exactly the same? We don’t know, but probably not. What was important was that worship
was again available in the spot that meant so much.
Construction, destruction,
rebuilding. It’s a cycle, and not just of physical structures. For us, it’s
about continual conversion. We make progress in our spiritual life, but there’s
always room for some tweaking, some destruction of pride perhaps, or of fear or
greed or lust. And when those walls that separate us from God come down, we can
feel we’re in a desert of our own, even though we know he is always there.
Faith is about the trust that after our temples are destroyed, they can be
rebuilt. Our souls may not look or feel the same as they did before, but they are
all the more pleasing to God for our willingness to wipe away those
comfortable, familiar habits that distance us from Him.
Action
Identify a
temple for destruction.
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