I Want Gourds and Palm Trees

Another snowstorm today -- outside my window the world is white, the dingy grime of old snowdrifts blanketed by the clean new fall. The sky is so opaque, so pale, that it nearly blends into the fallen snow. It's a beautiful landscape -- all clear lines, blank and pale and very clean looking. Beautiful and bleak.

Last night, DH and I reached I Kings 6 in our reading together. Compared to the blank white in my window, the description of Solomon's temple made a vivid impression on my summer-starved mind. The author spends the whole chapter describing Solomon's construction of the temple in exuberant detail -- the measurements, the materials, and the decorations. This is an astonishing house -- the place where God physically dwells among His people. And the details of that house almost explode with hugeness of the joy of God's presence. Imagine walking into Solomon's temple -- built of costly stone, cedar, and cypress. All over the interior of the house is carved with gorgeous gourds or pomegranates, palm trees, and open flowers. Everything is overlaid with a layer of gleaming gold, and the air is thick with incense.

If we walked into a church and saw what is described in I Kings, we would be shocked at how gaudy it was.  The note in my Bible suggests that the carvings in the temple evoke the Garden of Eden. I was reminded of the rich language of the Song of Songs, the garden images of blooming and ripeness and abundance. Maybe a temple like Solomon's is no longer necessary, or culturally appropriate, but the imagery of the temple still speaks to who He Is. God is with his people like a bridegroom with his bride. In His presence is fullness of joy, an overflowing delight that explodes outward as if in tendrils and green leaves and gorgeous flowers and ripe fruit, filling up the world around it, unfurling into every space.

Solomon's temple reminded me that Christianity is not about my sacrifice or my endurance, although it does include those things. Instead, it is about life and growth where everything was once dead and cold. At the heart of Christianity is an enormous, uncontainable rejoicing in my God and His love.