Temple of God

Temple is not a container for God. There is no temple, no religious symbol that exhaustively hold God within itself. God’s presence within the interiority of ourselves and everything that exists so much transcending our understanding that we cannot really accept the immanence of God within ourselves. The more we extend ourselves we might widen our sight to see the presence of God in others and in creation which calls for love and service. A direct experience of God and the compelling presence of God to live a life of compassion and mercy are also moments of finding the flames of God within our short life.

If our offerings are to be pure offering, they have to be real symbols of what we live in our daily lives. If life does not become an offering in our lived life, offerings are rotten objects placed at the altar. Real offerings we cannot carry to the temple, nor to the highest heaven. Real offerings are to be offered in love, care, mercy and compassion. Then the heaven is here, the kingdom is here and the temple is here where we live. There is the glory of God, and our sincere prayer.

Offering devoid of sincere offering makes the temple a house of trade. There in the temple glory of God never dwells, no prayer rises. Temple can become a place that promotes such rotten offering and the rituals related to it. Thus, it adds the function of conspiracy and plotting crime. It is that system that led the scribes and Pharisees from the 'Holy City' of Jerusalem to Nazareth, a place of no good, to find find faults with and kill the one they seemed to have worshiped.

There are already signs that the praised rising from sincere hearts though the temples seem abandoned. Many begin to recognise the glory of God in the kindness shown to the rotten and broken lives of humanity and nature. Temples discuss about the modality of worshiping God and add hatred to the worshippers, there are silent peacemakers struggling for justice in solidarity with those are denied justice.

There, if humanity and creation can gather in your life in worship and for the glory of God, you are the temple where the Spirit of God dwells.