...whom heavens cannot contain

Surely in temples made with hands, God the Most High is not dwelling;

high above earth his temple stands, all earthly temples excelling.

Yet he whom heavens cannot contain chose in his people’s hearts to reign,

built in our bodies his temple.

---Nicolai F.S. Grundtvig, 1837

When my kiddos were small, I was astounded at how awful their jokes were. Anybody else? Show of hands? I mean, I was hilarious. I just kind of assumed they would at least be able to string together a few one-liners. But, yeah. Nothing. In the years since, two things have happened. One, thank heaven, they’ve gotten a lot funnier. And two, I’ve realized that successful joke-telling is a higher order thinking skill—babies aren’t just born with the perfect punch line (not just my babies, either—nobody’s kids are any good at jokes for at least a couple of years!).

One of the simplest-sounding jokes, and the hardest to catch the mechanics of, is the knock-knock joke. One of my kids’ favorite ‘knock-knock jokes’ went something like this: “Knock knock.” “Who’s there?” “Hahahaha, got you! It’s nobody!” See? It was hard to be me for a while there.

Just like in my kids’ non-joke, the ‘temple made with hands’ of this week’s hymn text would have its knock go unanswered. As majestic, as monumental, as awe-inspiring as some of these temples are, God has not chosen to take any of them for a dwelling-place. So expansive the heavens cannot contain God, the Creator of the cosmos has chosen instead the hearts of God’s people for a place of abiding.

So, truly, God is in the world, in the hearts of the beloved. God is in our busy-ness and in our leisure, in our serving and in our growing. And, when two or three are met together, in temples made of hands, God is in the temple, in the midst of the people as they worship.

Knock knock…

...with our hands

Now thank we all our God with heart and hands and voices,

who wondrous things hath done, in whom His world rejoices;

who, from our mother’s arms, hath blessed us on our way

with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.

---Marin Rinkhart, 1636

I wish that I had written the first line of this hymn (well, I might have tweaked the grammar a little, but otherwise…). We are used to, even weary of, talking about giving thanks. We have a holiday reserved for it (well, named for it…the holiday is reserved more and more for eating and Christmas shopping). We debate whether we teach our children well enough to say thank you as they grow up, and whether we continue that courtesy as adults. We spend our table graces and parts of our corporate and private prayers in thanksgiving for our blessings. This is not a novel thought.

The genius part? Thanking God with our hands. Now I get the thanking with our voices, and with our hearts, but with our hands? I like this way of thinking about thanking. What form would thanking with your hands take? Would you ‘pay it forward’? Would you practice random acts of kindness? Would you give more than you thought you could? Would you find yourself going above and beyond, if you thanked with you heart, your hands, your voice?