The House Too Small to Hold God's Glory

The young king who had asked God for wisdom was not so young anymore, and he had spent seven years using it to build God a house in Jerusalem. It had cedar walls and gold on nearly everything, even the floor. (The stones were cut at the quarry, so no one ever heard a hammer on the building site. Picture all that building with no banging.)

Solomon's father, David, had wanted to build it. But God had told him, "It was good that you wanted to. Your son will build my house." Now the son had done it.

At the autumn feast, people crowded in from all over the land. The priests carried the ark, God's golden chest, up the hill on its long poles. Inside were only the two stone tablets Moses had put there at Mount Sinai.

The priests set the chest in the innermost room, under the wings of two golden cherubim, carved angels nearly as tall as a giraffe.

And the cloud came.

It rolled into every corner of the house, thick and dark. The priests could not stay on their feet to do their work, because the glory of the LORD had filled his house.

"The LORD said he would live in thick darkness," Solomon said, looking at the cloud. "And I have built you a grand house to live in forever."

Then he knelt before the altar, spread his hands toward the sky, and prayed. "O LORD, God of Israel, there is no God like you, in heaven or on earth! You keep your promises, and you never stop loving your people."

He stopped, as if the size of it had just struck him. "But will God really live on the earth? Heaven, even the highest heaven, cannot hold you. How much less this house I have built!"

Still he asked. "When your people do wrong, and are sorry, and pray toward this house, hear from heaven, where you live, and when you hear, forgive. When a foreigner from far away prays here, hear that person too." "There is no one who does not sin," Solomon said, so he even prayed for a day when enemies might carry God's people far away. "If they turn back to you there, forgive them."

Then he stood and blessed the people. "Praise the LORD! Not one word has failed of all the good promises he gave through Moses!"

Next came the offerings: twenty-two thousand oxen and a hundred and twenty thousand sheep. The bronze altar could not hold anything like that many, so Solomon turned the middle of the courtyard into an altar too. The feast lasted seven days, and then seven more. (No one went home hungry.) At the end the people blessed their king and walked home glad.

But a house can burn, and one day an army would burn this one to the ground. Even after it was built again, the innermost room stayed shut behind a thick curtain, and only the high priest could go in, once a year.

Kings came and went. God's people kept praying toward that hill, and the prophets promised that the Lord himself would come to his temple.

When he came, he did not come as a cloud. God's glory came as a baby in a manger in Bethlehem, a morning's walk from the temple. He heard prayers face to face and forgave people on the spot. And when he died, the thick temple curtain tore from top to bottom.

His name was Jesus, and God was living with people on the earth after all.