it's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there**

The Word for today:
Psalm 132

[** "It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there."/Bob Dylan/1997.
 Today's title courtesy of my boyhood hero Bob Dylan, who today became the first American since 1993 to win the Nobel Prize for literature.]

mark this: Psalm 132:3-5
I will not enter my house or get into my bed,
I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob.

The world was inhospitable to Jesus. It still is.

We think of the crowds yelling, "Crucify him." But we forget the everyday deprivation in Jesus' life -- the cold, the constant travel, the homelessness, the sleeplessness. He had no place to hang his hat, literally no place to lay his head:
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. (Matthew 8:20)

So I propose that we do something about it. I propose we build Jesus a house! We should make it warm and inviting, stocked with all the things we know he liked to eat and drink--bread, broiled fish, figs, cool "Samaritan Well" water, and "Wedding at Cana" wine. Above all else, he must have his very own pillow and blanket and his very own place to lay his head.

***

Not only was Jesus homeless, he was churchless, too. First he was thrown out of his hometown synagogue (and very nearly off a nearby cliff) because of his radical interpretation of Isaiah 61. (1)

Later he was vehemently opposed by the religious establishment in Jerusalem -- who finished what the hometown folks in Nazareth had meant to do.

So I propose that we build him a church, as well. You might think this sounds impossible, but it's not -- because the Bible contains the blueprint:
God inhabits the praises of his people. (Psalm 22:3/KJV)

We know that the great desire of David's heart was to build a house for God:
I will not enter my house or get into my bed,
I will not give sleep to my eyes or slumber to my eyelids,
until I find a place for the LORD, a dwelling place for the Mighty One of Jacob. (Psalm 132:3-5)

But you don't have to be a great king like David to invite Jesus in from the cold. Because when you praise the Lord in the morning, you're building a home for Him. When we praise the Lord together, we’re building a church where he is welcomed.

Come on in out of the cold, Jesus.  It's not dark yet, but it's gettin' there.

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(1) Luke 4:16ff.