Putting a Name on It: Why the Temple Still Speaks to Us

In 2 Chronicles 6, Solomon speaks at the dedication of the temple in Jerusalem, and one phrase keeps repeating: the temple is a place "for Your Name." Not a place for God to live, exactly, but a place where something about the divine could be present or remembered or acknowledged. That distinction is subtle but interesting. Even Solomon admits that the heavens can't contain God, so certainly this building can't either. Still, there's something about the temple being a defined location—a chosen site—that gives it meaning.

Anchoring the Intangible

This makes me think about the role of physical space in spiritual practice. Why does it matter that something intangible be associated with a tangible location? Is it for humans, not the divine? Probably. Maybe it's easier to connect with something unseen when it's attached to something we can see, like a building or a stone or a ritual that happens in a specific place. That seems to be what's happening here. The temple becomes a focal point, a kind of anchor for everything that Israel is going through: political identity, collective memory, the weight of history.

When Solomon prays, he keeps referencing different situations: drought, famine, war, sin, exile. In each scenario, he asks that if the people turn back and face the temple, God will hear them. The building becomes more than a structure. It holds the possibility of being heard, of being forgiven, of being remembered. But it's also symbolic. The temple doesn't fix the drought or stop the war. It doesn't erase the exile. But it offers something else—maybe a sense of orientation. A place to turn toward.

Geography with a Pulse

Psalm 136, read alongside this, emphasizes continuity and memory through repetition. "His love endures forever" becomes a kind of refrain that ties past actions to present understanding. The stories it tells—about creation, about escape from Egypt, about survival—are deeply place-based. Red Sea. Wilderness. Promised land. There, too, physical geography seems to carry spiritual weight.

Sacred Spaces, Secular Lives

Today, when a lot of people describe themselves as spiritual but not religious, or step away from institutions altogether, the idea of a sacred place might feel outdated. But even outside formal religion, places still matter. People return to childhood homes, pilgrimage to historic sites, visit gravesites, hike the same trails every year. Meaning often gets embedded in places, and we return to those places when we need to remember something, or re-center ourselves, or mark time.

So maybe the temple isn't just a religious building from the past. Maybe it's also a reminder that humans have always needed physical anchors for intangible things. And maybe that's not about limiting the divine to a location, but about giving ourselves a place to face when the rest of life is shifting.