Unveiled Monday |
As Easter approaches, I was reading Matthew 27:50-53 and thinking about the incident of the veil's tearing right after Jesus breathed his last and the significance it has to Christ followers today.
The huge, thick and beautiful curtain that was torn from the top down, served to divide the thick presence of God known as the most holy of places or the Holy of Holies from ordinary people. It was a
dark place that spoke of the mystery of God and could not be approached accept once a year by the high priests and only after a blood sacrifice was made. A reading of Hebrews 9 gives the theological understanding of the fact that Christ blood sacrifice opened wide the most holy of places to all who believe.
This access to the presence of God is something that we so easily can take for granted in our day to day lives. Yet, most of what we long for is found in the awareness of it.
This story really started back with Adam and Eve. They lived with a constant knowledge of this good, perfect, safe, awesome, mysterious and loving presence of God. It was to them as natural as any element of life - air, water, or food. When sin was welcomed, it was not God that hid from humanity, but humanity that hid from God. It was not God that withdrew His presence, but we who withdrew from knowing it.
This was the turning point in our history. Without a knowledge of the prefect presence of God – man began to murder, steel, lie, cheat, to hurt others, to start wars.
When we think of the atrocities of this world and the incredible sufferings of humanity, we are sometimes tempted to ask the question, "where was God?"
He has not gone anywhere. He never left. Fallen man cannot recognize the presence and so we often are not capable of operating within the goodness & mercy of it. The result is legions of people who are fractured and who struggle and endure great strife for identity and meaning in this world.
Our identity is wrapped up into the identity of God. When we are not aware of His presence, we are not aware of Him. When we don’t know who God is, we don’t know who we are. The real us (who we are in God) and who we think we are in this life becomes divided. We become desperate for meaning, struggling to make whole what feels pulled apart.
Do you see how important this awareness of God’s presence is?
You may be a believer in Jesus and wondering why you are not more conscience of this presence of God if in fact the veil is now torn. As you know you can be in a room with hundreds of people and still only be aware of a fraction of them. One has to be either paying attention to a person or at least in very close proximity to them to be aware their presence.
All barriers have been removed from God and us thanks to Jesus. What is needed is for us simply to be attentive to that presence, to draw near to it in our desires and actions.
Living with this knowledge allows us to understand why Paul calls us ministers of reconciliation (2 Co 5:18). As people who now have complete access to the presence of God and all that that means, we are now called to reconcile other people to that same awareness. God’s acceptance and their understanding of that reinstates their worth in Him, it makes whole what is broken.
The huge, thick and beautiful curtain that was torn from the top down, served to divide the thick presence of God known as the most holy of places or the Holy of Holies from ordinary people. It was a
dark place that spoke of the mystery of God and could not be approached accept once a year by the high priests and only after a blood sacrifice was made. A reading of Hebrews 9 gives the theological understanding of the fact that Christ blood sacrifice opened wide the most holy of places to all who believe.This access to the presence of God is something that we so easily can take for granted in our day to day lives. Yet, most of what we long for is found in the awareness of it.
This story really started back with Adam and Eve. They lived with a constant knowledge of this good, perfect, safe, awesome, mysterious and loving presence of God. It was to them as natural as any element of life - air, water, or food. When sin was welcomed, it was not God that hid from humanity, but humanity that hid from God. It was not God that withdrew His presence, but we who withdrew from knowing it.
This was the turning point in our history. Without a knowledge of the prefect presence of God – man began to murder, steel, lie, cheat, to hurt others, to start wars.
When we think of the atrocities of this world and the incredible sufferings of humanity, we are sometimes tempted to ask the question, "where was God?"
He has not gone anywhere. He never left. Fallen man cannot recognize the presence and so we often are not capable of operating within the goodness & mercy of it. The result is legions of people who are fractured and who struggle and endure great strife for identity and meaning in this world.
Our identity is wrapped up into the identity of God. When we are not aware of His presence, we are not aware of Him. When we don’t know who God is, we don’t know who we are. The real us (who we are in God) and who we think we are in this life becomes divided. We become desperate for meaning, struggling to make whole what feels pulled apart.
Do you see how important this awareness of God’s presence is?
You may be a believer in Jesus and wondering why you are not more conscience of this presence of God if in fact the veil is now torn. As you know you can be in a room with hundreds of people and still only be aware of a fraction of them. One has to be either paying attention to a person or at least in very close proximity to them to be aware their presence.
All barriers have been removed from God and us thanks to Jesus. What is needed is for us simply to be attentive to that presence, to draw near to it in our desires and actions.
Living with this knowledge allows us to understand why Paul calls us ministers of reconciliation (2 Co 5:18). As people who now have complete access to the presence of God and all that that means, we are now called to reconcile other people to that same awareness. God’s acceptance and their understanding of that reinstates their worth in Him, it makes whole what is broken.