{"id":2642,"date":"2023-05-24T08:29:26","date_gmt":"2023-05-24T12:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=2642"},"modified":"2023-05-24T08:30:14","modified_gmt":"2023-05-24T12:30:14","slug":"holy-ground-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2023\/05\/24\/holy-ground-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Holy Ground"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to this reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>.
 
Some years ago, a woman named Patricia Miller, who worked in a hospital emergency room, recounted an experience that changed her life.
 
Things at first didn\u2019t seem to be heading in that direction.
 
She admits that she had \u201clearned to stop crying at the pain around me.  Each day it seemed I was becoming more insensitive to people and their real needs.\u201d  Five years of exposure to the traumatic emotional roller coaster of the ER had taken its toll. 
 
Then, seemingly out of the blue, God intervened.
 
Miller was gathering information about a young woman who had overdosed on drugs.  She had apparently attempted suicide.  The girl\u2019s mother sat nearby as she keyboarded the relevant registration data into her computer. 
 
Miller recalls, \u201cThe mother was unkempt and bleary-eyed.  She had been awakened in the middle of the night by the police to come to the hospital.  She could only speak to me in a whisper.\u201d  The information came slowly \u2013 too slowly for Miller.  \u201cHurry up!<\/em>\u201d she thought to herself.  Her impatience was raw.  She finished the report and jumped up to copy the mother\u2019s medical cards. 
 
\u201cThat\u2019s when God stopped me \u2013 at the copy machine.  He spoke to my heart so clearly:  <\/em>\u2018You didn\u2019t even look at her.\u2019  He repeated it gently:  \u2018You didn\u2019t even look at her.\u2019\u201d<\/em>
 
Suddenly she felt a surge of grief \u2013 the grief that God must have felt for this woman and her daughter.  She bowed her head.  \u201cI\u2019m sorry, Lord. I am so sorry.\u201d
 
Patricia went back to the distraught woman.  She sat down in front of her, and covered her hands with her own.  \u201cI looked into her eyes with all the love that God could flood through me and said, \u2018I care.  Don\u2019t give up.\u2019\u201d 
 
The mother wept.  She poured out her heart.  She had spent years as a single mom struggling to make sense of her daughter\u2019s anger, rebellion, and addiction.  Miller writes, \u201cFinally, she looked up and thanked me.  Me\u2026the coldhearted one with no feelings.\u201d 
 
She concludes, \u201cMy attitude changed that night.  My Jesus came right into the workplace.  He came to see me free to care again.\u201d
 
It\u2019s interesting that historians have never been able to identify, with certainty, the so-called sacred places connected with the life and ministry of Jesus. 
 
Despite what the tour guides say, no one knows the precise spot where he was born, the exact terrain where he fed more than 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish, the place just outside the walls of Jerusalem where he was crucified, the spot of ground where he told Nicodemus late one night that he had to be spiritually reborn, and even the garden where he was buried, only to emerge alive on the third day.
 
And that\u2019s a good thing, too.  Otherwise we would be tempted to turn them all into theme parks. 
 
But that doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t holy places in the world.
 
Wherever you are when God intervenes in your life, opening your eyes and jumpstarting your flatlined heart \u2013 whether that happens in the middle of traffic, in the checkout line at Target, on your family room couch, in the back pew of a dimly lit sanctuary, or standing over the emergency room copy machine \u2013 you are truly on holy ground. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to this reflection as a podcast, click here. Some years ago, a woman named Patricia Miller, who worked in a hospital emergency room, recounted an experience that changed her life. Things at first didn\u2019t seem to be heading in that direction. She admits that she had \u201clearned to stop crying at the pain around me.  Each day it seemed I was becoming… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[600],"class_list":["post-2642","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hearing-god"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2642"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2645,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2642\/revisions\/2645"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2642"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2642"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2642"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}