God in Thin Places

In his book, Simply Christian, N.T. Wright describes three ways of seeing the relationship between the realm of heaven (or the divine) and the realm of earth. The pantheist seems them as the same realm, and the deist seems them as totally separate and distant from each other. The Christian viewpoint, Wright contends, is to see the two realms as distinct, but near — overlapping and interlocking. It is in these thin places where heaven and earth interconnect — where the realm of heaven actually breaks into the realm of earth — that God is known to us.

Scripture is full of such places, beginning of course with the Garden, where God walks and talks with the adam creatures He has made as His image, until they break the relationship and push the realms apart. But throughout Genesis we see God continuing to break through in thin places: talking with Abram, at the stone at Bethel where Jacob sees the ladder between heaven and earth, and again when Jacob wrestles with God and is renamed Israel. Exodus, too, is full of thin places: the burning bush, the pillar of cloud and fire, and most of all the Tabernacle upon which the shekinah glory rests. And throughout the First Testament, the tabernacle and its successor, the temple, are the most prominent of thin places — where God meets with His people.

The Second Testament relates the good news that God is not satisfied with meeting with His people in only isolated thin places, but has invaded the realm of earth Himself. Jesus becomes the ultimate thin place — the place where God is known most fully and completely — replacing the temple, and expanding it beyond imagining. All of us who are "in Christ" have become living stones of this new ultimate temple — the Body of Christ — and with the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the thin places proliferate, until we see the final culmination of the New Jerusalem coming down out of Heaven, where the entire city — indeed the entire earth — is awash in the presence of God, dwelling among His people, "as the waters cover the sea".

Dear Lord, You indeed are the God who has made Yourself known to me in numerous thin places: at the Communion Table, during the public reading of the Bible, in the communal liturgies of the church, in songs of worship, in the deep assurance of Your upholding strength in the face of pain and uncertain health, in the ongoing love of a good woman, in stories of grace, of death and resurrection.

Open my eyes that I may see the thin places all around, where your presence fairly shouts to those who can hear, where every bush is ablaze with the Glory of God. And transform my heart and my life that I too may be, in some small measure, a thin place — a place where Your presence is seen by those around me.