God Dwells Among Us

Photo Credit: Monique Stokman on Pixabay

Lately I’ve been captivated by the reality of God’s presence–how it gleams in the grit of the ordinary, how it pulses the very air we breathe. So I couldn’t wait to read God Dwells Among Us.  I don’t normally review books on this blog, but the content of the book was so perfect to this series!

This book beautifully shifted my paradigm of the whole narrative of Scriptures. GK Beale and Mitchell Kim show how one of the awesome overarching stories of the Bible is how God seeks to dwell with humanity. Lush Eden was the first temple, the first dwelling place of the Universe-Maker–but Adam and Eve lost this paradise after the bit fruit and the shifted blame. 

Then God chooses to reveal His presence through the tabernacle, a profoundly symbolic microcosm of creation, an image of Eden, and a shadow of a new heaven and earth to come. Beale and Kim follow this thread of the tabernacling presence of God even through Mount Sinai and the “small sanctuaries” where God called Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 

In the New Testament, Christ embodies the temple of God, succeeding where our first parents and the Israelites failed. And as the church, we are now called to be tabernacles of God, breathing stones in a divine sanctuary, the embodied presence of God on earth. And one day, a new cosmos will brim over with the pulsing, manifest presence of God. 

As a writer, I found the symbolism woven through the entire Bible (especially related to the Old Testament tabernacle) utterly fascinating. Its intricate detail–well worth savoring in private study– showed me God’s beautiful intentionality in unfolding the grand story of His love to humanity. 

That God dwells–and desires to dwell!--with a broken people astounds. Such love my mind cannot fathom–yet I can open myself to receive the ever-near presence of God. I sing with Solomon, “Let my beloved come to his garden, and eat its choicest fruits” (Song of Songs 4:16b)

This essay is part of a series called “Dwell,” which meditates on the spaces where God dwells with us.