Two Rooms

In the first room were a lampstand, a table and sacred loaves of bread. This room was called the Holy Place.
Then there was a curtain, and behind the curtain was a second room called the Most Holy Place. In that room were a good incense altar and a wooden chest called ‘the Ark of the Covenant’.
Only the High Priest ever entered the Most Holy Place and only once a year.
From Hebrews 9:2,3,7

Two rooms.
One holy where anyone can enter. The other even more holy where only one can enter and only once a year.
The first room has the feeling of being sacred, as though one stumbles into a sunset, something worthy of reverence, moments more worthy than time.
But the other though more holy is like a sudden hole in the floor. It is a debasement, a being seized by darkness, an engulfment of fear. Death opens her mouth and there is nothing more to say. The ritual, the sanctimony, the mitre and the robes, the sermon and the books, the institution, the temple fellowship, the congregation, the liturgy, those things you do in the Holy Room have no place here. You are in the Most Holy Place, where only God speaks and there’s no telling what he’ll say. Everything is silent but for the echo of descent.
You come with blood in your hands, blood which is not yours but atonement nonetheless. Is it atonement enough?
You shudder and wait.
Mercy triumphs over judgment, but how that might sound in words, only God can say.
You shudder and wait.
And then the Man appears.