Like walking in the rain or the snow and there's nowhere to go and you feel like a part of you is dying...

Woah, long title.

So, the song currently stuck in my head is "The Things We Do for Love". I have one checkmark in my Lenten observation book, and am ready to greet the difficult challenge of the more nebulous spiritual exercises I put myself to.

I've been reading a lot lately on Jewish websites and blogs. Specifically, those that have to do with the weekly Torah portion. It's amazing how much, as a Christian who only reads the text, I've missed. I've known for a long time that there are commentaries upon commentaries on the Torah, but I never really bothered to get into them (bad habit left over from sola scriptura).

The Torah portion for this week is Trumah, Exodus 25:1-27:19, and it's the beginning of Extreme Makeover: God's Home Edition. The part of Exodus where I lean back, groan, and steel myself to plow through it. Details upon details about how the Tabernacle was built.

One chapter given over to Creation. Thirteen for building a ginormous, glorified tent. Oy gevalt.

The Rabbis, however, those Sages whose stories were written down in those commentaries, equate the building of the Tabernacle to God creating and ordering the Universe. There had to be a place where the Glory of God could touch the earth, and specially chosen people after much preperation could go in and encounter that glory, and then take it out into the world and thereby sanctify the world.

I'm not Jewish, though, for all that I honor Jewish teaching and thought. I'm a Christian. And in reading all of this preperation and what went into the Temple, how everyone gave of what they had so they could all be a part of creating a space for God to touch the earth...

a place so special that only one man could go into that place, and then only once a year...

This same God became a human being. Walked the earth. Talked, sang, drank, partied, cried, grieved...

This same God became Spirit, became a breath over all, and lives within every person, comforts them when they fall, moves them to great joys and closer to God...



The things (that were done, are done, are being done) for Love.