Meeting Places of God
Where is the holy natural place near you in which God so obviously dwells?
Psalm 74:3-8
Direct your steps to the perpetual ruins; the enemy has destroyed everything in the sanctuary.
Your foes have roared within your holy place; they set up their emblems there.
At the upper entrance they hacked the wooden trellis with axes. And then, with hatchets and hammers, they smashed all its carved work.
They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing it to the ground.
They said to themselves, “We will utterly subdue them”; they burned all the meeting places of God in the land.
This prayer was originally written by Israelites in the besieged city of Jerusalem, lamenting the desecration of its temple by their enemies. It is a direct address to God, pointing out, “Hey, this was an attack on you.” God should be mad.
If we understand God to dwell in a particular place, then this makes sense. The ones who were violent against God’s house are the enemy, and any violence done against them can be endorsed since it’s defending God’s honor after such an attack.
But things change when we understand the whole of Creation to be the holy place God dwells. When the sanctuary is the fertile field, the carved works the canyonside, the trellis at the entrance a waterfall. Instead of a territorial prize fight fueling perpetual violence between aggressor nation and defender, the true enemy of “the exploiter of the land and its people” is revealed.
Where is the holy natural place near you in which God so obviously dwells? Who are you willing to hang up your grudge with to work alongside to save it?