Are you a third-culture kid? I had never heard this expression until this summer. A counselor who works with missionary kids explained that these kids don’t feel like they are part of their country of origin, but also don’t feel like they are fully assimilated into the country where their parents serve. They become a third culture all their own. Before I could respond, she said, “You are a third culture kid. You didn’t quite fit the U. S. when you came home, but you definitely were not a German. You were an American kid who grew up mostly in Germany.” In the right situation, any one of us might feel like an outsider.
Paul wrote to Gentile Christians in the great city of Ephesus. In Christ, they tapped into a beautiful Hebrew heritage which had never been part of their lives – so they felt like outsiders. On the other hand, as believers, they were no longer comfortable with their former pagan way of life. Who were they really? Paul says, “You are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens . . .” He uses the analogy of the Temple to show them that God lives in them just as he lived in the Temple of old.
It is good to remember the Tabernacle and the Temple in the Old Testament. But the real marvel is not the architecture and the physical dimensions. God, whom the skies cannot contain, chose to live in a building. Even more amazing, God chooses to live in his people as we serve him together. Christ is the cornerstone with whom we all align our lives. He has brought us into the house as indispensable living stones connected to himself. God is not waiting for a new building to be built so that he will have a habitation. He already lives, really lives in us. How then shall we live?
