“Pick up the fire and leave the ashes.” This quote was part of a sermon I heard in preparing for the new year. The point was if our focus is looking back, we miss the good that is coming. We are to pick up the things that are useful and good and leave the burned out remains of what isn’t.

When my daughter was very young, I went through really rough season and I had a dream I was living in the home I had grown up in. I had hired a giant moving truck to come in and take away the garage. Immediately afterward my cousin comes to visit and sees me standing in this enormous amount of space which was left behind where the garage had been. She clearly doesn’t understand what I have done, while I am excited and kind of in awe at the vast expanse in front of me. She says, “why did you have it moved, it was a good garage.” Immediately there is a flood of doubt. I really have no idea why I had moved it. I start questioning myself and thinking out loud how I probably was going to want to park inside during bad weather, it was a good garage, and my dad, after all, had built it with his own hands. That was the end of the dream, and that last statement hung loudly in the air even after waking up.

During this same time, I am also reading the history of King Solomon. In it, he is explaining to an ally how his father, David, had it in his heart to build the temple in Jerusalem but it was not possible during his reign because he was at war on all sides. God tells him it will be his son who rebuilds and then during Solomon’s reign, there was peace so that he is able to do this.

The temple becomes a solid, stable place for the arc of the covenant to reside, and for the people to come and worship God. There is an incredible celebration over its completion and the moving in of the arc. Solomon praises God saying, “You have kept your promise to your servant David, my father. You made that promise with your own mouth, and with your own hands you have fulfilled it today.” I Kings 8:15niv These words made my heart jump because it echoed so closely the words in my dream. With your own hands… I felt like He was reaching up through the pages and saying look, I build things too, there is so much more I have for you, you are going to have to clear space for what I’m teaching you.

Then there was this, Solomon goes on to say, “Can it be that God will actually move into our neighborhood? Why, the cosmos itself isn’t large enough to give you breathing room, let alone this Temple I’ve built.” I Kings 8:27-32msg

How often do we look at our family of origin, work, friends, money, physical appearance and more to value ourselves, find our stability and worth? All the while God is trying to move into your neighborhood with something so much better, the cosmos isn’t enough to contain it. Let that sink in a minute. We have in our minds a list of what we think we need to stand stable. My dad was a great provider, and what he built was good. I needed more and I felt guilty for wanting more, it felt disrespectful. It felt like saying what I had been given by my family was not enough. When the truth is they needed more too. We may both value and respect all of what we have and were given and dream of even more. We need to align ourselves with those who challenge us to a higher level of thinking and achieving our next level whatever this may be. If God is as big as the cosmos, I want more!

“Pick up the fire and leave the ashes.”