It says ground on which you stand, present tense. Present tense. Exactly where you are, whatever it is. The ground that you stand on in the here and the now is holy ground. Now that word holy is ambiguous, at least in two ways.
One way is it can refer to the ground as being holy, Or it can refer to the ground as maybe. Maybe one. And that's the way I look at it. What that old testament prophetess the message that they got from the Lord, however time it's going to be. But, anyway, they got the message in some way that got them into the most awful not awful, but the most trying circumstances.
It's a desert. After you've been out in Arizona or pardon me, maybe that's not the best way of referring to Arizona. Chamber of Commerce wouldn't like that. But it doesn't mean a place where you pick up a bit of ground and it's all sand. It means a desert, an abandoned place as you see just as soon as you leave Jerusalem.
It's arid, it's rocky, and it's hot, and sand is in the air, the sun blazes. It's just awful and above all boring living. I emphasize that word boring. It's monotonous to the nth degree, monotonous. Day in and day out you have the same hot sun coming up and you have the same awful heat at midday and you have the same awful cold at night.
It's a miserable life, not because of anything happening, because nothing happens. It's absolutely boring, monotonous. And then, look, god speaks and says to him, that this ground on which you're standing, all this monotony, all these boring conditions, all this land where nothing happens, All you do is put up with it day after day, and there's no changes. That is holy ground. It's holy because it is holy.
God is there. And it's holy because it can make you holy, can bring you back to God. And that's our destiny. This is Old Testament stuff, remember. And there's nothing and our blessed Lord didn't say anything to contradict this.
He said, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof. Give us this day our daily bread. There's a tremendous lesson here for all of us. We have we have plenty of stories from the concentration camps. Frankel is one of the outstanding ones who went through it all.
Of how people survived in those camps and others didn't. Not that they merely died, but that they committed suicide. Now the question is, why was the difference? Kell difference? What was the diff They all went in there about the same, many of them at least, a good fraction of them.
And as Frankl points out, the recognition that there is meaning to this, that there is some significance, that it is not absurd. Life is not absurd. Not for anyone who hears the voice that says, the ground on which you stand is holy ground. Now I wasn't very old before I began to hear people saying, I am bored. Life is monotonous.
It's even monotonous being president of The United States. Everything in a way becomes monotonous if you repeat it enough. Anything and everything. It's one of the things you hear all around you today. I am bored with my job.
I am dead sick of running this house, doing that shopping every week, and you bring home a truckload of groceries, and my God, by the sixth day of the week, you you're out of food again, and the whole thing goes over again. I'm speaking because I there's nothing I hate more than to shop. And to think of these men and women who go into these stores week after week and go through that same routine of pushing the darn cart all around, I take my hat off of them. They are carrying a cross even if the cross is on wheels. Life is monotonous if you take life seriously.
It has its high parts, of course. And remember, the church is very human. Why do you think that we have all of these feasts? Why do you think that we used to have more during the week? It was to bring people back.
The church is trying to say, look, just take a minute and and and and just pull out, pull apart, get away from that mountain you're trying to climb, and take a look at what you're doing. Draw off a little bit. Don't drown in your own life which is being smothered by what you call boredom and monotony and routine and getting nowhere and dead end careers. You know all you know all the words. This conflict, this is absolutely the consequence of people not knowing who they are and where they're going.
Because if you know who you are and if you know where you're going, then life will not be monotonous. It won't be boring. It will you will not be killed by routine because you will know that what you call that life that is boring and monotonous routine is holy ground. Now in what sense do we mean this? This isn't something nebulous, without meaning.
It has an absolute concrete meaning. It means you understand that the only reality to life is present tense today, And that your salvation, in other words, becoming holy, must be accomplished in the here and the now, and its individual, basically, ultimately. It drives me nuts to hear the individual who knocked. The the only reality are individuals. All of this talk about society and community, these are abstract terms.
They're just only in an idea. You can't sue society. And a corporation is a can be sued only because it's a legal person, and a person means individuality. So let's knock, let's knock, knock, and I know they say fair person. But the point is the only reality we're dealing with is the individual man and woman.
Our blessed Lord put it very simply. I call my sheep by name, by name. Not by society, not by community, not by all these ships, but by name, by name. He knows me by my name. This is it to heart.
Don't look to yesterday. That's history. Don't look to tomorrow. That's unreal. It ain't here.
Forget it. This there's nothing wrong about planning. That's part of the present tense. But let grasp the present tense, not in some kind of I'm okay, you're okay myth and froth and moonshine, but the reality of the present. The ground on which you stand is holy ground.
Recognize it and look up to God and say, Lord, behold your servant. What do you want me to do with it? And you'll know you'll know. And Moses had the same experience. The thing is that the thing will become transformed.
I have never heard a religious I mean, contemplative when they used to live community life, when the when it was a life of utter routine. I at solemn when that bell rang, the monastery bell, whatever the monk was doing, he flopped it down like that. Now some of you may know what what that that's a great sacrifice. Say, I just wanna finish this sentence. I just wanna do this.
I just wanna look that word up. No. When that when that bell rang, bang. And that had been going on for centuries, centuries. You talk about monotonous and routine.
I have never heard that kind of a religious express any doubt about being bored or by about dying of monotony or of suffering routine. I never heard it. Because, you see, the whole business was illuminated. It was shining forth with the light of Christ. That is the answer.
The ground on which you stand is holy ground when it's illuminated with the light of Christ. There'll be no more monotony. Routine will pass. You will not die of boredom. You will truly live.
In the name of the father, son, the holy spirit. Amen.