Reverence

Where it came from I do not know.  One moment I was here and then I had gone back nearly sixty years to a time when I was a boy running in and around church pews and hearing my Mother calling out to me not to run in church.  Her concern was not about my safety, but about my being disrespectful and irreverent in the house of the Lord.  Certainly, there is nothing inherently wrong with children being children in the sanctuary, but what she was teaching was a lesson about how to treat sacred spaces in this secular world.  Long before I could understand, I learned that there was something special about the sanctuary.  Since it was a place set aside to meet God, it was a place for a reverent spirit. 

 

It is strange how the mind brings old memories to mind.  And, it is always surprising the way God can move us from a childhood lesson to a powerful spiritual experience.  As I stood there remembering my Mother's teaching, I saw these two tall sycamore trees across the now brown hay field on the edge of the tree line.  I am not the first to see them.  Many generations have watched them stretch toward the sky and sun.  Two red breasted hawks had led my eyes to those trees and as I stood there looking, they were perched in the upper branches.  Suddenly, the field and tree line became a sanctuary and God was meeting me in that morning mist.  A sense of reverence filled the moment and my heart.

 

Is such not the way we are to live?  Are we not to live with reverence for all that is around us and a part of us each day?  Is not God seeking to meet us in the things deemed so ordinary?  Reverence is not just a response for the sanctuary.  Instead, it speaks of the right response for our daily living.  Each day is a precious gift and is meant to be handled with reverent gratitude.