a God without walls

I have to say that I absolutely love the 2 Samuel lesson for this coming Sunday. I love that God isn't all about getting walled up in a fancy and expensive Temple. I like that he says, "really, you want to build me a house? How about this, I'll build you a house instead, ok?"

I'm guessing here, but I have the think that the Church started building buildings the day after the Emporer Constantine said he was cool with Christianity. Over the years the buildings have been huge and expensive; small and beautiful; multi-use; orante; and simple, but always with one goal in mind - to give God a place to live.

But what God seems to say here is "I don't need a place to live. I'm always moving, always active, always looking for hearts and minds and actions to change." The back cover of Rob Bell's latest book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians says, "There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building. The local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five peopel in his city lives in poverty. This is a book about those two numbers."

Have a place where the body of Christ can come together to worship the Lord God Almighty is not a bad thing. That place costing millions, being impossible to heat and cool, and generally sucking the money, time, energy, and life out of the congregation - that is a problem.

Our God is a God without walls. He doesn't need high ceilings, brass candlesticks, or fancy organs. He doesn't need anything. What he wants, however, is quite simple. He wants you and he wants me and he wants us now. That's it.