Surely the Lord is in This Place

By Ronnie Bray

In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints we have the concept of sacred
space and sacred time. Genesis 28 lays before our understanding the perfect
pattern for our worship services by its description of Jacob at Bethel.

In that place Jacob dreams of a ladder reaching from heaven to earth with angels
ascending and descending. On waking Jacob declared,

“‘Surely the LORD is in this place, and I did not know it.’ And he was afraid and
said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and
this is the gate of heaven.’” [Genesis 28:16-17]

Is this how we feel about our meeting house? Is this the house of God and is our
God surely in this place?

There are special times God visits His people, and there are special times when we
invite him to visit us. Invocations invariably contain pleas to Almighty God to
come among us and make his presence known through the Holy Ghost so that each
of us feels that divine presence as we attend, sit, worship, renew, re-commit, and
are infused with words of heavenly inspiration.

Those places where God meets with his people is “holy ground” and when we
enter this sacred space we draw nigh unto God, we enter his presence, we cross the
threshold from the secular and enter the sacred, moving from the common to the
uncommon, and from the profane to the Holy.

When we feel His presence, then we are worshipping as God requires us to

worship.

© 2010 – Ronnie Bray