Dwelling is a wonderful word. It carries a sense of permanency, solidity, oneness with a place, hospitality, warmth, belonging; the sense of a sure foundation from which to live in this world.
For Jesus he dwells in the heart of God enjoying all the word brings to mind. If he and God are one, where does God dwell? In the heart of Jesus. Both then dwell within the Spirit active in our lives.
If we understand the Spirit is God and Jesus free in the world, then the Godhead dwells in the world in some mystical way. The heart of the Godhead is dwelling all around us and within us. It is within us by virtue of our creation and birth; for God cannot be absent from the dwelling God created.
Heaven or The Hidden Place?
Where is the dwelling place Jesus goes to prepare for us? Is it in the heart of God, and if it is, is that an external reality we know as heaven or is it something very different? I suspect that it is different and particularly as the Jewish mystic John understood it and frames it for us.
It is:
- Personal
- Inner
- Already with us
- Our inner or true self
It is the hidden place within where we rarely look to find the Godhead at work. The many rooms John writes about are the many inner dwelling places already here in this world. They are the hearts, the inner essence of being, in each and every individual and form of creation. Our task, as the many, is to uncover and enter the room where God dwells deep within us.
In a world of concrete, factual, evidence-based thinking we find it hard, for some impossible, to imagine our destiny, the eternal relationship with God is already present, available to us and is closer to us than ourselves.
A Changed World
In a world in which we have discovered that what we thought was concrete, solid, immovable, reliable and dependable has been shaken from its foundations in 7 or so weeks, this understanding may be the antidote to the viral anxiety much of our world is feeling.
What do we now trust? What is a real job? How long will that last? Where will I find a job and an income to sustain me and my family? No longer does my fathers old joke work: “After 50 years at the job the boss tells Joe he has to leave. Joe replies, “if had known this wasn’t going to be permanent, I wouldn’t have taken it in the first place.
Hope
Understanding where the Godhead dwells, where the room Jesus goes to prepare for us is and to where he will come and take us may not resolve our financial issues in the first instance, but it will give us a platform from which to engage the world as a true citizen with the right to engage with respect all other dwelling places in our world.
Jesus goes within us as we begin our relationship with Him, undermining our ego understanding of self to clear out the false ideas dwelling there – entitlement, individualism, the I, control, power, greed and more, in order it may once again become the dwelling place of a child of God.
Johns metaphors are powerful if understood in this mysterious manner and they change forever what is important, what is of value and what we can trust.
In the midst of our viral anxiety, let us see ourselves one with and in-dwelt by the Godhead in such a way we and God and Jesus and the Spirit are one and always have been one from beyond the beginning of time and the end of time.
Even beyond Covid-19.