Hebrews 9

When I sat down to read this chapter tonight, I took a deep breath.  Being alone in a quiet room is rather unusual when you’re a mother of four.   As I began to read Hebrews chapter 9 I was immediately engrossed in the description of the tabernacle or “wordly sanctuary” as the author calls it.  I pictured the candlestick and the shew-bread.  I imagined the sounds of a multitude muffled by the thick tapestries.  The dim coolness of the tent contrasting with the blinding heat of the desert.  The moment of silence as the priest, perhaps trembling, enters the Holy of Holies and a million people hold their breath.  Will He accept their sacrifice?  Will He cover their sins again?  I was taken by the silent holiness of that moment.  It reminded me of the song Silent Night, maybe because we decorated our Christmas tree tonight.  I often smile when I sing that song, because my guess is that night was anything but silent.  It was in a barn, in a town jam-packed with strangers.  Also I’ve been present at a few childbirths, they were not silent.  It was probably a dirty, smelly, loud, unspeakably beautiful night.  But as I continued on in the chapter I read about another night.  The night that the tabernacle mirrored.  The night that made the sacred silence of the tabernacle seem like a pantomime.  I saw the Son of God approaching the throne of the Father.  A place so holy that the author will not even speak of it’s earthly image (vs 5).  I heard all of heaven stand in breathlessness as the Son offered Himself as the once and only sacrifice for all of mankind.  The Son who was reunited after being separated by our sin, from his beloved Father.  The Son who had finished the task that had caused him to sweat drops of blood anticipating it.  In my mind I compared this moment, perhaps the most sacred of all time, with His raucous birth, His angry mob-led death.  I think of the perfect peace, oneness, unity  and love that must have accompanied that reunion.  Then I think that that peace is mine.  That perfect unity was bought for me.  Once and for all the sacrifice was made and  “Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many; and unto them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin unto salvation.”