Tag Archives: Humanity

Ardell's Art House, Theology Thoughts

Portable Resurrected Temples: A Sanctuary Vibrant With Life

IMG_1221A Temple

A place where the spiritual world meets the physical world

The Temple

A metamorphosis story of a temple of dirt to a war tent to an immovable golden building to blood covered cross to living stones to nothing at all.

A Portable Temple

Living stones handcrafted and shaped by the Creator. Stones joined together not by mortar but by the Spirit who hovered over the deep and indwells those who pledge themselves to the King of Kings.

Portable Temples

Movable temples designed to leave the safety of the garden on a mission to proclaim the kingship of the Creator and to defeat the remnant of evil that plagues the land.

A Resurrected Temple

IMG_1220 Though once dead, the Creator lives yet again. Though once drained of life with blood oozing across the grains of wood and falling into the dust below, the Source of Life rose from the rocky shelf having won the war with death.

Resurrected Temples

Look to your left. Look to your right. Look behind you. Look in front of you. Look around at all the people in the land. Look at the temple of the Lord.

Though we may be scratched and dented like a steel mirror, the Spirit of the Him-Who-Breathed-Life-Into-Dust will polish our lives, removing the scratches and dents till we reflect the light of the Crucified Creator to all of creation.

Portable Resurrected Temples

“Welcome to the living Stone, the source of life. The workmen took one look and threw it out; God set it in the place of honor. Present yourselves as building stones for the construction of a sanctuary vibrant with life, in which you’ll serve as holy priests offering Christ-approved lives up to God.” –St. Peter the Fisherman

 

[box]This is part eight of an eight part evolving art piece currently on display at the Vineyard Boise art gallery.[/box]

Ardell's Art House, Theology Thoughts

An Obsolete Temple

IMG_1218 The temple was gone

No more sacrifices. No more priests.

No more…

In its place stood a great city that was not a city.

Rather than being a city of streets, stop lights, building, and cars. This was a city of living bodies placed together in perfect completion.

It was a city adorned as a bride.

The long awaited Wedding day had arrived and the city was prepared to see her husband face-to-face for the first time. The veil was being lifted and the fog of the ages was burned away by the light that flowed from his face.

The physical and spiritual worlds that were ripped asunder all those years ago were kitted back together. All of creation was restored with evil, sin, injustice and death destroyed. New life rippled through the air, radiating out over the land and sea – crossing miles in a blink of an eye before traversing the vastness of space in a heartbeat.

Heaven itself was no more.

Earth and heaven had become one with the Creator King dwelling among his people on the land. It was a day that was greater than the original day when humanity was formed out of the dust. For on that day, the King had simply visited the land. Now the King lived on the land.

IMG_1219This change in residency rendered the temple obsolete.

Why would humanity need a temple to remind them of the King when the King was standing in front of them?

Why would we need a temple to worship at when we could climb into the lap of the King?

Why would we need a temple to run too when in trouble when death and evil have been purged from creation?

Why indeed?

“There was no sign of a Temple, for the Lord God—the Sovereign-Strong—and the Lamb are the Temple. The City doesn’t need sun or moon for light. God’s Glory is its light, the Lamb its lamp!” –St. John the Revelator

 

[box]This is part seven of an eight part evolving art piece currently on display at the Vineyard Boise art gallery.[/box]

Ardell's Art House, Theology Thoughts

The Chief Cornerstone

IMG_1182It was quiet.

The sun had stopped shining.

Creation held its breath for everything had changed. Only it was as if nothing had changed. New and yet the same. Different but not.

The mysterious steps of the dance had reached their climax with the Creator King suspended between heaven and earth. The Temple of God had been beaten, stabbed, and nailed to a tree with his blood left to pool on the ground.

Then a whisper was heard.

A whisper that grew in power as the silence of the ages was broken by a death cry that cut through the barrier between the Creator and creation, the physical and spiritual.

The curtain that hung in the great temple near the skull hill had been ripped into two. The sword that blocked the path of paths had shifted; leaving a needle hole through which humanity could walk.

The echoes of that day run wild both backwards in history as well as forwards into the future. And those who stop to listen to these echoes die.

And it is a good death.

In dying we allow the echoes of that day to raise us up again as living stones of the Temple. Not a brick and mortar temple like Solomon’s temple; rather a temple build of people in which the Spirit of the Creator King dwells.

IMG_1181We – humanity – had been restored in part to the original design in which we were made. With Jesus the Messiah as our chief cornerstone, this temple was one that spread out forwards and backwards through time, encompassing all tribes, nations, tongues, genders, races and the like.

It was a metamorphosis to end all metamorphoses.

The end of the world had come and the Kingdom of God had invaded human history!

Nothing would ever be the same again!

It was the beginning of the restoration, the start of the end in which the mission of the Creator would be completed.

 

[box]This is part six of an eight part evolving art piece currently on display at the Vineyard Boise art gallery.[/box]

Ardell's Art House, Theology Thoughts

Solomon’s Temple: The House God Didn’t Want

2026-solomon-2x620Solomon’s Temple.

One of the wonders of the ancient world. Grand in every way. Covered in gold and fine stone, it was a temple worthy of any god in the heavens above or the earth below. And it belonged to the Creator King who was the ultimate King of Kings over all of creation.

Only he didn’t want it.

His heart – nay, his passion – was to reside among his people. To walk and to talk with each one as they plowed the fields, cared for the sheep, washed the dishes and took out the trash. He was – and is- an inmate King who loves his people more than they could ever know.

And his people…well, while they loved him greatly, they were disappointed, and perhaps even a bit embarrassed, at their god’s lack of a proper etiquette. Everyone knew that gods were supposed to reside in massive temples whose shadows covered the land.

So they build him such a temple.

And being a loving Father, the Creator King praised the works of his people like a father or mother who gushes over the crafts of a young child. For while the building was nowhere as nice as the original temple he had built, the Creator know how much it meant to us.

We, humanity, needed something physical – something massive – something awesome – something that stood out – so that we could remember who we worshiped. For we have a short memory and a tendency to forget our mission.

So we build a temple.

A place where we could go when we are sad…a place where we can go when we are happy…a place where we could be reminded of what was important.

And God blessed it.

He used our perhaps-not-so-good desires to create something beautiful. A symbol of something that was and is and would one day be.

Solomon’s temple: a place that called into memory the original temple while looking forward to the ultimate temple in addition to standing strong to remind the people of Him-Who-Should-Always-Be-Worship.

 

[box]This is part five of an eight part evolving art piece currently on display at the Vineyard Boise art gallery.[/box]

Ardell's Art House, Theology Thoughts

Humanity: The Original Portable Temple

IMG_1141Our world is comprised of the visible and the invisible; of things that we see and things that we don’t.

Sadly it is common for us to try to separate these realms by focusing only on one piece at a time. We have our physical lives of work, play, food, games and the like on one side. On the other, we corral our spiritual desires, releasing them on Sunday or on that odd day when we need prayer.

The opening verses of Genesis paints a different story of our world.

Rather than having two separate worlds (physical and spiritual) existing next to each other, we have one world comprised of both elements. The physical and spiritual are intertwined and woven together to the point that one does not exist without the other.

And the ruler of this intertwined world is none other than the Creator King who brought order out of chaos and defeated the spiritual forces who sought to rule over creation.

In the aftermath of the creation battle, the Creator King reached down into the newly formed mud and formed a shape. Then as the wind held its breath and the earth trembled in delight, the Creator bend over and breathed life into this shape.

Humanity was born.

Female and male. Physical images of the invisible Creator created as a constant reminder to all of creation – physical and spiritual – of who was, and is, and will one day be the ultimate King of Kings.

The original temple was created that day.

A physical building made of flesh and blood in which the spirit of God would dwell. It was to be a place dedicated to the worship of the Creator. A portable temple commissioned by the Creator to go throughout the earth, proclaiming the kingship of God and defeating the remnant of evil that plagued the land.

Humanity: the original portable temple of the Creator King.

 

[box]This is part three of an eight part evolving art piece currently on display at the Vineyard Boise art gallery.[/box]