Created Sacred. Becoming Holy.

I catch a faint vision of crystalized trees as the morning light dawns. Frosty limbs, icy blades of grass and foggy-thick air whisper of the night’s events and beckon me to delight in the fresh winter scene. I step outside the warmth of my home and take the chilling mist deep into my lungs. I am alive.

The atmosphere is proclaiming its sacredness amidst its stillness. It knows the Designer’s hands. It hears the voice that called it into being. It is not rushing. In the night it kept the pre-determined pace as it’s Master called forth the cold and the wet and set them into place. It obeys now as it waits for morning light to reveal its beauty. But the atmosphere is not wanting us to only notice it’s magnificence. The atmosphere is speaking, declaring, shouting through its silence for our souls to take account of the Glory of God, for that is what makes the atmosphere sacred… not its beauty, but the Artist who spoke its beauty into existence just because He could.

In my mother’s womb I was formed. I was known before I was living. In the darkness I was conceived and designed to carry light, to be light. A billion little details unseen to the naked eye molded together by the Sculptor’s words and breath; DNA, Laminin, Atoms, Blood, Bone….Soul. In pain and struggle I was birthed. The umbilical cord squeezed tight my tiny neck and out I came, blue like this icy morning haze until the cord was released and my breath let out a cry. I was alive.

Not one other human is exactly like me. Not one is exactly like you. Of the trillions of snowflakes that fall in every winter, none are the same. No accidents here. Only perfect, brilliant, intelligent design. All of creation is sacred. The atmosphere, the snow, the sun and moon and stars are sacred because they were created by the Most High Creator. But not all of creation was created to become holy. That is what sets you and me apart from the rest of the heavens and earth. We are created Sacred, but we are made to become Holy.

The word Holy may seem as frigid as today’s morning chill. But it is not cold. Holiness is a fire. Holiness will consume us if we do not pursue it. For God is a consuming fire and He is Holy. That is why creation obeys Him. It knows who is Most Holy and it dares not to dishonor Him.

Thankfully, the Holy One is Kind and He is Love. From His holiness He gently speaks to our darkest places, “Be holy as I am holy.” Not in a hateful-commanding-tone, but in the parental-compelling-tone that teaches, “don’t run out into the busy street or you will die.”

His Holiness is a Perfect-Parental-Love-Fire and our Holiness compels our hearts and minds to live within that Protecting Flame.

To become Holy is to passionately run from the pleasant looking highlights of sin into the Shade-Wings of our Father where our eyes are covered by His love and our ears are comforted by his heartbeat. The plastic-beauty of sin no longer holds its power in that rhythmic, warm and settling place.

To become Holy is to count all this world has to offer as burning ash compared to God’s Wild Goodness. No wealth, no other power, not one single earthly thing can provide feast or freedom like the Goodness of the One True God.

To become Holy is to become Alive in ways no other part of creation can ever be awakened. While the Presence of God is evident throughout creation, He chooses to actually Live in us. We are made to be Holy Havens where the Creator of Life resides.

Does the Presence of God make things and places holy by just being present there? Yes. The burning bush was surrounded by “holy ground” that demanded bare feet. But even that precious ground did not pursue or choose holiness. Only we get to do that.

So to every set of eyes beholding these words: You Are Sacred because you were Created; like the still and glorious morning. Rest in that, but know there is more. You were created to become Holy from the inside out… to be an imager of Holy God. The snow-capped Everest nor the brightest coral sunset can claim that.

Suggested Reading:

Psalm 139: 13-17 “For you created my inmost being, you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body; all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. How precious to me are your thoughts, God! How vast the sum of them!”

I Peter 1:16 “for it is written; ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’”

Hebrews 12: 28 “Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”