Your body is a temple.

I grew up in the church, I’ve been told that before. Sometimes in reference to how tight a girl should wear her clothes, where hands do and do not belong before marriage, in defense of refusing my 16 year old request for a belly ring.

Your Body is a temple.

I have heard it as a reason to by that expensive coat, skip the Sunday service and instead hit the gym. I have heard it used to shame the overweight, the inked, the sickly.

Your body is a temple.

This seems to be a part of the Bible that even my atheist friends believe, as they by the organic groceries and scold me for handing my daughters french fries. “You know Abby, your body is a temple.” Yes, I think, one of the Holy Spirit…but you don’t believe in Him, so why should you care?

But this Sunday, when Jesus cleansing the temple was preached, and the stuff in Isaiah and  the stuff in first Corinthians were suddenly holding hands. Suddenly the shame in that verse melted away.

Because my body is a temple, the dwelling of the most high God.

As a woman, a gentile woman at that, I would not have been good enough for the outer courts even. But now, my body, the same one that would have called for me to be called un-pure and unequal, it is a temple, a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit.

I would have never been allowed to set foot into the furthest of inner-courts of that temple. My body, as female, would have denied me access to the place where glory dwelled. But Christ changed all of that, and now I am the place where Glory dwells.

My body is a temple, and it isn’t a cause of shame or a reason to be guilty. It is a miracle. Proof that the Lord can redeem all things.

Alleluia