“Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God,
But only he who sees takes off his shoes;
The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
— Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Last Saturday night a windstorm knocked out power to the church for 24 hours. Based on the size of the outage and Xcel’s “estimate” of when they might restore power it was clear we would be having an acoustic worship service. The band switched all of their songs to hymns (except for “Blow Mighty Breath of God” — which Charlie couldn’t resist), we put battery-operated candles in the bathrooms, and you all showed up to worship.
During the second service Rabbi Noah taught from Joshua 5 as the Israelites prepare to enter into the promised land. They have wandered in the wilderness for forty years where God has provided for them: He has led them by fire and smoke, He has been present with them in the Tabernacle, He has provided water and manna and quail to sustain them, and He has kept their sandals and clothes from wearing out. They have finally made it to the promised land they’ve been hearing about for their entire lives but they don’t rush ahead. They stop, celebrate Passover, and remember God’s faithfulness. And when an angel of the Lord appears to Joshua, his command is “Take your sandal off your foot, for the place where you stand is holy.” (Joshua 5:15) And then the Bible tells us that “Joshua did so.”
In the midst of the power outage we began our series The Encounter where we are studying examples of encounters with God from the Bible. No two encounters are the same — we cannot manufacture an encounter or force God into a formula — and we know that God is always present with us, whether we are paying attention or not. But last Sunday, without power and lights and microphones and amplification we got to hear the heart of the church: beautiful conversations, the murmurs of comfort, joyous laughter, children playing, engagement in teaching, and voices raised in singing. We stepped out of our “normal” for a morning and got to stop, to resist rushing ahead, and to notice God’s presence with us. We encountered God.
God’s creativity in getting our attention never ceases to amaze me. He can take an ordinary bush and set it on fire and He can use a power outage to create enough “pause” in our lives to turn an ordinary Sunday into a communal encounter with Him. A lot of our lives are spent rushing to the next thing on our calendar or worrying about the cares of the day, but on days like last Sunday we get the chance to notice that Earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush afire with God. And when we notice we get to stop, take off our shoes, and worship.
Thank you for sharing this holy ground. It is such a beautiful gift to be in community with you all.
Holly