Take Your Shoes Off

In Exodus 3:5 God said to Moses. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.”

The story of the burning bush in the Bible is not only a contextual story but a metaphor for the universality of everyday sacramentalism.  The holy ground mentioned in the cited text was holy when God activated Moses’ awareness of it. Was it really different ground than the ground, say, 30 yards away?

Ok, it did have that inexplicable feature of having a bush that was on fire but didn’t burn up. There is that?!?!?

However, I have become convinced that the sacredness was made acute by focus and awareness of the divine. Is not all of life sacred if we have the eyes to see it fully, completely, in all of its unique connection to a creating God? (see footnote by Henri Nouwen)

This reminds me of the familiar poem by E.B. Browning entitled Aurora Leigh: “Earth’s crammed with heaven. And every common bush afire with God.”

So, take off your shoes and live into the ordinary, everydayness of what is sacrament.

• Footnote: “When God took on flesh in Jesus Christ, the uncreated and the created, the eternal and the temporal, the divine and the human became united. This unity meant that all that is mortal now points to the immortal, all that is finite now points to the infinite. In and through Jesus all creation has become like a splendid veil, through which the face of God is revealed to us. This is called the sacramental quality of the created order. All that is sacred because all that is speaks of God’s redeeming love. Seas and winds, mountains and trees, sun, moon, and stars, and all the animals and people have become sacred windows offering us glimpses of God.” https://henrinouwen.org/meditations/created-order-sacrament/