As we near the end of this series of meditation of Finding
Holy Ground, we’ve arrived at the source of where Holy Ground is deeply rooted.
Love is the soil of all Holy Ground. All that we experience of Holy Ground
through our senses, our interactions with one another, in our work and our rest
begins in love.
It is God’s love for us that is the core of all Holy Ground.
The Holy Ground of Creation was based in the Love that desired beauty, life,
and companionship. When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush and said
‘remove your sandals because you are standing on Holy Ground’, it was God’s
love for the enslaved Hebrews that sparked the bush. Seeing or tasting or
hearing God’s Holy Ground in the world around us is our response to God’s love
for us. Life itself is the Holy Ground where God’s love meets us.
We do live in a broken world that only dimly perceives that
Holy Ground and that Love. We are called to be the hands and feet and lips of
God’s Love to the world. Teresa of Avila notes “Christ has no body now but
yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which
he works compassion on this world...”
I am reminded that when Naaman the Syrian was healed of his
leprosy, he asked to take some of the dirt of Israel back to Syria so he could
be reminded of Who is truly God. “Then
Naaman said, ‘If not, please let two mule-loads of earth be given to your
servant; for your servant will no longer offer burnt-offering or sacrifice to
any god except the Lord.” (2 Kings 5:17) We carry and spread the Holy
Ground around us each day, too.
In I Corinthians 13, Paul explains Love. He says, “If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of
angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I
have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I
have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may
boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or
arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or
resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. But as for prophecies,
they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it
will come to an end. For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part;
but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. When I was a
child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child;
when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a
mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then
I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and
love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
As we go through our daily lives, we are challenged and sometimes respond in unloving ways. It is easy to respond to criticism with anger; to
demands with stubbornness; to hatred with more hate. Love is not the easy path
to take. It requires ‘turning the other cheek’, as Jesus counselled in Matthew
5:39 and following. He advises, “But I tell you, do not resist an evil person.
If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also…”
Love is, as Paul says, “patient;
love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not
insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in
wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.”
The truth, despite all the media coverage of rage and hate
and killing, is that Love has triumphed. As Ann Voskamp noted on November 6, “Never
forget it: That serpent is crushed on the ground and Jesus is on the throne.”
What can you and I do today and tomorrow and the next day to
bring more of God’s Holy Ground and Love into our world? We can start by bringing
just a bit more into the places we are and with the people we relate to. Like
Naaman, we carry the Holy Ground with us. It may not be easy, but with God’s
help, we can spread some Holy Ground around us.
