You inhabit the praises of Your people…

…so the Psalmist says (Psalm 22:3).

Where is God?

It is my firm belief that God does not live in buildings. A church is not the house of God because God lives there when there is no-one else around.

Looking back into the Old Testament, God’s presence was in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle. This seems to directly contradict what is stated above – God evidently lived in a place, even when there was no-one else around.

This all ties in with Christmas and the Incarnation, but more strongly with Easter, and specifically Communion.

Because Christ died, we can be with the Father. The New Covenant, sealed with Jesus’ blood made this so. This is what we remember, and symbolise at Communion.

Communion is something quite complex and therefore confusing – I read an interesting take on it in an extract from a book called God Still Matters by Herbert McCabe, given to me to prepare as part of one of my Cambridge interviews for Theology. McCabe states that Jesus is not in paradise, Jesus is paradise. This sets an interesting spin on the purpose of Communion – by symbolically eating the body and blood of Jesus, we are having paradise infused into us in some way. At first glance, this seemed like a fantastic exposition of the true purpose of Communion, a real ‘lightbulb moment’ for me. However I’ve come to decided that I’m not entirely satisfied with McCabe’s idea.

This is where I make a tenuous link with the question above: ‘Where is God?’

God does not move in buildings when there is no-one there – have you ever heard of God repairing the brickwork, or updating the interior design? Of course not, for God is a God who deals in relationships and love. When God moves, His Spirit is in people. This is why a building can never be called a church, because it is simply a shell.  A church is the group, or fellowship, of people who meet together in that shell to worship… God is in them, not the building. We see this idea repeatedly in scripture, most memorably where Paul talks of our bodies as the ‘temple of the Holy Spirit.’ (1 Corinthians 6:19, NIV).

Until this summer, at events like Soul Survivor, my visual imagination of the healing power of God was a streak of light from the sky, filling the tent and touching people wherever it went, not dissimilar from the scene toward the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the Nazis open the Ark of the Covenant and are struck dead by this ‘light force’.

Now, I have come to realise what actually happens – the power of God does not come from the sky, but from the hearts of the people in the tent, who worship Him. God is not in buildings, He is in His people.

This is where Communion starts to make sense – it symbolises one’s acceptance of Jesus into their heart. By eating His body and drinking His blood, He becomes part of us.

The chorus of the song, ‘The Same Power’ illustrates this beautifully:

‘The same power that conquered the grave lives in me, lives in me…Your love that rescued the earth lives in me, lives in me.’

We can have the power of God within us, if we so desire.

‘Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.’ – Revelation 3:20, NIV.

This helps us to understand the concept of worship. We should worship the Lord our God with all of our being, our bodies, our minds, our hearts and our souls. If we can do this, then God will truly be inhabiting the praises of His people. He inhabits us, and our purpose is to praise Him. We are His praise.

I want my life to be pictured as a mirror – constantly reflecting something brighter and better than I, constantly showing others the way to be with the Father.

Jesus Christ is the Saving One.

Christmas Reflections

This year, Christmas hasn’t really been all that. Perhaps it’s because of my age or perhaps it’s because of my focus, but for some reason it just didn’t feel like Christmas.

Maybe this is a good thing – the commercial nature of the day has totally disappeared for me so I can focus on the ‘true meaning’ of Christmas.

I wonder how many times this year I have heard that phrase… This ‘true meaning’ of Christmas does seem to be quite heavily publicised, and often to great effect.

Usually, in order to illustrate this meaning, the presents, food and other superficial aspects of the day are shown to be unimportant compared to the Christmas Story from 2000 years ago. This great story, undoubtedly one of the most compelling ever told, is exactly why Christmas is celebrated some 20 centuries down the track.

The baby in the manger, the shepherds, the angels, the wise men bearing gifts, Bethlehem… We are all so familiar with these things – either from Nativity plays at school or from dramatisations on television or the big screen.  My thought this year, though, is…

What if this great story is actually a distraction from the true significance of Christmas?

It is without question that the events in Bethlehem in the land of Judah are the key to unlocking this significance. However I feel that we find ourselves today in a position where certain aspects of the story are not recognised for the immense weight that they carry…

We often talk about the shepherds on the hillside nearby, tending their sheep, but how often do we really think about what they experienced that night? There is no other place in the whole of scripture where the sky is literally filled with angels, singing and praising God (except for perhaps in Revelation). It is unimaginable, the entire sky brimming with beings dressed in perfect white, declaring the might and power of God. The birth of this child is something that God wants to shout about! He wants everyone to know about it, it is the most important event in the whole of history! Taking time to think about that fact drives it home…this isn’t any old story about a baby’s birth with a few complications and strange events lumped on top, this is the greatest and the greatest happening of all time. Of all time.

Perhaps the next question is, ‘Why?’ ‘Why is this birth the most important event of all time?’ I heard recently the statement that the true meaning of Christmas is actually Easter. To some extent, this rings true – the birth of Jesus points to His death and resurrection 30 years later – but it is not entirely satisfactory. There is something more about Jesus’ birth that isn’t encountered at the cross.

A.W. Tozer once said, ‘Instead of God degrading Himself when He became man, He, by the act of Incarnation, elevated mankind to Himself.’ The Incarnation of Christ is the point in time where God took mankind in its broken and degenerate state and made it something new.

Christmas is the time where God met man, face to face, for the first time since Adam in Eden (Moses was unable to see the face of God and only saw His back, from a cleft in a rock). Paul explains:

‘For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.’ – 2 Corinthians 4:6, NIV.

‘The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.’ – Colossians 1:15, NIV.

‘For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him…’ – Colossians 1:19, NIV.

‘God’s glory, displayed in the face of Christ.’ Christ is, ‘the image of…God.’ Surely, surely, this is what Christmas is about. The Bethlehem story is important, but beyond that we see the glory of the Almighty One ‘to human view displayed’ in Christ, the Lord. This is why a vast host of angels sang that night, worshipping over and over again the only One who is worthy of our praise.

For me, Christmas has changed. This year has shown that. But I am determined that that change is in the right direction. I can’t claim to be moving away from the commercialisation because it was never a problem for me in the first place. But I do want to be moving away from reading the wonderful story of Bethlehem and the birth of Christ as a nice, interesting tale which just sets the scene for Easter to take place, with some shepherds and gold, incense and myrrh. When I read or hear that story, I want to be overawed by the host of angels, I want to be moved by the heart of Mary, but more than anything I want to remember all the glory of the Most High God was on earth, in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ, the Saving One.