Sacred Space – Vanderbilt University
Recently I traveled to Nashville and visited with a couple of our families at the Vanderbilt Hospitals. It’s never fun going to the hospital, usually it’s serious, somber, sometimes it’s sad. While I was at Vanderbilt I seized the opportunity to raid their Divinity Library and sit among some great books while studying for a sermon. It was refreshing to be in a beautiful library overlooking a park-like campus.
I left the library and went across the way to a chapel. It was apparent that the chapel was built at a time in Vanderbilt’s history when the sacred was valued a bit more. This enormous sanctuary was a small piece of the sacred among an institution seemingly devoted to the secular. What made that place even more holy was a group of students who had sought retreat during their lunch hour to pray. Fifteen students among thousands pausing in that place to pray – I was standing on holy ground. A second visit to the hospital and I traded the warmth of that place for the sterility of fluorescent lights and lab coats. But my encounter with our divine God in a moment of pause carried with me that day.
These divine moments, seizing the sacred among the secular, are what a lifestyle of worship is about. Carrying Christ with us into sterile and dreary places is the act of a lifestyle of worship. These are the kinds of moments we want to share here at church. One of these sacred sharing places is our worship room. I’ve posted a picture and a thought from my day and encourage you to do the same. Let us claim this year for the Lord and take him with us throughout. Let us live lives of worship, carrying Christ with us always! We make the secular sacred through the presence of Christ in us.
Vanderbilt's Benton Chapel
