The Secular and The Sacred

A few years ago I did a series of posts about the silly (i.e. secular) and sacred questions that were popping up in my mind.  I never got any real answers to my questions but one.  The answer I received to a question I had not explicitly asked was this, yes.  Yes was my answer.

But what was the question?  At the end of my posts, but certainly not my questions, the only question that I really wanted an answer to was this; God, are you in all things? In all things labeled secular? In all things labeled sacred? In all things labeled silly? In all things labeled distressing? In all things labeled perplexing? In all things labeled joy? God are you in all things?  Yes was my answer.

What is the difference between the secular and the sacred?  I propose to you this answer; nothing. God is present in both, he is present in all and to take it a step further I believe, through life experience and observation, that there is no such distinction with him unless he says so.  I don't believe God lives according to our distinctions of what is secular versus what is sacred.

Over at 365 I am featuring the 'secular' and the 'sacred' holidays that happen every day. Yes, every single day there is a minimum of one 'holiday' celebrated.  On any given day life could be highlighting a debilitating disease that needs awareness and ice cream sundaes, sacred and silly. Is God in both of those?  Yes.

Living in a Christian bubble we can too easily forget that God is in all things.  That nothing has escaped his indwelling presence.  Christians tend to 'demonize' the things that rub them the wrong way, offend their idea of what scripture says, people who don't fit the cookie cutter religion (American) Christianity has become, etc.  Newsflash: God is in all things. Even the things we don't or can't understand.  Even the things that, on the surface, appear as if evil has won over. Yes, even in evil God is present.  Mind blown yet?  If not perhaps this next thought will do it. What if something we call secular God actually calls sacred?  What if?  And what if what we might call sacred God actually considers secular?  I think there's a good possibility that the 'what if' is an actuality. How could I think and say this?  Because God has already told us that he and we differ.  “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts." Again, God doesn't live according to our ideas and ways. God operates according to his ways and methods and nothing escapes his touch, his involvement, his very presence.

Nothing escapes God which has to mean that our labels of secular and sacred don't work. It is only God's ideas of secular and sacred that matter and I get the feeling, again through life experience and observation, that he is a lot more generous with the sacred label than we are.  I've decided to leave the labeling up to God, he's already proven he's better at it.  All he asks me, and you, to do is to watch for him and see him show up in all things. Yes, all things.