The Holy Places In Our Lives

You have been in holy places. Yes, you. 

i'm not talking about Antietam, or Iona, or Jerusalem.

We are sometimes invited to stand on holy ground where and when God's footprints are deep and powerful, marking places on earth and in our hearts.

We are sometimes invited to stand on holy ground where and when God's footprints are deep and powerful, marking places on earth and in our hearts.

Holy places are moments in time/space when God has been at work for 1, 5, 10, 30, 100 years, and you are somehow invited in to witness it.

Maybe you are called by a family at 2 a.m. because their favorite child has been killed in a car accident.

Maybe you attend the bloody, messy, event of a  baby's everyday-miracle birth.

Maybe you are part of 15 monks singing the psalms, like they do every day but you don't.

Maybe you hear a women talk about the relationship after the abusive one, where she saved her own life (with God's help).

Maybe a Muslim refugee child jumps into your arms, because it's safe, completely unaware that the Towers  are falling down.

Maybe you stand with a lesbian recognizing that she is made in the image of God. Her, too.

Maybe someone you love and admire comes to the point where the various ways God uses him--leading worship, writing music, talking to 20-year-olds working for take-out pizza companies, being a dad, being a friend, being a lover--all those things are actually all about him and the person God made him to be, and how God has guided him there.

Maybe you watch true contrition.

Maybe you hug someone who stinks and hasn't been hugged for months, if not years.

Maybe you make it through one more day, barely, and the sunset glows orange and white and green like you were in the Arctic and gloried in the aurora borealis.

Holy places.

All the time we are invited into holy places.

And if tears of gratitude and joy and humility don't run down your face, or the face of your soul, you've missed the miracle in it.

Holy places. Every day. Where God's footprints are deep and powerful.

God is here, making holy places everywhere. Don't miss it.