Christian Reflection and Prayer

 “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing
is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).

Moses encountered God at the burning bush. What’s the first
thing that God instructed him? “Take off your sandals, for the
place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).
There are many ways to understand this command, and here
is one of them: God was telling Moses — and all of us — to
remove anything that separates us from Him. We are standing
on holy ground – ground ripe for miracles and holiness. The
only thing it will take to fully activate the holiness of our lives
is to let go of anything holding us back from God.

We all have our hang-ups. We are all born with shortcomings.
Our job is to remove the barriers that separate us from God.
For some of us it might be a tendency to get angry. For
another person, it might be a harmful addiction. For another
person, it might be a false belief or a leftover fear that no
longer serves us. Still, for others, it might be an attachment to
material wealth, honor, power, or any of the other many
obstacles in our walk with God. We need to lift these things
off us and out of our lives. We need to grind them up and
destroy them.

What’s keeping you from God? What’s holding you back from
being your best? Remove the obstacles and break through the
barriers, so that like Moses, you might come close to God and
merit the privilege of doing His work on the holy ground of our
lives. Take away the obstacles between you and God, and
activate your best life yet.

With prayers for shalom, peace,
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein

Verse

The wolf shall live with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down
with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.
Isaiah 11:6

Voice

The social order we seek is not a utopia. It is a world where
political life is understood in terms of active participation by
the governors and the governed in the realization of the
common good.
Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Prayer

God, we yearn for the day you will govern this world. We
yearn for the day when the wolf shall live with the lamb, and
the governors shall work with the governed, and the little child
shall lead them. We pray you would sustain your people as
they seek this common good. Amen.

HOW ABOUT FERGUSON? (1)

Michael Brown was a good kid, by accounts of those who
knew him during his short life. But that’s not why his death
is tragic. His death isn’t tragic because he was a sweet kid
on his way to college the next week. His death is tragic
because he was a human being and his life mattered. The
Good Kid narrative might provoke some sympathy but what
it really does is support the lie that as a rule black people,
black men in particular, have a norm of violence or criminal
behavior. The Good Kid narrative says that this kid didn’t
deserve to die because his goodness was the exception to
the rule. This is wrong. This kid didn’t deserve to die
because he was a human being and black lives matter.

This post originally appeared at janeewoods.com. Follow
Janee on Twitter at @janeepwoods.