Not the Same

When I saw the white shirt and suit guys the other day, it seemed like I was seeing another world to which I belonged at one time.  I sometimes wonder about that man from my past.  Nowadays my normal attire is blue jeans and a work shirt sandwiched between a cap from the livestock sale barn and a dusty worn looking pair of boots.  So much has changed about me during these years which I sometimes think of as the last season of my life.  Well, maybe, last season is a bit overly dramatic, but time is getting on along.

 

But, the changes I see in the mirror are insignificant compared to the ones of the heart.  While my faith in Christ is still strong, I have discovered that the ways that spiritual life is nurtured as well as the ways that I think about God are almost as different as me back then in the white shirt days and now in the colored work shirts days.  For all those years of working in ministry, the sanctuary was in many ways the center of my spiritual life.  Looking back it seems that everything somehow revolved around that physical structure and what went on when the doors were unlocked. 

 

When I came to this piece of open land in retirement, the benefits of being close to a sanctuary were gone.  In its place I discovered a sanctuary not made with hands, but one that stretched from one horizon to another.  New symbols started showing up.  Things like trees and an owl and broken limbs and dirt started pointing me toward the holy as sure as the cross and candles did in the sanctuaries of the past.  Of course, I am not the first to walk this road and see the world in a new way, but I have become one of those who does and for the privilege and blessing afforded me I am grateful.