By The Rev. Susan Balfour

Beloved,

Grace and peace in the name of Christ! Your faithfulness and evident love for one another is a testament to God’s goodness at work in you, and I give thanks for that!

You may have heard the term “mountain-top experience.” These are moments of profound spiritual clarity and refers to the many instances in scripture of people meeting God on the mountain. Moses, Elijah, Jesus—all went up the mountain where they communed with God.

In the story of the Transfiguration, Jesus takes Peter and James and John for a walk in the hills. It was a perfectly ordinary thing to do on a perfectly ordinary day—until it wasn’t! So often we make pilgrimages to seek those “mountain-top” experiences, trying to make them happen on our own time, our own terms, as though we could make an appointment with the Holy Spirit. Imagine Peter, James, and John setting out that morning saying, let’s go meet Moses and Elijah on our walk today! But the Holy doesn’t have a Google calendar. The Holy shows up when we least expect it. That’s the blessing of it: holy moments pop up in the midst of the ordinary ones. One moment you’re going about your business, and in the next moment, Jesus shows up. The key is remembering Jesus’ words: let those with eyes see and those with ears hear. Without the eyes and ears to perceive these holy moments, we run the risk of missing them entirely. That underscores the importance of cultivating our ability to sense the Holy—taking time each day to intentionally look for God in the world. Stop and take a good look at a leaf; look a stranger in the eye; listen to the birdsong; marvel at the clouds. John Calvin argues that nature itself is a divine revelation, speaking to us of God’s majesty and goodness in the wondrous creation we’ve come to see as “ordinary.” But that is, after all, the very place and time God shows up!

As we continue our Lenten journey, I pray that you sense the Holy in the midst of the Ordinary at least for a moment each day, and that it blesses you deeply.

In Christ,

Rev. Susan