"Beautiful in elevation...is mount Zion...the city of the great King. [...] Walk about Zion, and go round about her; count the towers thereof. Mark ye well her bulwarks, consider her palaces, that ye may tell it to the generation following. For this God is our God for ever and ever; He will be our guide even unto death." Ps. 48:2, 12-14
Mount Zion was where the temple was located, a building with far more significance than being a mere museum piece of Judaism. It represented two very important realities. The first was the spiritual legacy of the Jews. From the first tabernacle in the wilderness to the subsequent temples that were destroyed and rebuilt, the Jewish house of worship stood as a sure testimony to God's dealings in Israel's history. The second reality that the temple represented was the presence of God. God was not a mere past memory but a living fact of the present. The temple reminded the Jews not only that Heaven had touched earth, but also that it still touched earth; and those were the two things that they were to pass on to "the generation following."
We do a lousy job of passing on our spiritual legacy. Sometimes we divorce the immediate presence of God from the facts of church/Christian history and tradition, and our faith becomes cold and academic, with the scriptures becoming a mere textbook of knowledge. More often, however, we divorce the facts of history and tradition from the immediate presence, and our faith becomes hollow and weak, void of grounding and depth, and the scriptures a fluid subjectivity handbook for our own private eisegesis. We are to give to our children the richest heritage possible, teaching them the things of yesterday to enrich their own experiences today.
-Jon Vowell
Mount Zion was where the temple was located, a building with far more significance than being a mere museum piece of Judaism. It represented two very important realities. The first was the spiritual legacy of the Jews. From the first tabernacle in the wilderness to the subsequent temples that were destroyed and rebuilt, the Jewish house of worship stood as a sure testimony to God's dealings in Israel's history. The second reality that the temple represented was the presence of God. God was not a mere past memory but a living fact of the present. The temple reminded the Jews not only that Heaven had touched earth, but also that it still touched earth; and those were the two things that they were to pass on to "the generation following."
We do a lousy job of passing on our spiritual legacy. Sometimes we divorce the immediate presence of God from the facts of church/Christian history and tradition, and our faith becomes cold and academic, with the scriptures becoming a mere textbook of knowledge. More often, however, we divorce the facts of history and tradition from the immediate presence, and our faith becomes hollow and weak, void of grounding and depth, and the scriptures a fluid subjectivity handbook for our own private eisegesis. We are to give to our children the richest heritage possible, teaching them the things of yesterday to enrich their own experiences today.
-Jon Vowell
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