Excerpt from Ezekiel 43:1-12

"This is the law of the Temple: As it radiates from the top of the mountain, everything around it becomes holy ground.”

Reflection by Lillian Daniel

Do you have a place that for you is holy ground? For our family it is a family church camp we attend each summer on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee.

Each year we easily enter into the same traditions—taking classes in the morning, relaxing at the lake in the afternoon and dancing in the barn late into the night. When we pull up and see the place, I feel the stresses I bring with me everywhere else just melt away.

There are physical images of this place that I take back home with me and pull out whenever I need to reorient myself. Looking past the cross to the sunset on the lake, the old barn at dusk, the white wooden chapel at Vespers, the first sight of the small cabin in which we will spend a week. These are like little photographs in the album of my mind.

But the place is far from perfect. Like so many beautiful, old church camp facilities, it has fallen into serious disrepair. They sell off parcels of real estate to keep going, and ostentatious mansions spring up around the modest and shrinking camp.

But I wouldn’t trade any of those mansions for a week in my little mildew-scented cabin.

I know holy ground when I see it.

Prayer

Thank you, God, for the generations that came before us, who created these beautiful spaces. And now, let us do our part as well. Amen.

OMG! — a collection of devotionals for young people written by the writers of the Stillspeaking Daily Devotional.  A great gift! Order here.

About the Author Lillian Daniel is the senior minister of the First Congregational Church, UCC, Glen Ellyn, Illinois. Her new book, This Odd and Wondrous Calling: the Public and Private Lives of Two Ministers, co-authored with Martin B. Copenhaver, has just been published.