Body and Soul… Faith and Sight…

In the past few weeks, Denise and I have been incredibly blessed. We were able to travel to the North Georgia Mountains (Cleveland and Helen area) to attend Denise’s niece Mackie’s wedding to her new hubby, Lance Corporal Nick Drohan on the Sunday before Memorial Day. Weddings can indeed be wonderful events (especially when the Padre isn’t the one in charge!) and this was no exception. The location was wonderful as was the fellowship. As we wandered about the area and enjoyed some time on the front porch of our rented cabin, the sense of the mountains being a thin place really hit home for me. The picture above is a closeup of a flower (one of many flowers) that caught my eye with its beauty.

This past weekend, we had the opportunity to visit with very dear friends in Colorado. We also spent some time visiting the Rocky Mountain National Park and the communities in the valley. When you find yourself driving down the road and seeing elk grazing on the side of the road it can make you smile. I know it made me smile. The locals call the traffic jams when the elk are down in the valley “Elk Jams”. Often it is tourists (like me, yes, I know…. but at least I pulled off of the road to take the pictures) who stop in the road simply amazed by the sight of these majestic creatures grazing peacefully in the midst of humanity. At one meadow near the road, we saw at least 50 Mama Elk and Calves grazing in the field. The calves were a riot to watch as they grazed and then suddenly would jump and run around like baby sheep and goats do.

But if you want to talk about literal thin places, try about 12,000 feet above sea level! For someone who has lived in an area that varies from 125 feet above sea level to sea level, that is a massive change! The air is crisp and quite thin up there which can lead to sunburn without you realizing it and dehydration. In addition to the obvious thinness of the air, I sensed again and again the beauty of the mountains and the Celtic meaning of thin places where the boundary between the physical and spiritual world is, as they say, thin. You can almost sense an other-worldliness about the place and I truly do believe you can sense the Spirit’s presence in a very special way. I joked with our friends that a phone call to God would be a local call!

And now we get around to the passage from Scripture for this Sunday and the title of this blog. When you read Paul, you need to remember that in the period when he was writing, the Christian community was expecting the imminent return of Jesus. With that in mind, the focus was on preparing yourself spiritually for that coming. The strong desire of Paul to “rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) was quite representative of that school of thought. Paul even charged in his early writings that it was preferable for the widows and the unmarried to remain single and celibate (1 Corinthians 7:8). The assumption was that you could focus completely in your life on serving the Lord and being ready for his coming again. However, the longer Paul remained alive, he began to realize that Jesus wasn’t necessarily coming again as soon as he thought Jesus would! That was the beginning of a shift in the early church to begin making plans to organize and figure out how to serve God in the “in-between” times.

Just because Jesus wasn’t coming again as soon as they thought he would, they still had to figure out how to live in the world and yet not be of the world. Paul stated in Romans 12:2 that believers should not conform to the patterns of the world but rather they should be transformed by the renewal of their mind. In his prayer for his disciples in John 17:16, Jesus asked God not to take them out of the world, but rather to protect them from the evil one. “They are not of this world, even as I am not of this world.” (17:18)

That was the challenge Paul presented to the church in Corinth. That was always the challenge Jesus presented to his disciples. And that is the challenge presented to us today. Just as the thin places I described earlier are a reminder to me that I need to pay attention in this world. If I keep my eye on the things of the world, I miss the wonderful opportunities to experience God’s presence in the ordinary and the extraordinary. If I miss these opportunities to listen for God and to be open to the blowing of the winds of the Spirit, I miss out on real life!

So how do we navigate this life we are called to live? How do we discern the difference between what is true and of eternal value and what is of temporal or passing value? A Contemporary Christian song from the 1970’s says it this way: “Open our eyes, Lord, we want to see Jesus.”  A hymn written in 1895 by Clara Scott says it this way: “Open my eyes that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me.”

Paul said it this way in the opening verse of the passage: “while we are at home in the body, we are away from the Lord — for we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-7) These thin places remind me that it really isn’t about me at all. In those moments when my attention is taken off of myself I can quite literally see the work of God’s hands for what they are… miracles and gifts of love for us. In the breathtaking sight of the sunset in the Rockies or on the beach… in the awe inspiring grandeur of the mountains I am reminded of the words of the Psalmist — “I lift up my eyes to the hills — from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.” (Psalm 121:1-2)

In 1993, when Saint John Paul II visited St Malo’s Retreat Center in the Rocky Mountains and blessed the “Chapel on the Rock” (officially called Saint Catherine of Sienna Chapel), it is said he looked up to the mountains and the words from Psalm 121 sprang from his lips. In this “thin place” he felt the presence of the Eternal and all he could do was offer a psalm of praise. Even though the surroundings had been ravaged by the 2013 floods, when I stepped into the chapel (above) my heart was stirred. When I walked out of the chapel and looked to the mountains, my breath was taken away. I did indeed sense the presence of God in this holy and thin place. However, in order to be open to this opportunity… to be available for the Spirit to move in the midst of that moment… I had to, in the words of Paul, “walk by faith, not by sight.”

Will you join with me, dear reader, as I seek to walk by faith, not by sight? If we open our hearts, look with the eyes of faith, and listen with the ears of faith; who knows what wonders we will experience! I can tell you this though… the more I keep myself open for the movement of the Spirit, the fuller my life becomes as I seek to serve the Lord. Are you ready? Let’s walk!