There are physical places that do
something to our souls, that stir something inside of us. Often we even talk
about those places in spiritual terms–those places evoke something that feels
connected to God, or the divine, or whatever you choose to call it. As I’ve
written before, I learned a few years back that Celtic Christians–Christians in
Ireland many centuries ago–called those places “Thin Places,” places where
heaven and earth touch, where access to God seems more possible, more
immediate.

Those moments are wonderful when they
come.

But we don’t live there.

We don’t live our daily lives in
transcendent moments, watching the sunset or stargazing or hiking in the woods.
We live our lives amidst dirty dishes and, for some of us, dirty diapers,
amidst piles of laundry and the demands of email and phone calls and all the
other mundane details of daily life. And in addition to those daily tasks that
feel far from the serenity of a nature walk, there are times in our lives when
we live amidst crisis–amidst illness or job loss or divorce or accidents or
even death.

God is present on the mountaintops
and in the sunsets. I agree with the Celtic Christians who say there are “thin
places” out there. But honestly, I’ve never been transformed, I’ve never been permanently
changed, by standing on a mountaintop. I’ve simply been inspired. I’ve been
awed by the grandeur of creation.

But when I have gone back to the
valley of daily life–whether that’s the valley of dirty dishes and not enough
sleep and writing deadlines, or the deeper valley of dashed dreams and
suffering and death–when I have gone back to the valley of daily life, those
moments on the mountaintop have not sustained me. It has been finding the “thin
places” in everyday life–seeing Jesus in the midst of wound care and cancer treatments,
in the midst of breastfeeding and potty training, hearing Jesus talk to me
about what love looks like, about what hope entails… It’s in those “thin
places,” that my life has been changed.

(These reflections are taken from a
talk I gave in Virginia Beach on Friday.)