“Better is One Day (or 30 years) in Your Courts..” – Day 16 of Lent

Temple1  Reading: Psalm 84

Every time I take a group on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land I always insist that the guide take us to the Israel Museum where we can view a scale model of Jerusalem and Herod's Temple as it appeared around the time of Jesus. It's an impressive model that I wish I'd been able to see when I started seminary as it would have helped with visualizing the places referenced in the Gospels (actually, I think it would behoove every seminary student to actually GO to the Holy Land during their first semester. Now that would be a scholarship program to endow!). 

It turns out, though, that this "official" model actually pales somewhat in comparison to one that retired farmer Alec Garrard has been building in a separate building in his garden for the last 30 years…and Garrard says he won't finish it in his lifetime. The impressive model of Herod's Temple is so authentically detailed that to archaeologists and experts from the British Museum have come to see it. Mr. Garrard has spent some 33,000 hours working on the model, hand-baking and painting every single clay brick and sculpting some 4,000 tiny human figures to populate the courtyards.

Garrard, 78, says he does it for relaxation (though his wife thinks he's nuts). 

I find Garrard's dedication fascinating and certainly indicative of the kind of wonder, joy, and dedication we see in the psalmist's ode to the Temple in Psalm 84. To invest one's life in connection to a holy place may seem a little strange to our more "spiritualized" and Western-ized Platonist sensibilities, but the Bible makes it clear that God has a sense of place, as do God's people. If the Temple represented God's dwelling place to the people of Israel, how much more should we be aware that God's dwelling is with all of us in time and place–not in Temples, but in our hearts.

We know that the Romans destroyed the Temple in 70AD, but the destruction of that grand edifice didn't change the fact that God continues to want to dwell with us. Just a thought, but what would happen if we dedicated 33,000 hours to celebrating that fact? 

"How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!"

PRAYER: Lord God, let me celebrate the fact that you seek to dwell within me and work through me to bring your love and grace to the world. Amen.

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