Holy Ground
Posted: Fri Dec 01, 2017 1:13 pm
While reading this opening day devotion, I couldn't help but recall the first class of the first day that I was in Seminary. The pastoral care professor came into class and read from Exodus 3:
2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
3 Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up."
4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
5 Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
6 He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Exo 3:2-6 NRSV)
He then went on to explain how ministry is like the wilderness but we are always walking on holy ground. And yet, like Moses, we are not perfect individuals, but a people that have our own failings.
Laniak's opening chapter for me explains much the same....for it is in the wilderness that God called his people, met them, stayed with them, and shepherded them. After being in ministry for 10 years now, it is easy to see how a church (even a small church in a rural "downtown") is still a wilderness when it comes to ministry. Yet even in this wilderness that I travel to daily, God is at work, meeting, calling, staying, and shepherding his people. Like the burning bush encounter, it too is holy ground, full of the mysteriousness of God and the failings of humanity.
2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
3 Then Moses said, "I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up."
4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, "Moses, Moses!" And he said, "Here I am."
5 Then he said, "Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."
6 He said further, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." (Exo 3:2-6 NRSV)
He then went on to explain how ministry is like the wilderness but we are always walking on holy ground. And yet, like Moses, we are not perfect individuals, but a people that have our own failings.
Laniak's opening chapter for me explains much the same....for it is in the wilderness that God called his people, met them, stayed with them, and shepherded them. After being in ministry for 10 years now, it is easy to see how a church (even a small church in a rural "downtown") is still a wilderness when it comes to ministry. Yet even in this wilderness that I travel to daily, God is at work, meeting, calling, staying, and shepherding his people. Like the burning bush encounter, it too is holy ground, full of the mysteriousness of God and the failings of humanity.