Holy Ground
“Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”
Genesis 28:16
In the book of Genesis, Jacob has an amazing dream of angels ascending and descending on a ladder from heaven to earth. When he wakes up, everything around him looks the same, but he knows something is very different. He then exclaims, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it!”
Like Joseph, we too may fail to recognize Christ’s powerful presence in our daily lives, especially in the ordinary and so called “regular” events of our lives.
Recognizing His presence is one of those things that is much easier said than done. Many of us have inherited our western culture’s dualistic tendencies to compartmentalize our lives, placing the sacred in one box and the secular in another.
For example, I imagine it’s easier for most of us to recognize God’s presence in church on Sunday mornings rather than in Houston traffic. It’s easier to hear God’s voice in Holy Scripture than in the evening news. However, as we know, God can never be contained.
The Christian author Barbara Brown Taylor describes it like this: “Human beings may separate things into as many piles as we wish—separating spirit from flesh, sacred from secular, church from the world. But we should not be surprised when God does not recognize the distinctions we make between the two.”[1]
In the book of Exodus, when Moses discovers the burning bush, God tells him to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. Chances are Moses had probably walked by this exact same spot day after day, year after year, until he sees a bush that is on fire but not being burned up, and God tells him the ground is holy. In other words, perhaps the ground was holy all along and Moses is just now becoming aware of it for the first time.
Like Moses, how often do you and I walk on holy ground right next to the risen Christ and not realize it? Most of us are moving so fast, if we are not careful, we can forget that every moment of every single day is a precious gift from God.
So today, may we remember we walk on holy ground all the time. May we remember the risen Christ enters our world and our hearts in the most unexpected ways. And may we remember and be thankful God is always present and active in our lives, whether we recognize it or not.
[1] Taylor, Barbara Brown, An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith. (New York: HarperOne), 2009.
