The opening piece is from “Union with Christ” – The New Finnish Interpretation of Luther.
...according to the Reformer’s description, faith is like the cloud in the most holy place of the Temple of the Old Covenant in which God wanted to dwell (cf. 1 Kings 8:12: “Then Solomon said, ‘The Lord has said that he would dwell in thick darkness’”). It is in the darkness of faith that Christ sits on his throne in all his reality and reigns, just as God did in the darkness and cloud in the most holy place of the Temple.
We trust that Christ is with us. Like that “cloud” or “smoke”, we cannot see him but we trust that we are in the presence of the power for life that will sustain us and shape us. But for us, the cloud is not limited to a holy place like the Temple. Rather, it is here, right where I sit at this moment and right in the middle of your activities within this day. We do not merely have faith that Christ was somebody or did something, we have faith that Christ is present now and the faithfulness of our Lord is the faithfulness in which we carry on.
Connection: We are invited to step into the cloud of faith…it is a cloud filled with the likes of the Lord who has led generations before us and who now leads us through the pathways of this day. Sure we may not see a thing…but we are encouraged to trust that our God in Christ is with us and for us….now.
Open up our hearts, Loving Lord, so that we will not lose sight of your never-failing love that sustains us and becomes for us the food that fills us up for life as you have faithfully lived before us. Amen
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