The Kneeling Spot

I am grateful for the altar in the sanctuary.  An altar is indeed a holy place.  It is one of those places in our world where our human need intersects with the power of the Holy Spirit.  There are, of course, other places where this happens, but there is no place like this particular kneeling spot in our world.  The truth is there are no other places which encourage or invite us to kneel.  Kneeling is not something commonly done by those of our day who only see the whole kneeling thing an unnecessary anachronism.  People who have it all together and see themselves as the masters of their future have no use for an altar.

 

In my days of ministry every United Methodist Church had an altar.  This is not to say it was used in all of them, but it was at least there as a reminder of something important in life.  In many of our United Methodist Churches, the only time people are invited to kneel is when Holy Communion is offered.  Of course, this is only true if the church has not bowed to the more expedient "walk by" communion offered to many hurried worshipers.  It is sad to see an altar not used and even more sad to see it omitted completely when newer more contemporary sanctuaries are constructed.  In many places an altar is no longer seen as necessary.

 

For a lifetime I have been kneeling at one after another after another.  I always made a practice of inviting those who worshipped to use it.  I have prayed many prayers while there on my knees.  I have met many a struggling soul at that holy place to pray about the burdens of the heart.  I have been there on many occasions when the Holy Spirit stirred in our midst in mighty and powerful ways.  The altars of all those churches from my past have proven themselves to be holy places where God is encountered.  I am grateful for everyone of them on this journey of faith. 

Ten

During my 43 1/2 years of preaching, I have been entrusted with the pulpit ministry that has gone forth from ten different pulpits.  Some were high and some not so high.  Some were very simple in appearance and some were not so simple.  On each of them laid a large open pulpit Bible on which I placed whatever I carried into the pulpit.  The Bible always was a silent reminder of the authority I had for preaching.  It reminded me that folks came not to hear my opinions, but to hear the Word of God.  Though there were too many preaching hours to count, everyone represented a holy opportunity to speak a holy Word to the people of God who came with more needs than I could have ever imagined. 

I still wonder at times about the wisdom of God in calling me to preach, but He did.  Of this I have no doubt.  What a privilege it has been to have a place to stand and preach every Sunday for all those years.  There is no place like the pulpit.  It is holy in that it is set aside for a holy purpose.  From it the Word of God is to be proclaimed.  It is not a rostrum to hold material of a speaker.  It is not something which is to be moved so that other purposes can be in the spotlight.  It should be regarded as a permanent part of the sanctuary which is, of course, larger space that is also set aside for holy purposes.

I remember everyone of those ten pulpits behind which I have stood and preached the Word of God.  There were those times when I stepped into it woefully unprepared.  I deeply regret having wasted a single moment given to me for preaching.  I have always believed God was at work through the preaching and sometimes He did it through this preacher and sometimes He did it despite this preacher.  On the surface it may seem like a ordinary place to stand, but far from it, it is a holy place where extraordinary things are only a breath of the Spirit away.  To have stood there humbles me and blesses me. 

Belly of the Big Fish

Going to Asbury College was my "Jonah in the belly of a big fish" moment.   The bottom line was that I did not want to go.  I was convinced at the time that going to this Kentucky school was being obedient to the leading of the Holy Spirit.  I simply wanted no part of it.  It was too religious.  It was a school with a holiness tradition.  It was 600 miles from home.  I was not going to do it.  So, I went to another college here in Georgia.  I had my only Dean's List quarter at that school, but I was miserable  so I sent my application to Asbury and got accepted. 

I went there with a heart full of doubt and a spirit in rebellion.  I was determined being at Asbury would not change me.  I was going to leave as rebellious as I was when I arrived.  God surely had a reason for my being there, but it took me a while to see it.  Within a month or so after starting classes, I met a young girl from Georgia whom I would marry in less than two years.  Since she was far ahead of me in her faith journey, it is amazing she stuck it out with me.  But, she did.  Since attendance at chapel was required three times a week, I began to get a steady dose of preaching that got my attention.  I found myself being introduced to some new ideas about the work of the Holy Spirit.  For the first time I wondered what a Spirit controlled life would look like. 

Everything came to a head for me in February of 1970 at what is known as the Asbury Revival.  For a week classes were suspended and services of worship and praise continued without stopping in the auditorium on campus.  Lives all around me were being changed by the power of the Holy Spirit at work.  Mine, too.  I joined so many others at that altar the first afternoon and my walk with God carried me forward into new and not yet imagined places.  I am grateful God led me to Asbury College and allowed me to kneel at that altar at Hughes Auditorium.  I cannot imagine my journey without that holy moment and holy place. 

The Bedroom Altar

From the water stop for baptism at the Hebardville Church in Waycross, Georgia, the journey took me to Savannah and then to Alamo where I graduated from Wheeler County High School.  With graduation and college looming on the horizon, I was struggling with what I was going to do with my life.  The "What will I be when I grow up?" question was really weighing heavy.  But, there were other things that were undecided as well.  Important things.  Things like my relationship with Christ.  Though baptized I knew my life of faith in Christ was more pretend than reality. 

On that May evening a few weeks before graduation, the preacher spoke at a business meeting of the church and said, "If you see a need and realize you can do something about that need and do nothing, you may be neglecting the call of God on your life."  It was a word I carried with me back to my bedroom.  It was a word which drove me to my knees beside my bed.  There I gave my life to Christ as I had never done and heard what I knew to be a call to preach.  There in the Alamo parsonage in my bedroom a holy moment took place in my life which would shape the rest of my days. 

The Old Testament guys made a shrine of rocks to mark the holy places.  I should have done something.  Maybe put an X on the floor or a sign on the door.  But, as is the case with many of the holy places in our lives, there is no visible thing to mark the place.  It is marked only in my memory.  It seems to me that I could walk in that room and see that bed exactly where it was back when I was almost 18 and know the spot where I knelt and had the rest of my life re-directed by that encounter with the living presence of Jesus Christ. 

The Water Stop

Whenever I go back to visit the Hebardville Methodist Church (and it has been a long time now), I always look first toward the front pew on the right where I sat.  Somehow or another my mother managed to buy the pew and donate it in memory of my father.  It was where I sat Sunday morning and Sunday night.  And then, I look toward the left end of the altar where I knelt down one Sunday morning when I was nine years old and was touched by the waters of baptism.  The preacher who baptized me would marry my mother a few years later and his influence would continue.

Now, at age nine, most children have no real clear understanding of what happened on the cross when Jesus died.  But, then, such is true of a lot adults as well.  And, to be honest, I still struggle at times to get my mind around what God has done for all of us through the death of His Son on Calvary's cross.  What I do remember was that baptism was for me a way of responding to God.  It was that simple.  Even then I sensed God's presence and out of that awareness I was baptized.  It was an act that sent me forth as a teenager who thought of himself as a Christian.

As I think about the holy places where God was at work in my life, the Hebardville Church certainly comes to mind.  Thinking back causes me to be aware of how long I have been about this journey of faith.  At the water stop there was little understanding of what faith meant, but maybe the simple and unsophisticated faith of a boy is enough.  As we go along, our faith often gets cluttered up with an intellectual search and rigid duty.  Neither is really necessary.

The First Place

I have always thought of country church cemeteries as holy places.  Surely, the prayers from inside have spilled out the windows and doors gracing the ground with a kind of spiritual holiness.  But, then there is more.  Those grounds are made holy by the prayers prayed over graves, the tears of grief and sorrow which have dropped to the ground, and the loved ones left behind.  Unlike the manicured and neatly trimmed memorial gardens which adorn the suburban areas, these country burial places looked real, authentic, and bear the marks of those who go again and again to pay their respects and speak of their love. 

 

My first memory of going to such a place is from age seven.  We went to the Pierce Chapel Methodist Church Cemetery to bury my father.  It was land donated by our family from a couple of generations back and a place that he no doubt went by on many of his ramblings through that countryside.  Back then only dirt roads gave access and only those who knew where they were going made it without an overwhelming sense of being lost.  While paved roads now take folks to the church and its cemetery, the holy land has mostly escaped and been spared the pain inflicted upon ground by modernization.

 

At age seven my father's death took me on my first journey to that place that has become holy.  I also know it as a time in my life which set me to thinking about God for the first time.  While there were many things I could not figure out, the one thing which became clear in those years was that there had to be a God.  Nothing made any sense apart from that one single truth.  It is a truth I hung onto and one that got me started on this lifelong spiritual journey which has kept me moving toward God. 

Journey Places

When I was a boy with my first Bible, I read all those stores about Abraham and his descendants which followed, Moses and the Hebrew people, Joshua and the fall of Jericho, and many more from Elijah to David and beyond.  As I read the stories, I often went to the back of that zippered black Bible to the maps to see the location of the places mentioned in the stories.  Even then I had a sense that places were important.  Now, I understand more clearly that God does not operate in a vacuum, but within the context of specific places.  Many of those Biblical characters did things to mark as significant some of the places where they encountered God in unusual and powerful ways.

 

All of us have places that are important to our spiritual journey.  Maybe there is no set of maps to guide us, but then, none are needed.  We know the names of those places and where they are located in the journey of faith that we call ours.  Some of those places may have already been designated as holy by the community of faith, but many others have been noted as holy and special because of the moment we had with God in them.  They are so marked not in a book of holy places, but in the book of spiritual memories we carry in our heart. 

 

It is, of course, a list of places that is incomplete.  Each year of our life more places are likely being added to that list of memories which remind of us powerful moments with God.  Perhaps, we have some physical token taken from a place in the past to remind us.  Maybe it is a rock, or a seashell, or a t-shirt.  In most cases nothing is really needed to bring to mind a place where a meaningful encounter with God took place.  Think about those places.  Begin to write them down on a piece of paper and slip into that copy of the Word kept so close.  Spend some time remembering.  Spent some time being thankful.