Reflection:  The Covenantal Chest     

God’s reputation is terrifying. He’s just dramatically rescued his enslaved people for all the world to see and now he ‘comes down’ to be with them. (Gods just don’t do that sort of thing!) But the Israelites are too scared…and in fact, God, too holy. So Moses mediates. He meets with God instead, and comes away with two stones on which God has etched literally, ‘Ten Words’. Treasure me like I treasure you, is the essence of this concise covenant. Like a wedding vow, Moses reads aloud: Will you…? and the people respond: We will! With splashes of blood the ‘document’ is ‘signed and sealed’.

There was a time when the Tent* was the most holy place on earth.

Nuclear radiation-like holy.

Organic and visceral, all the while terrifying and confounding.

Draped in mystery, the Divine grounded in time and grace

was perceived through thing and place.

Curled up in hyperspace,

He chose that place to interface.

And within that hot-holy place,

a holiest space to manifest and obfuscate:

prescribed and named The Covenantal Chest.

God parked his presence and his precepts behind a curtain and a cloud, in a box.

Glory…in a box? There’s the paradox.

That glory, for all her splendour and goodness,

should shroud in obscurity and mystery.

Prayer:

It’s like you wanted this covenant under lock and key so one day we’d all grasp the greater wonder! Not just the wonder of your infinite glory and justice and holy love, God, but the wonder of our costly freedom when it would burst out of the box, the tent, the curtain, the cloud. We wonder at your holiness inhabiting us! Help us by your Spirit to treasure you and to live out our salvation in cherishing others.

*the Jewish tabernacle/temple