Story
22nd July 2024
Donna Jennings
When Jacob awoke, he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I didn’t know it”.
He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place.
This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven!”
Genesis 28:16-17
Surely the Lord was in this place- did they know it?
A black cooking spatula, numerous medicine packs, photos of loved ones, asthmatic inhalers, a child’s dummy, boys’ socks, girls’ hair band, a collection of foreign coins, a single baby’s bootee.
Over the past year I have been walking with God and others along the prayer-soaked pilgrim paths towards some of Ireland’s holy wells. These are just some of the personal items, prayerfully laid and prophetically cradled at a well north-west Ireland.
As I prayerfully pondered this pain-filled, prayer-soaked place, I imagined the individual mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, siblings, friends who carried and laid each item here. Journeying to this sacred place searching for that Celtic ‘thin space’ for hope and healing from beyond this world.
And I prayerfully asked…. did the Lord make Himself known to these people in this place?
Surely the Lord is in this place – do we know it?
What is it that transforms a place into a thin space, where the veil between the heavenly and earthly realms becomes a dynamic threshold of transformation?
As people of faith, we believe in the encompassing omnipresence of Creator God that permeates all times, all places.
We celebrate in Christ Emmanuel, that God incarnate entered our human time, in His human place.
From the Scripture’s stories, we anticipate that God through His Spirit has always accompanied and appeared to His people within the thin spaces of their time, their place.
Jacob, a fugitive was escaping the land that was attached to the blessing he had just stolen. Yet when God meets with Jacob, the place of ‘Luz’ becomes the site of the thin space that transforms Jacob’s journey of faith. So significant was this encounter, that Jacob prayer-fully renames the place, Beth-El house of God, (Genesis 28.19).
The real places, like Luz, that become our thin spaces root us and remind us that God the Father Almighty, the Creator and sustainer of all things, things seen and unseen (Col 1.16), has revealed Himself at various times and in various ways, most powerfully through His Son (Hebrews 12.1-2) – has also chosen to appear to us, walk alongside us, converse with us, to use us within our real time, within our real places.
As you pause into prayer now, at this time, this place in which ways can you say “Surely God is in this place – I know it…”
Surely the Lord has been in my places – I remember it!
We all have places (like Luz) that become thin spaces (like Beth-El) in our pilgrimage of faith. These places matter because they become memory milestones that root and direct us as His faith-filled people across this island.
I cannot re-experience my childhood certainty that God whispered my name in Silent Valley; or the intense wonder at Jesus’ resurrection in Greystones kids’ club. The sense of trembling awe and overwhelming surrender that I knew in Carrigart age 14 and clarity of His call that compelled me in Dundonald are a faded memory. I cannot reconstruct the pervasive peace that held me outside the clinic in Newtownards as we received our son’s diagnosis of learning disability…
…but the real places remain as memory milestones – so I can say, surely the Lord was in that place, at that time and I knew it… Surely He is present in this time, this place of my journey – Lord, show me Your face!
God in His kindness often invites us to prayerfully revisit the real places where He met us in a thin space.
Jacob named the place where God appeared to him as Bethel (Gen 28). After twenty-two years he revisits this place to pray, worship and remember the appearance of God at that pivotal time in his life. (Gen 35.1-15)
Peter is met again by Jesus, back on the Galilee fishing shores where he first heard and responded in faith to the call to follow. In the same place three years later, he recalls, repents, and recommits. (John 21.1-17)
Jesus too, sensing the reality of the cross, returns to the place of his baptism to prayerfully remember the Spirit’s descent, recall the Father’s delight and recommit to His divine identity and destiny. (John 10.40)
Where are the places that held ‘thin spaces’ on your pilgrim journey? Can you name them, and prayerfully recall and remember them… could you plan to revisit them?
Surely God is in this place – I will make it known!
When we live into the spiritual reality that God’s time and place has become interlocked with our time and place… When we take King Jesus’ claim that “all authority in heaven and earth belongs to me”…
Then, we learn to perceive our earthly places through heaven’s authority and availability. We prayerfully ponder how we might become the pilgrim paths that lead to the thin space where heaven meets earth, right here, right now.
How can our prayer-filled conversations, friendships, and welcome become the holy wells where our neighbours, friends and colleagues might lay their precious hopes and dreams, fears, and pains?
How can our prayer-filled presence, questions, contributions at the school Board meeting, the business planning table, or the finance committee become the paths through which heaven’s resources can transform the places of earth?
Surely God is in this place of Ireland – we pray together:
In this time, in our place from Belfast to Ballina, from Gorey to Garvagh, within Enniskillen and Enniscorthy, Dundrum and Dublin, Ireland is receiving the unshakeable Kingdom. Together, we ponder and proclaim, “Surely the Lord has been in this place, is now in this place, and will still be in this place – we want to know it!”
So we pray together, Your Kingdom come in these earthly places here, Your Kingdom come in our time now… just as it is in heaven.”
Amen, we agree, let it be so.
Take time in prayer and ponder these questions raised by Donna:
As you pause into prayer now, at this time, this place in which ways can you say “Surely God is in this place – I know it…”
Where are the places that held ‘thin spaces’ on your pilgrim journey? Can you name them, and prayerfully recall and remember them… could you plan to revisit them?
How can our prayer-filled conversations, friendships, and welcome become the holy wells where our neighbours, friends and colleagues might lay their precious hopes and dreams, fears, and pains?
How can our prayer-filled presence, questions, contributions at the school Board meeting, the business planning table, or the finance committee become the paths through which heaven’s resources can transform the places of earth?