December 6 Devotion

Read Exodus 3:1-6

Ray Buckley, the Director of the Native People's Communication Office for United Methodist Communications, tells of a large rock on the Lakota Reservation in South Dakota. This rock is 40 feet high and is divided by one narrow crevice that extends deep into the rock. Ray's father, prior to his death in 1990, frequently went to this rock to pray. As he would pray, he would write down the prayers and the prayer requests he had, fold the papers, and then drop them into the crevice.

Sometime after his father's death, Ray and his brother visited the rock. When they looked into the crevice, they could see the shards of paper on which their father had written. Ray and his brother decided to leave the papers where they were -- for it is a sacred place for them both. It is a place where their father communed with God.

I have sacred places, too. When I walk around at the farm in Buckhannon, particularly when I am there by myself, I can hear the conversations of my grandparents, and aunts and uncles, and mother -- conversations with one another and with me and conversations with God. These are the people who taught me the faith, who taught me what it meant to believe in and follow Jesus Christ. And the farm is one of the places where those sacred conversations often took place.

Where are your sacred places? It may be your church, it may be a homeplace, it may be your back yard, it can actually be almost anywhere. Where are those places that speak to you of the presence of God, where have you met God in your life, where are the places that speak of the presence of those who have taught you about God? Where can you go to stand on holy ground?

Be thankful for the places where you have met God -- for those places have become for you holy ground, just as the location of the burning bush became holy ground for Moses, and a stable in Bethlehem became holy ground for Mary and Joseph and some shepherds, and the rock is that for Ray Buckley, and the farm is that for me.

"We are standing on holy ground, and I know that there are angels all around, let us praise Jesus now. We are standing in his presence on holy ground." Amen.

Dr. Joe Shreve