God created the heavens and the earth and declared it a very good place to live. Adam and Eve then rejected His rule and were expelled into the wilderness. God’s children filed for separation because they confused slavery to sin with being emancipated minors. The Holy playground that God had created became an unholy crime scene. God’s daily walks were transformed into a once-a-year sacrificially supervised parental visit. Sadly, because His children behaved like typical messy teenagers they were only capable of keeping a space the size of a walk-in closet clean enough for their yearly meeting.

It’s interesting that most religion’s seem to find only small spaces for their gods to dwell; it may be a temple, an idol, or a mountaintop, but no matter what they choose, access is limited. I would suggest that we humans restrict God to small spaces because our original sin egos are so big. We fear that our shadowy unholiness may be revealed if we let in too much divine illumination. We treat the Light of the world like a flashlight we control instead of as an uncontrolled supernova of salvation. The very size of our Holy spaces should clue us into the fact that our unholiness is a big problem.

The Good News is that the death and resurrection of Jesus made it possible for God to come out of the closet.

However, instead of embracing God’s coming out we make it about our going in. We tend to view the tearing of the veil as an opportunity for us to visit God on our terms instead of as the moment God broke out to claim us on His terms. We amuse ourselves by foolishly thinking we can tame the Lion of Judah in His cage instead of allowing Him to roar.

St. Paul declared that the work of Jesus transformed our bodies into temples where the Spirit could dwell, but instead of allowing Him to roam the grounds we continue to stuff Him back into the closet and rehang the religious drapes. We are afraid that He will overturn tables when He sees that our houses of prayer have become dens of robbers. We are more than happy to visit His little room but terrified that He may get out and conduct a home inspection. Sadly, we have become so accustomed to our sinful feng shui that we fear that if God is freed He will start to rearrange our life furniture. God’s coming out party began when Jesus died on the cross, so instead of stuffing Him in a closet, lets clean up our homes and make Him a permanent guest in our living rooms.

The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything.  And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. (Acts 17:24-27)

Photo by Julian Paul on Unsplash