In today's first reading, 1 Kings 8: 22-23, 27-30, Solomon says: "Lord, God of Israel, there is no God like you in heaven above or on earth below; you keep your covenant of mercy with your servants who are faithful to you with their whole heart. Can it indeed be that God dwells on earth? If the heavens and the highest heavens cannot contain you, how much less this temple which I have built!....May your eyes watch night and day over this temple, the place where you have decreed you shall be honored...
We have a God who cares for each one of us personally, a God full of mercy for us, so merciful that He took on human nature with all of its weaknesses, except sin. He took on death for us and destroyed its power over us. Because Jesus destroyed death, it is not the end of our lives but the door through which we pass on the way to our eternal inheritance, earned for us by Jesus reconciling us to the Father through His obedience to the Father even unto death. It is only because of God's mercy that we, with Jesus, can learn to be obedient to God even unto our earthly deaths and the daily dyings asked of us in doing God's will each day: sacrificing our time and energy for the sake of another. And just as God guarded the temple built by Solomon and "decreed [God] shall be honored" there, so, too, does God guard us, who are temples of the Holy Spirit, the Father, and the Son of God, and wants to be honored in the temple that we are.
Truly, there is no God like our God!
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