Pause | Every Day Holy Ground

Every day we are hit with a barrage of sensory inputs; sounds, sights, smells and our minds race constantly. In the midst of all of this are we missing something?

Yesterday Impact Church was contacted by a woman representing Heartland Hospice. Hospice is a program of doctors, nurses and caregivers that help families care for loved ones in their final stages of life. They give their patients the freedom to die at home. They were hoping to find volunteers from Impact Church to serve in our community to visit their patients. So, as I was writing down her information I got to thinking about my most recent Hospice patient, my father-in-law. I was brought back to a time about two weeks before he died when he told Christy that he always wished his family prayed together more. So, in response to his wish we had begun praying all together before bedtime. He had already gone up to his room this night and those of us that were there went up to say goodnight and to pray together. That night it was Christy & me, her mom, her oldest sister Marisca and her husband Frank. All the girls were on the bed with him and Frank and I were standing near the foot of the bed. As we all began to pray I felt an unexplainable movement in the room. It was of course emotional but it was bigger than that. As Christy’s dad began to pray for the end of his life and to express to God his desire to go home I stepped back and looked at what was unfolding in that room…

Remember Moses when he was in the desert and encountered the burning bush? In Exodus 3:5 Moses is seeing an amazing sight. It grabbed his attention and he couldn’t take his eyes off of it. As he moved closer to a flaming bush that does not burn God tells him to come no closer and to remove his sandals because he is standing on holy ground. In the next verse God informs Moses that he is in the presence of the God of Israel, the God of his forefathers. Moses was afraid to look. What is holy ground? The dictionary defines holy as something set apart for divine purpose. Moses had encountered an intersection of our world and eternity that had been set apart for divine purpose, and God was there.

Back to the bedroom…as Dad was praying and the girls were there with him I realized that this moment and this place had been set apart. It had clearly been set apart for divine purpose and we had stumbled across a time and place that intersected with eternity, intertwined together like an embrace between lovers. As I think back, I should have removed my shoes…I was standing on holy ground.

Every day we go through our lives and we are thinking about our daily tasks, our chores or what we wish we were doing. We walk past people and events all the time. I think that its easy to miss those places in time when our world has intersected with eternity. I think it happens all the time. I want to take notice of those moments and embrace them…do you?