Sacred Space

Misty Edwards wrote a song that is one of my favorites. It’s called Garden and goes like this:

It’s You and me alone God
You and me alone
You’ve hedged me in with skin
All around me
I’m a garden enclosed
A locked garden
Life takes place behind the face.
So come into Your garden
I’m no longer my own
I’m Your garden
I don’t want to waste my time
Living on the outside
I’m going to live from the inside out.

At the recent Onething conference, she was speaking about the cacophony of voices and conversations that constantly stream and swirl about our heads. No one can enter the space behind the face except God. It’s a sacred place. No one knows what we are thinking about them, or what conversations we are replaying over and over in our heads. No one can see the pictures and movies that play on the screen behind the eyes. It is a sacred space.

Our minds are incredible. Really they are. Isn’t it just phenomenal how we have the ability to instantly recall sights, smells, impressions, emotions at the spark of a moment? We see a photo or walk into a room and a flood of memories will hit us that we haven’t thought of in years.

But the reality is that our minds in todays’ oversaturated communication world are just that… oversaturated and overstimulated. Few know how to unplug and breathe and clear out the constant stream of information. Misty went on to say that we are so bombarded by this continual flow – from updating Facebook and Twitter to the constant flow of texting conversations. At some point, this continual over-communication drowns out the sound that we need to hear… the voice of the Lord. He is trying to speak to us, but we are so unable to drive without music, or to sit through a message without texting. We never take it in for real. We don’t disengage from our text and Facebook friends long enough for our minds to start ruminating (chewing the cud as it were) and considering and meditating.

If God were on Faecbook, He would friend all of us and say, “I want to talk to you, I want your attention. I am jealous for you! My heart burns with desire for you! I love to be close to you! Even in your weakness or brokenness, I want you! I want to be with you! Do you know how you move my heart? I have much to show you! Do you hear my heartbeat? I delight in you! I enjoy you more than you know! Do you know who I am? I came and died because I want you to be with me forever and ever!”

Our space… behind the face… where we can commune with the One who created us and longs for us to slow down and stop for a while. To shut off the computer, the TV, put down the iPhone, or the vide game controller, and find a quiet place and sit and listen. Find a stream, a park bench, a quiet couch, and open up His letter to you and read. Listen. Be still before Him for just a few moments.

As you continue to do this, you will find that your mind grows more focused, less filled with the foolishness of the things that seem so important but really are just clutter which keep us from hearing clearly. And you will begin to hear the still small voice of the Lord, the Holy Spirit who lives inside, as He speaks to you. And you will also find that you are able to focus on people and really pay attention to them. (Multitasking is not a laudable quality!)

This is your sacred space. It’s the place where the Lord desires to dwell and make His name evident. It’s time to live for real… from the inside out.