Note: On Tuesdays, you can find me at Your Daily Tripod, owned by my friend TonyD. A longer version of the post below appears there.
Solomon’s temple was destroyed. It was about 588 BC, and it is difficult to even imagine the sorrow and anger of the people of the kingdom of Judah. Life as they had known it came crashing down. All they had was their faith.
It took decades, almost fifty years in fact, for deliverance to come in the form of the Persian conquest of Babylon, which resulted in the people’s return to Jerusalem. It would be about 515 BC when the new temple, on the same site, was completed. Did it look exactly the same? We don’t know, but probably not. What was important was that worship was again available in the spot that meant so much.
Construction, destruction, rebuilding. It’s a cycle, and not just of physical structures. For us, it’s about continual conversion. We make progress in our spiritual life, but there’s always room for some tweaking, some destruction of pride perhaps, or of fear or greed or lust. And when those walls that separate us from God come down, we can feel we’re in a desert of our own, even though we know he is always there. Faith is about the trust that after our temples are destroyed, they can be rebuilt. Our souls may not look or feel the same as they did before, but they are all the more pleasing to God for our willingness to wipe away those comfortable, familiar habits that distance us from Him.
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