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How lovely is your dwelling place,\xa0 Lord Almighty!\xa0 My soul yearns, even faints,\xa0 for the courts of the Lord;\xa0 my heart and my flesh cry out\xa0 for the living God.\xa0 Blessed are those whose strength is in you,\xa0 whose hearts are set on pilgrimage.\xa0 (Psalm 84:1-2,5)\xa0 \xa0

Psalms like this one come to mind as real prayers in our Wilderness Wanderings outside the church building.\xa0

"My soul yearns, even faints, for the courts of the Lord." We miss the church building. The community that gathered there. The God who we met and worshiped together there. The font and table, pulpit and candle, beams and brick.\xa0 It was the tangible place of gathering for worship and for community where so many milestone of our lives were marked. And we miss it.\xa0

Despite texts like this one from Psalm 84 though, as I've reflected over these past months, I've come to realize that the Old Testament was largely written without a weekly worship service in a building in mind.\xa0

There was only one Temple, one place of worship. And that, only later in the Old Testament under King Solomon. Before that it was a tent\u2014the Tabernacle. Before that, there was nothing at all. Most Israelites did not live in Jerusalem or Shiloh though, and even when they did make a pilgrimage up to the tent or the Temple for the feasts three times a year: they were not permitted to go inside under the roof. They could only go as far as the outer courts to worship.\xa0

So: worship at a structure only happened at most three times a year for the Israelites, and even when they did arrive at said structure, they couldn't worship inside it.\xa0

So why did they long for this place if they'd only rarely saw it and had actually never stepped inside?\xa0

Well, the answer is that in the Old Testament, the Temple was the one tangible place on Earth where God was said to dwell among His people. "How lovely is your dwelling place" the Psalmist says. This was the reason for awe and worship\u2014the structure marked the dwelling place of God.\xa0

But now in the New Testament world of the Christian faith we live\u2014Jesus is the one who has "tabernacled" among us. He has become what the Temple was: Immanuel, God who dwells in the flesh with us. The connection point between heaven and earth. As the ascended Lord, He is now with us at all times and in all places, giving us of His Spirit so that we might be equipped for life, worship, and mission wherever we are.\xa0

That doesn't mean that we don't miss the church building and all that it meant and represented and enabled though, because what is lost is that tangible experience of the body of Christ in action and in worship, gathered in the flesh in the same place at the same time.\xa0

It's not really about the building, it never has been. We miss the tangible connection to our God in the face of His gathered people.\xa0

And so, like the Israelites of long ago: our pilgrimage continues with the same longing in our hearts and the same song of prayer on our lips:\xa0