Every Monday morning all the families on the base gather for 50 minutes of worship together. Usually it includes a guitar or a keyboard player and some words to follow on TV screens. However, about 6 weeks ago when I was talking to God about how I get distracted when I'm trying to worship, a picture popped into my head from the Old Testament. with that image, I had a sense that I was supposed to sign up to lead worship, as a way to re-claim my ability to focus on Jesus undistracted. And so, I prepared a story and a collage project for helping people think about all of God's beautiful character traits (aka his Glory). Below you can read my paraphrase from the book of Exodus, of God's Glory filling the tabernacle which the people built for Him. I can tell you, that I was walking around smiling ear to ear to see families with kids of all ages (even as young as 2) creating together something that invited them to think about how beautiful God is.
In the Book of Exodus God tells Moses, “Have the people make a sanctuary for me. And I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you.” And sort of like Moses’s office, there was this small place called the Tent of Meeting where Moses would go to get instructions from God. And then God gave them fourteen chapters of intricate instructions on how to make a dwelling place for him! He gave them details about how to make the Ark of the Covenant, the clothing for the priests, the dishes they would use, tables to build, the fabric and what colors to use in the embroidery, and more. There were MANY details to follow. And the beautiful thing is that at the end of Exodus, it says, “The Israelites had done all the work just as the Lord had commanded Moses. Moses inspected the work and saw that they had done it just as the Lord has commanded.” (this in itself is such a gracious statement. Because certainly these imperfect humans, as much as they wanted to do a good job, must have made a few mistakes. BUT God didn't let them stop Him for coming close to them) And then they set up the beautiful tent they had build for God; they washed themselves to be clean before God, and they finished all the set up. “then the cloud covered the Tent of meeting and the LORD filled the tabernacle. Moses could not even enter the tent of meeting because the cloud had settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. …and the cloud of the Lord was over the tabernacle by day, and the fire was in the cloud by night, in the sigth of all the house of Israel during all their travels.”
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