“But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!" - 1 Kings 8:27
Focusing on the special presence of God may have brought a question to your mind over the past few days. Isn’t God present everywhere? Scripture tells us that there is nowhere that anyone could go to flee from God’s presence. After all, he is infinite and immeasurable. His being is not constrained by any boundaries of either time or space. If you’ve wondered about that, you’re in good company. Israel’s wisest king pondered the same thing.
God allowed King Solomon, David’s son, to build a temple in which his glory would uniquely dwell. At the ceremony to dedicate the temple to God, Solomon marveled at the mystery of how God’s special dwelling could be inside creation. Not even the highest heaven could contain God’s essential presence. How could the Creator dwell in this building created by human hands? But when the temple was completed, the glory of the LORD did fill the house and the LORD made his dwelling in the midst of Israel.
God’s presence everywhere is actually the bedrock of the revelation of his special, covenantal, intimate, gracious presence with his people. What an astounding mystery! Wise men are driven to adoration at the thought that the boundless God freely chose to inhabit a bounded creation. How much more incredible to think that the LORD would come in human flesh?