This morning in my quiet time I read 1 Kings 6, an entire chapter devoted to Solomon building the temple. There are so many details recorded that it is literally overwhelming to read. Normally I read 2-4 chapters or so in the mornings, but today I just couldn't bring myself to read on about Solomon's Palace in chapter 7.
Six or seven years ago, reading a passage like this was boring. I would skim through it as fast as I could, not taking time to consider the lengths and measurements and the ornate little details like carvings on the doorposts and what they symbolize. How does the fact that there were cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers all over apply to my life today anyway? But this morning I thought about those details. I tried to imagine the size of the structure, what it looked like, what it smelt like. I imagined what it would be like to walk into a room whose walls and floor were completely overlaid with gold. As I started to comprehend the cost and beauty of such a structure, built by human hands as the dwelling place for the Living God, I was awestruck.
All the gold, all the cedar, all the beautiful carvings and materials in the world would still never be enough to make a dwelling place fit for our God. So was it all a waste? Certainly not. The beauty of the temple points us to the beauty and the greatness of our God. When men visited Jerusalem and looked on the temple, they recognized that the God it was built for was far greater than the structure itself. Such an impressive structure could only belong to One truly worthy of it.
But if men came to the the temple and saw its beauty and its splendor and gave no thought to the purpose of it all, the worship of our God, then the temple would have been nothing more than a shiny building. The danger is that the temple itself could have easily become an idol and an object of worship and praise, that its beauty could distract those who saw it from the true Beauty it contained.
I'm sure there are things in our own lives that are "temples" of sorts - wonderful, beautiful things meant to point us to the Living God - that have a tendency to distract us from Him instead. What came to my mind as I meditated on this passage this morning was music. I love my worship music. So many good songs, full of powerful and encouraging truths, and set to tunes that make them pleasing to my ear and easy to remember. But when the music and the rhythm, the beat and the melody distract me from the reason for the song, isn't that the same thing?
There is absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying worship music, the way it sounds, and all the little details of vocals and instrumentation. Those are good things. I am not suggesting that worship and music should be stale and boring or that if it's enjoyable at all it isn't true worship. What I am suggesting is that sometimes I need to be reminded that the song itself is not the object of my admiration. It wasn't intended to call the attention to itself and stop me there. Like the temple, it points to the God that it was made for, the God who alone is worthy of it and of so much more.
Worship music is probably my greatest "temple" in life. I'm sure there are more that I'm unaware of. If you think of any of your own or ones that you've seen in the lives of others I'd love to hear about them. The more "temples" we are aware of, the more we can work on keeping ourselves from being distracted by their beauty. Will you join me in this fight?Labels: journal/quiet time, reflections, songs/music