Sacred Spaces

Sacred Spaces. Those places and moments when you block out the world, the noise, the chaos and quietly bow your head. The moment offering a spiritual breath. Exhaling the exhaustion of the day or the season and inhaling His strength. A place and moment of divine recognition.

When God moves and speaks, revealing Himself to us, what is our response? Do we mark those moments on the timeline of our life, like we do when measuring the growth of our children. Or do we just give a quick nod of the head and continue on our way?

I admire those of ancient times, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They had many things in common, but one, in particular stands out to me—they built altars (Genesis 12:7, 26:25, 35,14).

Moses too marked God moments. Exodus 17, he’s found sitting on top of a hill, below him the battle wages on. Joshua leads the Israelites against the Amalekites; they were winning as long as Moses kept his hands raised. When he grew tired? Aaron and Hur placed a stone under him to sit and then stood beside him, holding his arms up. They did win the battle miraculously with God ability, “Moses built an altar and called it ‘The Lord is my Banner’” (v15). It doesn’t say it in the narrative, but I can imagine Moses taking rocks and placing them on top of the large stone he sat on during the battle, marking the fight—marking the victory.  A place and moment of divine recognition indeed.

An altar is a landmark of God’s presence. It declares a sacred space, sacred due to the moment, the Presence and hunger of our heart. May we be like the Patriarchs of old, may we too be altar builders. Although there may be no need to take our sandals off and culturally no longer gather various rocks and pile them in our backyard. Yet may we make some kind of recognition.

Recently while driving to work, I was impacted by my surroundings. A combine was cutting hay on my left and a field of foot tall corn on my right. Further I passed alpacas, cows, horses, and goats.  Why impacted?  For the last forty plus years I have lived primarily in the city in the Portland Metropolitan area.  Now I drive through the country. The blessing was so overwhelming, I built an altar right there in the moment (and no, I didn’t pull over and wander through the farmers field looking for rocks) but I marked the moment by thanking God for this (out loud) and determined to remember.

Altar building: recognizing, remembering and declaring THIS is where God met with me. Honoring and worshipping He Who is faithful—He Who is worthy.

Sacred spaces.

In Him, DeDe (“Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love & good deeds.” – Hebrews 10:24)