Living Midst the Holy

Ten years have passed since the every Sunday pulpit was exchanged for retirement on the farm.  Much has changed in these years beside the obvious external changes, the slowed down lifestyle, and the loss of any interest in jumping fences.  As I look back I remember thinking of the church as an outpost of the sacred in the midst of a sacred world.  It was set apart ground.  It was set apart for holy purposes.  The sacred and the secular seemed separate and to step out of the sanctuary was to step into the secular, or the profane as one remembered author from seminary referred to it.

When I started getting more of the earth's dirt on my hands and clothing, things began to change.  While I am not exactly sure at what point it happened, there grew in me an awareness that all of the creation was holy ground.  It was not just the ground religious people chose to build what they defined and set apart as holy places.  Those places were surely holy and they surely pointed the passerby to the realm of the holy, but they stood on an earth that was holy from one end to the other. What I began to discover was the reality that everything around me was touched by the hands of the Creator God, and therefore, made holy by His touch instead of the prayers of those who wore the clothing of the religious. 

And, while this may not seem like such a big change, it changed everything.  Everywhere around me became a means by which God could reveal Himself and "every common bush" did seem afire with His presence.  In those ordinary moments of being immersed in the creation His Word could be heard as surely as it is heard when reading the Holy Book.  Living midst the creation every day is how life is offered here in these day and there is no part of it which the Creator cannot use to reveal Himself, or to speak a word to one learning new ways to hear.  It is all holy.