Holy Ground
Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father in law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said here am I. And [God] said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground (Exodus 3:1-5 KJV).
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help (Psalm 121:1 KJV).
Have you ever stood on holy ground? Think about that for a minute.
First of all, I must confess to picking Rev. Ryan’s pocket of ideas for today’s devotional. Not too long ago, he wrote a series of devotionals based on his ideas of liminal spaces, places of transition or change, such as where the land meets the sea. He wrote that such places “are not escapes from the real world. They are places where we are reminded what is most real,” such places are, he says, sacred places. Such places are “holy ground.”
For Rev. Ryan, one such place was the seaside. For me, it was the top of a mountain.
I was a Boy Scout in the latter part of the last century of the last millennium. My Troop took a hike on the Appalachian trail from its beginning at Springer Mountain, Georgia (Mile Marker 0.0) to Fontana Dam, North Carolina, a distance of 166.7 miles over the southern Appalachians, also known as the Great Smoky Mountains. Such a hike would take a full fourteen days.
It’s no secret that the scenery of the Great Smoky Mountains is literally breathtaking. But so is hiking a trail where the only flat ground is steeply inclined, uphill or downhill. Shortness of breath (along with fatigue and sore feet) is the default state of hikers on the Appalachian trail. But the scenery is spectacular.
About day five of our hike, we came to a campsite shelter fairly early in the evening. Knocking off early made us, if you’ll pardon the expression, very happy campers indeed. We had an early supper of high carbs and mostly artificial ingredients, and were contentedly in our sleeping bags not very long after sundown.
Standing Rule held that First One Up stirred up the fire and put the coffee on. I was the FOU that morning. I did my duty as the others slept on. It wasn’t quite daylight, but it wasn’t long to dawn either. So, I stood by the fire, coffee in hand, and watched the sunrise. As it happened, our campsite faced due east.
I remember the silence, deep and solemn. The sky went from a deep velvet blue to a pinkish grey-blue. Then the rim of the sun appeared, dazzlingly bright. The light spread slowly over the landscape touching the tops of mountains, the valleys and dales, some filled with mist through which treetops pierced like lonely sentinels. Shades of yellow and green became brilliant, almost shining, contrasting with the grey and bluish white mists and fogs and purple shadows clinging to the lowlands.
And the words of the Psalmist came to me. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.” In the King James Version, it’s a statement, not a question. I stood on that liminal space, where land met the sky, where light met the darkness and overcame it. That where I stood was holy ground.
Holy ground is where you find it. Holiness, sometimes, finds you.
Let it find you today.
Rejoice always,
Jerry Lipscomb
