Is Here

Where do you sense God? When you need to draw close to God, where do you go? Physically marking the geographic presence of God before the Temple was very important in the Old Testament. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Moses and others all built altars to mark the space where they had met with God. Altars made wonderful reminders of the experience of God?s presence when memory might be tempted to fade. We can have certain places where the veil between God and our world is thinned. We can even mark these places. Altars were built because people needed to move from these spaces. They needed to continue on in life and responsibility. Further, God could not be contained at a specific location. Likewise for us, we must not get stuck thinking that we can only encounter God in a specific space or that some spaces are off limits to God. Luke?s account of Jesus? birth shows us that the love of God has come near in Christ, has come here in Christ?and that here can be a variety of spaces. Let?s look at four found in this Gospel.