A friend of mine said something simple yet profound yesterday. In the book of Haggai, God says that His temple is in ruins. So my friend asked God what he ought to do to help rebuild the temple. And God replied, “My temple is not a building of stones and brick. It is you.”

I realise that words seem to fall flat when trying to explain all that entails, but I was just awestruck by the fact that God considers me His temple. I know He states it clearly enough without mincing any words – “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” (I Corinthians 3:16), yet somehow, hearing my friend utter it so baldly, brought it home in a new way.

I thought of all that rebuilding involves – the breaking down of old, rusted pipes and walls, the wires sticking out of sockets, the rubble and the mess, the torn up tiles, the caved in roof, the re-plastering and painting, the re-tiling, the dust, the hammering and rewiring, putting in new fittings, cleaning the mess, ensuring everything works – phew! So, it naturally follows that if God is in the process of rebuilding me, there will be issues I have to deal with in my life – uncomfortable growing pains, unpleasant corrections, learning lessons in humility, patience, kindness, and loving (the hard way!). If something dirty exists in a holy place, it is removed forthwith, right? So why should I be surprised when I have to face the ugliness in my own heart. Rather, I can rejoice that here is something else that is being scrubbed clean.

I think my entire life on earth is a process of rebuilding and restoration. As long as I make my peace with that, I can live in contentment – knowing that though I am a work in progress, there is Someone who is highly invested in ensuring that the construction is completed one day.

Even as I ruminated over this, I realised that C. S. Lewis had explained it much more eloquently, several years ago (truly, there is nothing new under the sun!) –

“On the one hand, God’s demand for perfection need not discourage you in the least in your present attempts to be good, or even in your present failures. Each time you fall He will pick you up again. And He knows perfectly well that your own efforts are never going to bring you anywhere near perfection. On the other hand, you must realise from the outset that the goal towards which He is beginning to guide you is absolute perfection; and no power in the whole universe, except you yourself, can prevent Him from taking you to that goal. That is what you are in for…I think that many of us, when Christ has enabled us to overcome one or two sins that were an obvious nuisance, are inclined to feel (though we do not put it into words) that we are now good enough. He has done all we wanted Him to do, and we should be obliged if He would now leave us alone…But this is a fatal mistake. Of course we never wanted, and never asked, to be made into the sort of creatures He is going to make us into. But the question is not what we intended ourselves to be, but what He intended us to be when He made us…That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time…It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us…Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of – throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself. The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command…The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.”

 

 

Photo by Milan Popovic on Unsplash