Thin Places

“‘You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart. I will be found by you”, declares the LORD…”– Jeremiah 29:13-14a.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to volunteer with the National Parks Service program to assist with water quality experiments for a fourth grade field trip.

As the instructor and I walked down the muddy and leaf-littered path, he pointed out the floodplain trees and discussed the native people and settlers who had once lived on the land. Around a bend in the path, I caught glimpses of the river, and as we came to our site, my breath caught. It was a gray morning and the air was humid and damp. A filmy veil of mist rose off the surface of the river and hugged its surface for as far as my eye could see. It was truly a “God-moment”. The beauty of the scene swept me away and I couldn’t take my eyes from it.

Several hours later, in the afternoon, after the students had run simple chemistry tests for pH, nitrates, phosphate, dissolved oxygen, and clarity, we noticed a man on a Waverunner zipping around up and down the river, waves breaking, engine whining. The solace was broken, the kids got distracted. By now the temps had risen and the sun had broken through, dappling our area by the river with sunlight. All remnants of the mist were gone and the river looked like a different place entirely.

But I can still see that misty veil in my mind as I reflect, and I felt I had been in a sacred place…

I get a newsletter from a local Presbyterian church called “Thin Places” and it is about the contemplative life of prayer. A “thin place” is that place in life where it seems the sacred and holy intersects with the plane of ordinary life, that thin destinction where heaven and earth seem to almost touch.  It is the place where we seem to experience God’s presence. That misty veil on the river felt like a thin place to me, a place where God’s presence seemed to be front and foremost in front of my eyes. I sensed the holy in that serene, gray, misty place.

Where might your “thin places” be this week? Where do you sense the holy and sacred places where your ordinary life almost seems to intersect with the divine? Sometimes it’s obvious, and sometimes you have to look for them, but they are there. My prayer is you encounter a thin place in your journey this week!

Prayer– “God, so many times I miss seeing your presence. I get distracted, busy, and wrapped up in the things around me that I can see. Give me the eyes to see and experience the thin places, the places where Your Spirit is right in front of me, working in my life. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.”