Come.
Freely and Lightly series, #4.
“Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”
~ Matthew 11:28-30 msg
“Thin places.” Have you come across that term before? It’s often applied to geographic locations that feel particularly sacred, an abiding presence, holy ground. The veil between heaven and earth is gossamer thin, where you can almost reach your hand through that delicate membrane and touch the other side. Maybe you’ve felt that sense, either in travels or closer to home: not a moment, but a place.
Twenty years ago Kellie and I moved our family to Colorado Springs for two years, and I found a place like that: a chapel that seemed to hold a weighty, mystical Presence, no matter how many times I returned. The Old Testament had a name for this, the Shekinah Glory, and it was localized in various places: the Tent of Meeting, the Tabernacle, the Ark of the Covenant, and later the Temple. Later still, Jesus expanded on that viewpoint speaking to the woman at the well:
“Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem [not bound to place]…. A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit… (Jn 4:21-23).
Jesus championed and demonstrated a heavenly reality that was omni-present, accessible to all, and incarnated in his person. In effect, he invited his listeners to inhabit the Thin Place in all places and mediate the Thin Place to all people. I suspect that the human quest could even be defined in these terms and that the lack of this realmic interpenetration is the source of all human weariness.
I have spent several posts in this series exploring ways in which deep soul-weariness shows up in our lives. Jesus seemed to profoundly understand that, for all peoples and in all eras, we must face—and transcend—times of fatigue and burn out in our yearning for the Thin Place. It’s an essential part of the divine dance in which he draws us close in healing and intimacy.
Whether drained spiritually, emotionally, physically, or some combination, our encounter of the wearisome illusion of separation is meant to be redemptive. The disillusions of spiritual performance, tribalism, and cognitive conformity have served us well by exposing the “illusions” of these roads and awakening the desperate need for another! Soul fatigue is meant to bring us to the place where our relationship with God, self, and the world can be fundamentally realigned.
And here’s the new road, Jesus says: Come to me! Draw near, come close, ease your head onto my chest and feel my heartbeat. Enter this all-enfolding embrace and find your true Self in this holy space. Let go of the crushing need to be right or to work your way through the maze of religious performance. It’s so much simpler than that; it’s just about being with me. It’s about being loved beyond all reason. It’s about recovering your soul in Sacred Connection.
This is indeed the deepest cry of every human heart, no matter how deeply buried, skewed, or scarred. All sin and suffering on the planet is the result of misguided attempts to satisfy this craving for the divine embrace. Every violent act, every relational breach, every self-destructive impulse, even the ravaging of our natural world: like a child’s tantrum or teenager’s cutting or despot’s cruelty, we’re all just acting out the pain of separation. And Jesus says simply, Come. Be separated no more. In truth, there is no separation except of your own making.
Here was Paul’s appeal…and he should know! If anyone had cause to feel unworthy or spiritually burned out, it was Paul’s alter-ego Saul (Acts 7-9). But once this man of desperate violence encountered the depths of divine love, he could only exclaim…
Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ’s love for us? There is no way! Not trouble, not hard times, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not bullying threats, not backstabbing, not even the worst sins listed in Scripture…. I’m absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic, today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has embraced us. (Rom 8:35-39 msg)
The message of the Thin Place is that between you and God, there is no “between” (as one mystic declares). “Your life is now hidden with Christ in God,” Paul told the Colossians. Jesus’ vision for our union with God is nothing short of explosive: “May they also be in us,” he prayed before his death, “I in them and you in me.” Thin indeed.
I’m interested in visiting some of the renowned Thin Places of the world… but I’m also interested in being a Thin Place in the world. I hope you will too.
contemplate
Journal your musings to these questions:
Where do you feel separated from God?
What would it take to drop that illusion and accept God’s radical acceptance?
How is God inviting you to inhabit the Thin Place for yourself and mediate it for others?
Takeaway
Go Thin.