The Blueprint for a Living Temple
I’m sitting at my kitchen table, reading 1 Kings. It’s the first time in days that I’ve fully surrendered into my Bible. Admittedly—ashamedly—I’ve been putting it off.
Most mornings, I wake up with Scripture in hand and a warm cup of coffee, either on the balcony or wrapped in my thousand-dollar bed sheets. At night, I tuck myself in with Yeshua Instrumental playing softly on repeat and the let the Word of God rock me to sleep.
By midday, I’m usually immersed in some other expression of His voice: beautiful books, prayers on social media, and of course, communion with God Himself… at least, as best as possible.
Since shifting my writing toward beauty, style, and the skincare routine of the Proverbs 31 woman—I’ve found myself searching for ways to write God into every line. Because, if I’m honest, my life is completely centered around Christ… yet only a fraction of it ever seems to make it into words.
Perhaps it’s resistance. Perhaps it’s the weight of “religion.” But I’m starting to see that God doesn’t press His way into our lady-lives with pressure, He builds His home in us through ease and beauty.
Lately, He keeps asking me to soften into Him and notice how He reveals Himself in all things… notably, the beautiful ones.
And maybe that’s why 1 Kings has been sitting on my heart this week and taking me so long to read—because it feels like He’s been answering me in the blueprints of His own temple and I’ve been resisting the sheer ease of it. While I’ve been wrestling with how writing about beauty fits into the category of devotion, God’s been showing me how He singles out every detail when something is built to hold His presence.
Page after page, I catch myself slowing down over measurements, carvings, and gold. And then, it hit me… in such a gentle way: the God who documented every cubit and golden door 1 Kings is the same God who authors my life with that same attention to detail.
This made everything I’ve been writing about suddenly feel more relevant, even, might I say, holy. If God took the time to describe every palm tree etched into bronze, every gallon of water in His fountain, and every pomegranate wreathed in His temple, then maybe my love for beauty can serve the same purpose as Solomon’s temple… to invite Him in.
On Beauty and the Temple
1 Kings is filled with entire chapters devoted to the design of the temple—the height, the width, the materials, and every ornate detail of decoration. “Carvings of cherubim, lions, and palm trees decorated the panels and corner supports wherever there was room, and there were wreaths all around.” 1 Kings 7:36 NLT It’s clear, when you really look at it, that God took His time to paint the picture of His temple.
“Solomon also made all the furnishings of the Temple of the Lord:
the gold altar;
the gold table for the Bread of the Presence;
the lampstands of solid gold, five on the south and five on the north, in front of the Most Holy Place;
the flower decorations, lamps, and tongs—all of gold;
the small bowls, lamp snuffers, bowls, ladles, and incense burners—all of solid gold;
the doors for the entrances to the Most Holy Place and the main room of the Temple, with their fronts overlaid with gold.
So King Solomon finished all his work on the Temple of the Lord. Then he brought all the gifts his father, David, had dedicated—the silver, the gold, and the various articles—and he stored them in the treasuries of the Lord’s Temple.” 1 Kings 7:48-51 NLT
When we reach 1 Kings 8, Solomon prays for the Lord’s blessing over the people, that they would always turn to the temple for forgiveness and repentance. A whole week was dedicated to the altar of the Temple of the LORD. So many sacrifices and offerings were brought that the bronze altar itself could not hold them all—thus the courtyard became an extension of the holy space.
“That same day the king consecrated the central area of the courtyard in front of the Lord’s Temple. He offered burnt offerings, grain offerings, and the fat of peace offerings there, because the bronze altar in the Lord’s presence was too small to hold all the burnt offerings, grain offerings, and the fat of the peace offerings.” 1 Kings 8:64 NLT
To me, this is one of the clearest examples of how beauty can be used to worship God—not for its own selfish sake, but as a vessel to host His holy presence.
The temple took seven years to build, with no expense spared or detail overlooked. Every doorway, pillar, and carving was accounted for in devotion rather than cost. “Solomon did not weigh all these things because there were so many; the weight of the bronze could not be measured.” 1 Kings 7:47 NLT Every pomegranate wreath and carved cherub was a detail in a much larger act of reverence: to create a dwelling place for the Lord. A space for God to land and live.
And somewhere between the verses, the desire rose in me… to make my life that kind of temple. To see to it that worship, beauty, and devotion will invite Him to stay with me. Because, as I’ve come to learn, a temple isn’t only built with stone and gold; it’s built in the small moments we choose to consecrate—the space in our lives we set apart for Him and the details of our existence we offer as worship.
If my life is to become a temple, then my home must be its first room. That means tending to it with Him in mind—keeping it clean, adorning it with lovely decor, and anointing everything from the structural pillars to the accent pillows.
Even with food, the principle applies. To treat each plate as a temple as much as the body that receives it. To cook with intention, mix the ingredients as if they were ancient spices, breathe the aromas like I’m breathing in God, and eat with joy and gratitude, knowing provision itself is holy.
This is how ordinary days become the walls of a living temple.
As most of you know, I love fashion, style, and beauty—not for the vanity the world chases, and never at the expense of communion with The Beautiful One—but because in every thread and every detail, I witness His majesty reflected.
If we dress ourselves as women of God, tending to our bodies as His temples… if we groom ourselves as Esther did, six months in myrrh and six months in perfumes… imagine the altar our lives could become if we consecrated beauty to Him.
In that light, even a morning of Scripture becomes an altar: lemon-honey tea steaming into the breeze, a Bible catching the perfect ray of light on your lap.
Maybe then we would finally see that the beauty of the world is not for us to be consumed by, but to stir us to wonder how much more beautiful its Creator must be.
In letting Him fill our lives with beauty and receive it as the raw material for His own temple within us, we begin to live as Solomon once built.
How much more whole, radiant, and alive would we be if every corner of our lives became decoration on the walls of the Lord’s living temple?
To let beauty be our devotion, and God our only object of worship.
So, with that, I leave you…
With beauty to live by, words to think by, and a God to wholeheartedly let in…
What are you called to consecrate?
Is it your home? Your body? The small, ordinary moments of your day?
Comment below—I’d love to hear what part of your life you’re ready to set apart as a living temple.
Xx,
Sarah Elle
