Moving the Mercy Seat
Never having been to the Holy Land, I am as ignorant about this as I am about everything else, and would do better if I'd been there and had memories and mental images of what’s there so it could come alive for me.
But not so. With help from the internet, I’m visualizing.
In our Bible story this Sunday, Solomon finishes building his temple as the house of God to hold the ark of the covenant. Long lost in time, it was a chest that, by tradition, held the tablets of the law that Moses brought down from the mountain, and that was God’s dwelling place. From pictures and other stories,
I visualize the ark as a box with long handles on each end so men could carry it; and on top, two animal images, perhaps bovine, calves, or angels, or eagles, one on each end of the lid, facing each other; and between the images is the mercy seat for God to sit on. Ebenezer, maybe it goes back to "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, 'Thus far the Lord has helped us.'" (1 Samuel 7:12), IDK. If what you visualize is different, stick with your image, there’s no photograph of it, only the imagination of artists’ renderings.
In the story for Sunday (1Kings8), king Solomon has the chest, the ark of God, brought from Zion, the City of David, a neighborhood that I visualize as being in the south end of Jerusalem, up through the city to the temple at the north end of Jerusalem, a growing, burgeoning capital. Effectively, God is being moved from the other end of town where he was kept for safety and security while the temple was built, into his new home. No longer does God reside in a tent, where the ark was kept all those years in the wilderness with Moses and thereafter.
There’s a big celebration. Solomon dedicates the new temple, and prays to the Lord that he will answer the prayers of all those who face the temple and pray, both Jew and Gentile.
No matter where one might be in the world, to face toward the temple and pray is to recognize the Lord and accept him as one’s God. A further thought comes: in that God resides in the written law, which is God’s word, we find the theology that God is the Word and the Word is God. God is present in and as his Word.
Pinched online, the maps help me visualize.
And the word Ebenezer makes a hymn and tune go round in my head. UMH #400
1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.
2. Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.
3. O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
TW+
But not so. With help from the internet, I’m visualizing.
In our Bible story this Sunday, Solomon finishes building his temple as the house of God to hold the ark of the covenant. Long lost in time, it was a chest that, by tradition, held the tablets of the law that Moses brought down from the mountain, and that was God’s dwelling place. From pictures and other stories,
I visualize the ark as a box with long handles on each end so men could carry it; and on top, two animal images, perhaps bovine, calves, or angels, or eagles, one on each end of the lid, facing each other; and between the images is the mercy seat for God to sit on. Ebenezer, maybe it goes back to "Then Samuel took a stone and set it up between Mizpah and Jeshanah, and named it Ebenezer; for he said, 'Thus far the Lord has helped us.'" (1 Samuel 7:12), IDK. If what you visualize is different, stick with your image, there’s no photograph of it, only the imagination of artists’ renderings.
In the story for Sunday (1Kings8), king Solomon has the chest, the ark of God, brought from Zion, the City of David, a neighborhood that I visualize as being in the south end of Jerusalem, up through the city to the temple at the north end of Jerusalem, a growing, burgeoning capital. Effectively, God is being moved from the other end of town where he was kept for safety and security while the temple was built, into his new home. No longer does God reside in a tent, where the ark was kept all those years in the wilderness with Moses and thereafter.
There’s a big celebration. Solomon dedicates the new temple, and prays to the Lord that he will answer the prayers of all those who face the temple and pray, both Jew and Gentile.
No matter where one might be in the world, to face toward the temple and pray is to recognize the Lord and accept him as one’s God. A further thought comes: in that God resides in the written law, which is God’s word, we find the theology that God is the Word and the Word is God. God is present in and as his Word.
Pinched online, the maps help me visualize.
And the word Ebenezer makes a hymn and tune go round in my head. UMH #400
1. Come, thou Fount of every blessing,
tune my heart to sing thy grace;
streams of mercy, never ceasing,
call for songs of loudest praise.
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
sung by flaming tongues above.
Praise the mount! I'm fixed upon it,
mount of thy redeeming love.
2. Here I raise mine Ebenezer;
hither by thy help I'm come;
and I hope, by thy good pleasure,
safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
wandering from the fold of God;
he, to rescue me from danger,
interposed his precious blood.
3. O to grace how great a debtor
daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness, like a fetter,
bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
prone to leave the God I love;
here's my heart, O take and seal it,
seal it for thy courts above.
TW+