Yet sometimes in dreams I take in your whole expanse...

AM Psalm 30, 32 • PM Psalm 42, 43
Haggai 2:1-9 • Rev. 3:1-6 • Matt. 24:1-14

Today I noticed themes of reconstruction and demolition of the Temple of Jerusalem. In Haggai, when the people of God had been exiled and had returned to the ruins of their temple, God promised to shake the heavens, earth, dry land, and nations for all the splendor of the world with which the new temple would be built.

In Matthew, however, the second temple has already been built. The anxiety that came with not having a temple to properly sacrifice within had been replaced by complacency of the scribes and pharisees. Jesus prophesied that the temple would be destroyed yet again and it made a lot of people nervous.

What are we to make of this cycle? Is everything in the world meant to be constructed, razed, and then rebuilt? How can we reach perfection if we must keep starting from scratch?

As I pondered these questions, I came across a poem written between 1899 and 1903 in Rainer Maria Rilke's Book of Hours translated from German by Barrrows and Macy. It reads:

Our hands shake as we try to construct you,
block on block.
But you, cathedral we dimly perceive—
who can bring you to completion?

What's Rome? It crumbled.
What is the world? We are destroying it
before your towers can taper into spires,
before we can assemble your face
from the piles of mosaic.

Yet sometimes in dreams
I take in your whole expanse,
from its deepest beginnings
up to the rooftop's glittering ridge.

And then I see: it is my mind
that will fashion
and set the last pieces in place.

Written by Haley Hixson

If you are interested in receiving the Saint Paul's Young Adults newsletter, contact me! We get together occasionally for book clubs, after church fellowship, and movies!