Holy Ground 

God on Monday
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‘Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law(…). There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush’ (Exodus 3.1-2). 

Reflection

The house I live and often work in has subsidence. The associated cracks in our walls have become long and deep. In the next few days, we will need to move out to allow builders to move in. They will break out the floor, excavate the ground, and underpin the foundations with concrete. Once the building is secure, they will fill in the cracks and carry out other repairs and improvements.

For several months, therefore, our home will be a very different kind of workplace. Instead of facilitating work that consists largely of research, writing, teaching, hospitality, music rehearsal, and family life, it will become a noisy building site where heavy machinery, and different work skills, will operate.

But God will be as much at work in the manual labour as in the non-manual labour that preceded it. Moses had been a prince in the court of Pharaoh, but it was only later, when he was working as an agricultural labourer, that the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in the burning bush. God even tells Moses that the ground he is standing on – ground that would have been strewn and contaminated with the excrement of the sheep he tended – is holy.

Here, then, an ordinary, everyday workplace turns out to be the sphere of divine activity. And an ordinary everyday worker who thinks God had abandoned him because of a violent yet surreptitious murder he had committed, finds himself called to lead God’s people out of slavery to freedom.

Down the ages, Moses’ story has inspired many other freedom leaders. Among them is the civil rights activist Martin Luther King, the 60th anniversary of whose 'I have a dream' speech' is this year. He once declared:

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, go on out and sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures; sweep streets like Handel or Beethoven composed music; sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry; sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause to say: ‘here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well’.

King understood that all ground, even streets strewn and contaminated with litter and injustice, is holy ground.

Echoing his words, may it in future be said of all who have worked – in whatever capacity – below and above the ground of our house, ‘here laboured great workers who did their job well’.

Response

Imagine your work, however ordinary it may seem, as holy ground. What difference will this make to your work this week?

Prayer

Lord, thank you that our ordinary tasks are holy tasks. Amen.

This Week's Author 

God on Monday is produced in partnership with the Church of England. The reflections are based on the scriptural readings designated for the next Sunday in the Church's lectionary. You can sign up to Faith in Business here to receive each God on Monday instalment.     

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