The Sacredness of Space

“This is the place,” the young mother will say to her child, “where your mother lived when she was a little girl.”

“Over there,” the father will say to his children, “is the first place I saw your mother.”

This is the place where George Washington stood, where Lee surrendered to Grant, where the first computer was used. This is the garage where Steven Jobs designed his first computer. This is the place where the Declaration of Independence was signed.

This is the place…

There are some places, but public and private, that seize our imaginations. Moments that changed our lives, that changed the world, happened at a particular place. We are drawn back to those places so we can remember what happened there and what changed because of what happened in that place.

Let’s face it. Some places are holy.

I’m afraid a lot of people forgot this during the recent quarantine. To be sure, our congregation was eager to work with government and healthcare leaders during the national shut down and take our services online. Our staff worked from home, and we encouraged our members to stay home in order to limit the impact of the virus. Loving our neighbors made this the right thing to do.

And yes, I know, the church isn’t a building. I know God is everywhere. I know you can worship anywhere.

At least, that’s what I’ve been told by every hunter who attended the churches I served and told me they could worship God while sitting in a deer stand. I’ve been told that by every church member who went to the beach and told me they were closer to God walking on the beach than in the sanctuary.

According to countless church members in all of the churches I’ve served, they could worship God anywhere.

“I guess it’s silly,” she said. “This is where I sat the first Sunday after my husband died. I was so scared”, she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. This is the place Jesus told me I was going to be OK. He didn’t give me any details, He just said I would be OK.”
“I come here every Sunday and He reminds me.”
I felt like I should take off my shoes. I was standing on holy ground.

No, you can’t. Our attention spans are too fragile. We are too easily distracted. You can be walking on the beach, thinking about God, then a seagull flies by and just like that, you’re thinking about the seagull. You’re in the deer stand, celebrating the glory of God revealed before you in nature, and then, there’s the buck you’ve been hunting….and well, you aren’t thinking about God anymore. Sure, you might have moments, deeply spiritual encounters, with God, but you can’t sustain them.

That’s why we need sacred spaces. One of the overlooked aspects of creation is God made a place for us to be with Him. Space is where we are. Space is where we live and love.

Professional writers go to great effort to make their writing spaces support their work. They know when they show up in their writing space, it’s time to focus on writing. Everything around them in their writing space supports their writing. Painters want to be sure their studios have the right light. Every guy dreams about a man cave. Every teenager can’t wait to move away from home and find their own space.

Everyone, it seems, needs and wants their own space.

Churches have been closed. People have stayed home. But let’s not act like something hasn’t been lost. Sacred spaces are those places where we have encountered the Divine again and again. It’s where the light in the stained-glass windows focuses our mind on His eternal beauty. It’s where the pulpit reminds us the time when God’s word sustained us on the journey. This is the sacred space where, on that day when life crashed in on us, our friends gathered around us and reminded us that we’d get through this.

And it happened on this spot. It happened in this place.

Early in my ministry, when I was too young to know better and too cocky to admit it, I was the pastor of a church in South Carolina. One of my members, a widow, would always come early to church and sit in the same place in the sanctuary. She got there in time to go to Bible study, but she would never go. She would just find her pew and sit by herself in the sanctuary.

From time to time, she would complain about being cold in the sanctuary. It was. After all, the room was being cooled in anticipation being filled with carbon dioxide exhaling Baptists. Other than that, our only conversation was me picking on her for always sitting in the same place.

One morning she answered me.

“I guess it’s silly,” she said. “This is where I sat the first Sunday after my husband died. I was so scared”, she said. “I didn’t know what I was going to do. This is the place Jesus told me I was going to be OK. He didn’t give me any details, He just said I would be OK.”

“I come here every Sunday and He reminds me.”

I felt like I should take off my shoes. I was standing on holy ground.

Row after row, on pew after pew, people come, and Jesus tells them they’re going to be OK. He may not give them details, but He’ll let them know they’re not alone.

They’ll come back next Sunday, and He’ll remind them.

Sacred spaces. The place where it happened. I can’t wait until we can get back into the church. I know where I was…when Jesus told me I was going to be OK…I need to get back to be reminded.