Ezra 6:7-8, 12, 14-20 / Luke 8:19-21
Everybody needs to have a place to go back to, a place where we can feel secure and comfortable, a place where we are at peace and at rest in familiar surroundings.
Whatever we may want to call this place to be, whether it is our home, or our shelter, or our refuge, it is a physical place.
Without this physical place, we may feel rather lost as we wander from place to place but nowhere to call our own.
So the people greatly rejoiced when the Temple was completed. It was a place where the people can worship and pray, a place where they find their identity as the people of God.
It was the house of God, and it was there that the people can experience the presence of God.
So it was not just a building that was completed. It was a place where the people could see that God was with them and where they could come and be with God.
It was also a place where the promises of God to His people were renewed as they listened to the scriptures.
But as they listen to the Word of God in the scriptures, they must also put the Word into practice.
When we listen to the Word of God and put it into practice, then we will have security and peace as our hearts rest on the Word of God and on God's promises.