Ever since Adam and Eve drew their first breaths God has been trying to get our attention. And more often than not whenever we stop running from God and experience God's love in a profound way we seek to enshrine that experience. The "gathering of stones" to commemorate the places where we met God are scattered throughout history and the world. But like any gathering of stones we cannot encapsulate God no matter how hard we try.
I remember my childhood church. The doors were always open, night or day. I didn't even know as a child if the doors even had locks, but I suspect that they did. But that church was alive in many ways, not just in the people but in the space. My childhood church was a "pass through", it was a place that you went through on your way to some other destination. I suspect that when we lose that sense that our places of worship are pass throughs we lose a sense that God is encountered and worshiped not in a church building but in leaving that building.
Our places of worship are not destinations where go to find God, but rather they are way stations, pass throughs where we stop for a time as part of the journey with God. God isn’t enshrined in our buildings, God is a nomad, a wanderer, a holy hobo who travels daily with us, our Church buildings are simply “sacred places” where we have communally experienced a closeness to the Divine. Like our biblical ancestors erected stones at important encounter points in their traveling so too are our church buildings. They must speak of a God who is on the move, who wanderers, who journeys not some domesticated geriatric God confined to a sacred nursing hoping for an occasional visit from the too busy family.
When we seek to encounter God as we go out into the world we are better able to allow ourselves to be pursued and found by the living God.
Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool; what is the house that you would build for me, and what is the place of my rest? All these things my hand has made, and so all these things came to be, declares the LORD. But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my word." (Isaiah 66:1,2; ESV)
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