And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.
Right after freeing an entire nation, God's next move is oddly domestic: build me a place to live among you. Not a throne room to rule from a distance. A sanctuary to dwell in their midst, in the middle of the mess and noise of an actual camp.
That's not the picture a lot of people carry around of religion — a distant judge keeping score from somewhere far away. This verse describes something closer to a neighbor moving in. The instructions that follow about materials and measurements can look tedious, but the whole point of the project was proximity. God wanted to be near, not remote.
If your image of God has mostly been "far off and hard to reach," this is worth sitting with. The ask was never for people to climb up to God. It was for making room, down here, for God to come close. That's a very different starting point than most of us assume.
What would change if you assumed God wanted to be near you, rather than assuming you had to close the distance yourself?
A short video on this is coming soon — for now, read on.