It's 5:05 and I can't sleep. My four year old asked me a question recently that I can't seem to get off my mind, "Mom, what is holy?" My quick reply, "Well, God is holy." (as if an answer like that would fly with a child...please). "Yes, but mom, what IS holy?"

Not gonna lie...I blanked. The only thing going through my mind was, "holy...is not me." I posted "what do I know about holy" to fb just to see what others had to say about the issue. Seems to me that all any of us really know about holy is that it isn't us.

SOOO...where do all wise people turn when they need a quick answer?...yep, I googled it.

Holiness - "A state of being sacred"

Sacredness - "Something that is venerable" (say what?)

Venerable - "impressive - due to age, character, wisdom or value."

Ok, so maybe google wasn't the best place to start. In Exodus 3:4-6 Moses takes off his shoes, because he is standing on holy ground. Does anyone else find it frustrating that dirt can be holy, yet we find it so difficult?

When the temple was being built, God instructed the room entered to be known as the holy of holies. The deepest room in the temple was the Most Holy Place....the place where God was. So is holiness all about proximity? God is holy...impressive, His presence demands change. The closer we get to God the more holy we become...the more our lives demand change. We become impressive in the sense that just as being in the presence of God changes us, being in our presence influences others. I envision this like getting so close to God that we become stained by him.

Ok, my new definition of holy- Being so close to God that I become stained by Him. I think I will go add that to Wikipedia now :-) Thanks for entertaining my middle of the night ramblings.

Mark 4

Spent some time thinking about this story...

Jesus asks His disciples to go out in a boat to get away from the crowds. The storm comes, the disciples freak out, Jesus fixes everything. But what I've been thinking about is all the people in all the other boats. The bible specifically says that other boats went out as well.

The disciples see, first hand, the power of God to change their circumstance. But what about everyone else that is going through the same storm. Sure, they may see the waves calm down and the wind die down, but they don't see that all of nature has just submitted to the voice of its Creator.

They don't realize the miracle they are experiencing because Jesus is not in their boat, He's in ours.

The only way they will know is if we tell them.

There is power in the word of our testimony, because as we express what God has been in our life, we allow others to recognize Him in their own.