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 lived and often worked in developed subsidence. Cracks in our walls grew long and deep. Eventually we had to move out so that the builders could move in. They broke up the floor, excavated the ground, underpinned the foundations with concrete, carried out repairs and began to make improvements.

The project then went pear-shaped. Due to an unscrupulous builder, we are still unable to return home three years later. But each time I visit the site, I am reminded how different a workplace it has become since we lived there. Instead of facilitating work that consists largely of research, writing, teaching, hospitality, and family life, our home has become a noisy building site where heavy machinery, and different work skills operate.

Yet I am also reminded that God can be as much at work in ’blue-collar’ as in ‘white-collar’ labour. Moses had been a prince in the court of Pharaoh, but it was only when he later 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 thought God had abandoned him because of a violent yet surreptitious murder he had committed, finds himself called to lead God’s people from slavery into freedom.

Down the ages, Moses’ story has inspired many other freedom leaders. Among them is Martin Luther King, who once declared:

Even 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 are now working – in whatever capacity – on 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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