Where Does God Live?
Even the ones we’re tempted to walk past
It was a freezing Monday morning. The kind where the church heat hasn’t fully committed to believing in resurrection yet.
Father Brian — part theologian, part Irish sage — steps up and asks a question that sounds like it belongs in a children’s book:
“Where does God live?”
If this were spiritual Jeopardy, most of us would slam the buzzer: Heaven. Final answer.
Maybe we’d add: newborn babies. Have you seen a newborn? Tiny prophets wrapped in hospital blankets. Or a sunrise. Or a sunset. Or that one song that makes you cry in the car even though you swear you’re fine.
Two years ago, that would’ve been my answer.
But Father Brian referenced an old book — Where Does God Live? — written decades ago by a rabbi and a priest. And he didn’t say it dramatically. No thunder. No organs playing with incense burning...
He just said it plainly.
God lives in the human heart.
And I swear something in me shifted.
Because if God lives in my heart, that means He’s present when I’m generous — and when I’m spiraling at 2:14 a.m. Googling symptoms I do not have.
It means I’m walking around as a temple.
Which is beautiful.
And slightly terrifying.
Because if God lives in the human heart… then the person I’m arguing with online? Temple.
The guy yelling about the halftime show like it’s a theological emergency? Temple.
The politician I can’t stand? Temple.
The neighbor who leaves their garbage cans out three days too long? Annoying temple… but temple nonetheless.
We live in a world addicted to outrage. Comment sections. Cable news panels. Group texts that should’ve been muted in 2018. The schisms are loud. The ugliness is easy.
And yet.
If God has chosen the human heart as His address, then every interaction is holy ground.
Which means the way I speak matters.
The way I post matters.
The way I forgive — or refuse to — matters.
Because maybe God doesn’t just live in heaven.
Or in babies.
Or in sunsets.
Maybe He lives in the fragile, anxious, complicated chambers of the very people we are most tempted to dismiss.
Including me.
So maybe the better question isn’t “Where does God live?”
Maybe the real question is:
How are we treating His house?
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