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Isaiah 66:1-2

“This is what the LORD says: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. Where is the house you will build for me? Where will my resting place be? 2 Has not my hand made all these things, and so they came into being?" declares the LORD.  

"These are the ones I look on with favor: those who are humble and contrite in spirit, and who tremble at my word.”  

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The people of Israel were lamenting the destruction of Solomon’s Temple (or the meagre rebuild in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah) and looking forward to the day when the house of the Lord would one day be rebuilt in all its former glory.  

The temple was the holiest of holy places in Israel, where God’s Presence dwelled in a special way. It is no surprise, then, that Israel longed for its rebuilding.  

And yet, in this magnificent text from Isaiah, the Lord of heaven and earth tries to reframe Israel’s thinking on this matter.  

In the first place, the whole world is actually God’s temple, built not by the hands of men but by his very own hands. Israel’s ‘brick-and-mortar’ structure was an imitation, a miniature of the big one. And so God tries to refocus Israel’s imagination to long for the day when he will fill the earth with the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea, and not just long for an earthly structure. We too look forward to this day when God will rebuild his cosmic temple without sin and suffering; and we are to long for it (Revelation 21).  

In the meantime, however, the Lord says that we are also to long for something else.  

Holiness can be contained on the outside of our bodies, in physical bodies like temples. But holiness can also be contained within our own bodies, within our own lives. We can be vessels of God’s Presence in the world.  

This is another reason why God shifts Israel’s attention from desiring an outward and physical structure like a temple to desiring to be a humble person who reveres his Word. As an empty balloon has plenty of available space to be filled up with air, so too does a humble person—who’s not full of their own hot air and their own ideas—have plenty of space to be filled up with the presence of God and his sacred Word.  

Where do you look for holiness today, and seek to find God’s Presence? Do you seek the Presence of God as mostly something that you’ll find on the outside, say in church buildings? Or do you know that the Presence of God can also fill you, today, and seek to be filled of Him, and then witness to him in the world?  

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Prayer: Dear Lord, give us great humility, so we may be filled of you. Give us great hunger for your Word, so we may think your thoughts after you and unto your glory. And keep our hope in the world to come alive and joyful when the days are tough.

In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.