No shoes

During the last few months, I’ve had several experiences with the Holy Spirit. As a follower of Jesus, I believe we are designed to meet with the Creator of the Universe and experience His presence in real, tangible ways. This month, I’ve experienced the Holy Spirit multiple times very intensely. I’m not going to try and describe it, or say exactly how this experience should be, or what it’s like, because I truly believe every individual is unique in their design and will experience the presence of God differently. However, there is something I’ve learned through these moments that has transformed my idea of how and when we encounter the Holy Spirit. 

In Exodus 3, Moses is in the wilderness watching over his father-in-law’s sheep business. What a lovely job. I think I would genuinely enjoy watching sheep for a while. On a normal Tuesday (no Biblical evidence for it being Tuesday, okay), in a desert, while in the midst of another day full of mundane tasks for the sheep business; Moses comes across an ordinary bush that was on fire but not burning up. Moses decides (in the Message Bible, it seems like he was talking to himself throughout this story which I love) to go and investigate why the bush was on fire but not burning up. When Moses shows up at the bush, God calls out to Moses from within the burning bush and then tells him to do something exceptionally strange. God commands Moses to take his shoes off because the ordinary ground he is standing on is suddenly holy ground. gosh dang, imagine you’ve been tending sheep in the pasture for years and all of a sudden God tells you the ground you’re standing on is holy??? This strange encounter is exactly what I’ve been discovering recently in my life. The Spirit of God meets us in some of the most ordinary moments of our lives. There are no intrinsically holy spaces. No environment you can create which guarantees the Spirit’s presence. No idealized version of worship which transforms everyone who enters into a space. The ordinary moments of our lives are the moments He meets us in. We do not control where, or how, God shows up, BUT we do control a very important variable: being present to the moment and firmly established in reality. In my opinion, Moses’ act of taking off his shoes is huge. Planting his feet on the ground demonstrated his humanity. It highlights our human experience as an embodied experience. We encounter divinity in our bodies. What is happening within our body, our mind, and our being as a whole is inextricably tied to our encounter(s) with the Holy Spirit. 

This has been a huge moment of growth for me in the past few months. I’ve learned the more present I am to the current moment, what’s going on in my body, my emotions, my thoughts, the more I am able to create the space and opportunity to experience God. This does not mean I need to be experiencing only positive emotions to experience closeness to God. Or, that if I try hard enough to focus my mind, I will for sure experience His presence. It means I show up aware of what’s going on inside of me. It means I show up with my anxiety, my doubts, my fears, my insecurities and I worship with them. I worship in the tension of being a human being with a body full of reactivity to what I’ve been experiencing that week, but also aware His Spirit can show up in the moments I least expect it. I come as I am, aware of the reality of the ground I’m currently standing on, the place I’m currently living in, and the moment of time I am part of. Grounding ourselves in reality and the moment we are actually living in is an exciting practice to provide opportunities for you to become aware of His presence.