Will God Really Dwell on Earth?

Will God Really Dwell on Earth?
1 Kings 8:10-30

An hour or two ago I was sitting not at my desk, as I am now, but in my recliner chair, where I start off the day with my coffee, reading the Bible just for my own benefit and praying for people, and I sometimes picture God sitting on the sofa on the other side of the room; I did so this morning to remind myself that God was with me. The picturing is an exercise in the imagination, but the presence is a reality. Yesterday in church as I sang hymns or said the creed or gave people bread and wine, I didn’t feel I had to summon up that reality; it was built into what we were doing (“Where two or three gather in my name, I am there among them,” Jesus says in Matthew 18:20). While my coffee was brewing this morning, I mixed the dough for the bread I shall bake later, and God was there, too, not least making the dough rise (I just checked it). I didn’t think about God’s presence then, but it was nevertheless a reality. Here at my desk God had better be present, too, or this writing won’t be much use to you, and obviously I think about God, though in a more third-person way than when I was in my recliner. I don’t talk to God very often except for saying thank you when something nice happens...