2023-04-30 A Meditation on Holy Place

“Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”” (Ex 3:5 ESV)

Special times and special places remind us that we are creatures who live in tandem with their situation. We are situated. We try worshipfully to observe rather than to bluster, the circumstances of our lives. There is nothing like looking forward to the arrival at a favorite spot once a year or certainty God’s armies spiritually patrol and better, spiritually charge onto the Sabbath scene perhaps, or perhaps to feel a pick-me-up, all-hands-on-deck urgent call each of us has to put aside our self-criticisms and enter the mix.

Put aside our not-ready-yet mindset and know this, that the hour is now and the time is nigh, for those who worship in Name and in substance, to be paraded before the world. Before the blinded and averse world. The world whose eyes are like those of deers caught in headlights, fixated on what cannot, until the gaze ends, move elsewhere, change. Eyes stuck in repetition cycles. Eyes at odd and awkward angles. Eyes frozen in time. Eyes bureaucratized and legislated and pained to be accepting only the rules and the status quo; we need people leading, real people and inspired voices.

Special times and special places give as good as it comes, the floating along and better, carried along mindset, of the follower. This day we shall celebrate. This day we shall observe God at work. This day we shall let mind go blank or spend time listening, in rest, or at work, for we believe it not beneath God’s dignity to find us in our labors. We believe it is gift and gain He has given us, with these times and seasons, with these places and travels, with all that sense of the hour or two spent in transit to grandma’s and grandpa’s, some shift, something tectonic, prayerful, quieted souls moving together.

Therefore we have a strange duality, of awe, reverence, bent knee and plea to be merciful to me a sinner, whilst also no-delay, no-nonsense assuming our duties to be the ones making it all happen, hanging in the cloistered halls, in the temple, in the sacristy, in the chambers and vestibules: we dwell there in some reaction to the locale, not our own gifts that are brung, but our response to God’s space. We are the owners and the executors of God’s estate. We are automatically found to be in prayer as we motor about and do our Sabbath work for the betterment of His people. More than that, we aim for it to be a place of healing—but not on our terms, but rather on His terms. Certain that some no-nonsense code of honor rules the place, yet we make no Law but rather know simply to be about the Master’s business.