Quotations from Scripture and Other Writings Related to Dwelling Place
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Biblical Quotes
God dwelling in a people:
If you follow my statutes and keep my commandments and observe them faithfully, … I will place my dwelling in your midst, and I shall not abhor you. And I will walk among you, and will be your God, and you shall be my people.
My dwelling place shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Then the nations shall know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary is among them forevermore.
Among all these I [Wisdom] sought a resting place;
in whose territory should I abide?
Then the Creator of all things gave me a command,
and my Creator chose the place for my tent.
He said, “Make your dwelling in Jacob,
and in Israel receive your inheritance.” …
Thus in the beloved city he gave me a resting place,
and in Jerusalem was my domain.
I took root in an honored people,
in the portion of the Lord, his heritage.
And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
In him [Christ Jesus] the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
God dwelling in Jerusalem/the Temple:
Then you shall bring everything that I command you to the place that the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his name: your burnt offerings and your sacrifices, your tithes and your donations, and all your choice votive gifts that you vow to the Lord.
In Judah God is known,
his name is great in Israel.
His abode has been established in Salem,
his dwelling place in Zion.
How lovely is your dwelling place,
O Lord of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints
for the courts of the Lord;
For the Lord has chosen Zion;
he has desired it for his habitation:
“This is my resting place forever;
here I will reside, for I have desired it.”
The Lord, the God of their ancestors, sent persistently to them by his messengers, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place;
They set your sanctuary on fire; they desecrated the dwelling place of your name, bringing it to the ground.
Have pity on the city of your sanctuary,
Jerusalem, the place of your dwelling.
Fill Zion with your majesty,
and your temple with your glory.
Our ancestors had the tent of testimony in the wilderness, as God directed when he spoke to Moses, ordering him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. Our ancestors in turn brought it in with Joshua when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before our ancestors. And it was there until the time of David, who found favor with God and asked that he might find a dwelling place for the house of Jacob. But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made with human hands; as the prophet says,
“Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool.
What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?
Did not my hand make all these things?”
God dwelling in heaven:
[Solomon, at dedication of the Temple] But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, much less this house that I have built! Regard your servant’s prayer and his plea, O Lord my God, heeding the cry and the prayer that your servant prays to you today; that your eyes may be open night and day toward this house, the place of which you said, ‘My name shall be there,’ that you may heed the prayer that your servant prays toward this place. Hear the plea of your servant and of your people Israel when they pray toward this place; O hear in heaven your dwelling place; heed and forgive.
For he who has his dwelling in heaven watches over that place [Jerusalem] himself and brings it aid, and he strikes and destroys those who come to do it injury.
God as one’s dwelling place:
Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations.
Because you have made the Lord your refuge,
the Most High your dwelling place,
no evil shall befall you,
no scourge come near your tent.
The people dwelling in a land or allotment:
[Settlements of the Levites] These are their dwelling places according to their settlements within their borders:…
The effect of righteousness will be peace,
and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.
My people will abide in a peaceful habitation,
in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.
Dwelling place after death:
[Bildad to Job] “Surely the light of the wicked is put out,
and the flame of their fire does not shine….
Surely such are the dwellings of the ungodly,
such is the place of those who do not know God.”
When we look at the wise, they die;
fool and dolt perish together
and leave their wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes forever,
their dwelling places to all generations,
though they named lands their own.
Mortals cannot abide in their pomp;
they are like the animals that perish.
Such is the fate of the foolhardy,
the end of those who are pleased with their lot.
Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol;
Death shall be their shepherd;
straight to the grave they descend,
and their form shall waste away;
Sheol shall be their home.
But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol,
for he will receive me.
In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you?
Secular Quotes
Compiled from the following websites: Brainy Quote, Good Reads, AZQuotes
God dwelling among humans:
… where Solomon says that ‘Wisdom has built herself a house’ (Prov. 9:1), he refers darkly in these words to the preparation of the flesh of the Lord: for the true Wisdom did not dwell in another’s building, but built for Itself that dwelling-place from the body of the Virgin.
Not facts, not scientific knowledge, but eternal Truth delivers men, and that eternal Truth became flesh to dwell among us. “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”
Where mercy, love, and pity dwell, there God is dwelling too.
Now is the dwelling place of God himself.
God dwelling in humans:
O Holy Spirit, descend plentifully into my heart. Enlighten the dark corners of this neglected dwelling and scatter there Thy cheerful beams.
It is consoling that he who must judge us dwell in us to save us always from all of our miseries, and to pardon us.
Greatly ought we to rejoice that God dwells in our soul; and more greatly ought we to rejoice that our soul dwells in God. Our soul is created to be God’s dwelling place, and the dwelling of our souls is God, who is uncreated.
He who through virtue and spiritual knowledge has brought his body into harmony with his soul has become a harp, a flute and a temple of God. He has become a harp by preserving the harmony of the virtues; a flute by receiving the inspiration of the Spirit through divine contemplation; and a temple by becoming a dwelling place of the Logos through the purity of his intellect.
Heaven and earth, all the emperors, kings, and princes of the world, could not raise a fit dwelling-place for God; yet, in a weak human soul, that keeps His Word, He willingly resides.
A Christian is the dwelling place of the living God. He created me, he chose me, He came to dwell in me, because he wanted me. Now that you have known how much God is in love with you it is but natural that you spend the rest of your life radiating that love.
Once you are in communion with God, you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear other people in whom God has also found a dwelling place.
You have no questions to ask of any body, no new way that you need inquire after; no oracle that you need to consult; for whilst you shut yourself up in patience, meekness, humility, and resignation to God, you are in the very arms of Christ, your heart is His dwelling-place, and He lives and works in you.
The Christian does not go to the temple to worship. The Christian takes the temple with him or her. Jesus lifts us beyond the building and pays the human body the highest compliment by making it His dwelling place, the place where He meets with us. Even today He would overturn the tables of those who make it a marketplace for their own lust, greed and wealth.
But remember, for all your adult life you’ll be a woman. And how you live your life as a woman, all by yourself before God, is what makes the real you. Nothing on the exterior can touch or change that precious inner sanctuary—your heart, His dwelling place—unless you let it.
The Church is the dwelling place of God in the Person of the Holy Ghost.
Where the Church thrives, people are blessed and progress is evident.
After death dwellings:
Two places are ordained for man to dwell in after this life. While he is here, he may choose, by God’s mercy, which he will; but once he is gone from here, he may not do so. For whichever he first goes to, whether he like it well or ill, there he must dwell forevermore. He shall never after change his dwelling, though he hates it ever so badly.
The man who is seriously convinced that he deserves to go to hell is not likely to go there, while the man who believes that he is worthy of heaven will certainly never enter that blessed place.
…if we know God our knowledge of… everything will be brought to perfection, and, in so far as is possible, the infinite, divine and ineffable dwelling place (cf. Jn. 14:2) will be ours to enjoy. For this is what our sainted teacher said in his famous philosophical aphorism: ‘Then we shall know as we are known’ (I Cor. 13:12), when we mingle our god-formed mind and divine reason to what is properly its own and the image returns to the archetype for which it now longs.
In order to profit from this path [of prayer] and ascend to the dwelling places we desire, the important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so, do that which best stirs you to love.
Dwelling in God:
Of all persons the Christian should be best prepared for whatever the New Year brings. He has dealt with life at its source. In Christ he has disposed of a thousand enemies that other men must face alone and unprepared. He can face his tomorrow cheerful and unafraid because yesterday he turned his feet into the ways of peace and today he lives in God. The man who has made God his dwelling place will always have a safe habitation.
Our lives are full of supposes. Suppose this should happen, or suppose that should happen; what could we do; how could we bear it? But, if we are living in the high tower of the dwelling place of God, all these supposes will drop out of our lives. We shall be quiet from the fear of evil, for no threatenings of evil can penetrate into the high tower of God.
My journey deep into coma, outside this lowly physical realm and into the loftiest dwelling place of the almighty Creator, revealed the indescribably immense chasm between our human knowledge and the awe-inspiring realm of God.
Dwellings on earth:
Man, especially in our time, has without hesitation devastated wooded plains and valleys, polluted waters, disfigured the earth’s habitat, made the air unbreathable, disturbed the hydro-geological and atmospheric systems, turned luxuriant areas into deserts and undertaken forms of unrestrained industrialization, degrading that ‘flower bed’ which is the earth, our dwelling place.
I think humans have to learn a new way of dwelling on this earth. A way of living with their companions: animals, plants and fish.
There are, forever, swamps to be drained, cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed … But the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.
Lord, this humble house we’d keep Sweet with play and calm with sleep. Help us so that we may give Beauty to the lives we live. Let Thy love and let Thy grace Shine upon our dwelling place.
And I do further recommend to my fellow-citizens aforesaid, that on that occasion they do reverently humble themselves in the dust, and from thence offer up penitent and fervent prayers and supplications to the great Disposer of events for a return of the inestimable blessings of peace, union, and harmony throughout the land which it has pleased him to assign as a dwelling-place for ourselves and for our posterity throughout all generations.
The public realm in America has two roles: it is the dwelling place of our civilization and our civic life, and it is the physical manifestation of the common good. When you degrade the public realm, you will automatically degrade the quality of your civic life and the character of all the enactments of your public life and communal life that take place there.
We are all sentenced to capital punishment for the crime of living, and though the condemned cell of our earthly existence is but a narrow and bare dwelling-place, we have adjusted ourselves to it, and made it tolerably comfortable for the little while we are to be confined in it.
Culture makes the whole world our dwelling place; our palace in which we take our ease and find ourselves at one with all things.
Miscellaneous:
The heart is the dwelling place where I am, where I live; according to the Semitic or Biblical expression, the heart is the place “to which I withdraw.” The heart is our hidden centre, beyond the grasp of our reason and of others; only the Spirit of God can fathom the human heart and know it fully. The heart is the place of decision, deeper than our psychic drives. It is the place of truth, where we choose life or death. It is the place of encounter, because as an image of God we live in relation: it is the place of covenant.
Peace is the first thing the angels sang. Peace is the mark of the children of God. Peace is the nurse of love. Peace is the mother of unity. Peace is the rest of the blessed souls. Peace is the dwelling place of eternity.
Nationalism—in other words, the dividing of the church into bodies—consisting of such and such a nation, is a novelty, not above three centuries old, although many dear children of God are found dwelling in it.
A nation is only great when its citizens fall in love with the art of dwelling in peace and unity.
The dwelling places of Europe have an air of inheritance, or cumulative possession—a hive occupied by generations of bees.
Darkness is the fit hour for beasts of prey, and ignorance the natural dwelling place of cruelty.
Solitude is the natural dwelling place of truth…It is there you will wrestle. It is there you will be tested by fire and by darkness.
Other Religions:
If you are proud of your descent from virtuous ancestors, how empty their virtue will leave your hands if you yourself are not virtuous. How little pride your ancestors will have in you in this world and the next if you do no good! All men are children of Adam whom Allah created by His own Hands, giving him paradise for a dwelling place and letting His angels bow down before him. But how little is the advantage from this since all the vices dwell in mankind and all the wicked impious people are among their number.
An adept of Kriya Yoga conquers death by taking the soul beyond identification with the physical body, consciously and at will; and then returning to the consciousness of the mortal form again. By this process, he experiences the body as merely the material dwelling place of the soul. He can remain therein as long as he wants; and after that body has fulfilled its usefulness, he can quit it at will without suffering physical pain or mental pain due to attachment, and enter his omnipresent home in God.
He whose inflowing thoughts are dried up, who is unattached to food, whose dwelling place is an empty and imageless release—the way of such a person is hard to follow, like the path of birds through the sky.
Man is spiritual being—a soul, in other words—and that this soul takes on different bodies from life to life on earth in order at last to arrive at such perfect knowledge, through repeated experience, as to enable one to assume a body fit to be the dwelling-place of a Mahatma or perfected soul. Then, they say, that particular soul becomes a spiritual helper to mankind.
