Aug 23 - Psalm 5:7

because of your great love

I can come into your house;

I can worship in your holy Temple

and bow down to you in reverence.

Psalm 5:7

GNT

I sometimes like to point people to the room they’re sitting in and say, “Imagine that this room is earth.” Then I point upward and say, “Imagine that the floor above us is heaven.”

“You can’t see heaven,” I say, “but it’s real. It’s there.”

Have you ever felt, however, that the barrier between heaven and earth was twenty feet thick? Have you ever felt like you’ve prayed and prayed, and all your prayers did was bounce off the ceiling and fall back down helplessly?

On the other hand, have you ever experienced moments when the barrier between heaven and earth has grown thin? Have you felt that God was very close?

One of the times I see this most clearly is when people are on their death bed. Rather than death being a moment of defeat, all who gather can sometimes feel the gentle embrace of God and his holy angels. Have you ever felt that?

In Isaiah 6, the prophet walks into the temple in Jerusalem. In this majestic room, he didn’t see the gold. He didn’t see the stone. He didn’t see the clamor of a thousand worshippers. He simply saw God.

The Lord was sitting high and lofty upon his throne. Just the stitching along the hem of God’s robe filled the entire temple. “Holy, Holy, Holy!” sang the seraphim, and as they flew, the pillars of the temple shook. The house of God filled with smoke, and in that moment, the barrier between heaven and earth was infinitesimally thin. Have you ever felt that?

Isaiah fell on his face and said, “Oops.”

That’s my translation. But isn’t that what you’d say if you met God? In my best moments, I’m an ant crawling on the hem of his garment. And then there are my other moments. I constantly need to fall on my face like Isaiah, and cry, “Woe is me” (Isa 6:5 NRSV).

With a live coal taken from the altar, God purified the prophet’s lips and life. God purifies you and me in a different way – with drops of blood, fallen from the cross.

I’m not worthy to enter God’s presence, and yet “because of [his] great love, I can come into [his] house.”

In Christ’s Love,

a guy who’s been given a key

to the house of the Lord