God’s sanctuary – T’rumah
Israel are commanded to create a mishkan, a sanctuary for God. It had to be a building where worship took place and people would encounter the presence of God in their midst.
The people needed the mishkan, but did God? The Torah says He did; it says v’asu li mikdash, “they shall make Me a sanctuary” (Ex. 25:8).
Difficult to understand when you look at the 66th chapter of Isaiah which says that God’s dwelling place is everywhere. Surely God cannot be pinned down to any one place or territory.
But it is not in the edifice that God is located but in the people who enter and use it. It is in the people themselves that the Divine spirit rests.
Each person is equal in the sight of God. Each has the capacity to sense that they matter to the Almighty. Each has eyes to see the majesty of the world, ears to hear the Divine Word of justice, peace and truth, a mouth to acclaim the greatness of the Creator.
Outside the sanctuary people tend to get up to mischief; inside the edifice they are changed forever and become, in the words of Psalm 8, “little lower than angels”.
