I have been pondering God’s presence within me. In her book He and I, Gabrielle Bossis relayed these words from Jesus to her: “Perhaps I created you only to console Me and to give Me a refuge in your heart where you sing Me the hymn of love. Why shouldn’t I have a home on earth? Must I still have no stone on which to rest my head?”
The first part filled my heart; the second made it ache. I find myself deeply desiring to console Him.
What space do I give Him interiorly? Of what quality is it? Is it a place of rest for Him, a protective and healing refuge?
Psalm 132 relates David’s desire is to build a house for the LORD:
I will not enter the house where I dwell, nor go to bed where I rest;
I will give no sleep to my eyes, to my eyelids I will give no slumber,
till I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling for the Strong One of Jacob.
David was thinking of building a temple. I am thinking of a spiritual temple: Where does the LORD dwell? In our hearts. So how do I go about building a dwelling place for the LORD?
That is a huge question and there are a myriad of tangents to consider. However, one lesson I’ve been learning over the years is the balance of “boldly approaching the throne of Grace” to bring our needs before God, vs. using God as a sort of Santa Claus with our own expectations of how He ought to respond.
In a reflection on the gospel story of Jesus cleansing the temple, Meister Eckhart addressed this very thing. He wrote: “As long as we look for some kind of pay for what we do, as long as we want to get something from God in some kind of exchange, we are like the merchants. If you want to be rid of the commercial spirit, then by all means do all you can in the way of good works, but do so solely for the praise of God … Expect and ask nothing in return. Then the merchant inside you will be driven out of the temple God has made …
“…observe that when all was cleared, there was nobody left but Jesus. And when he is alone he is able to speak in the temple of the soul.”
My soul.
A clean heart create for me, God;
renew within me a steadfast spirit.
(Psalm 51:12)
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