Holy Ground

The high school youth and I began our Montreat@Home journey the Sunday before last. Since Montreat, our usual summer youth conference site, was unable to host guests this summer, the leadership for the six weeks of high school youth conferences that they hold each summer came together to create a great resource for re-creating a Montreat experience at home. Now, it certainly doesn’t hold a candle to the real thing – being in the mountains of North Carolina, hearing wonderful keynote speakers and preachers, doing energizers with a thousand high school students, meeting up after small group for ice cream at The Huck, meeting new people, or concluding the week with a candlelight worship service around Lake Susan; but it is a great option when none of those things is possible. (Check out the pictures below for the vast difference between this year and last.)

2019 Montreat Youth Conference

2020 Montreat Youth Conference

The theme for this year’s conference was slated to be, “We Are”. In keeping with that theme, our first session was entitled, “We Are Here.” No, we are not “here” at Montreat, but we are “here”. We are gathered virtually all over the country to worship God as we would if we were all able to gather in one space. The speaker for this session, Rev. CeCe Armstrong, reminded us that wherever we are – here or there, Montreat or at home – God is there also. Wherever we are able to gather, whether it was physically distanced in a fellowship hall or via zoom, God was there. She reminded us that the same is true even as we go about our daily lives, whatever that may look like in these strange times. If we are sitting in our houses day in and day out, God is there. If we are masking up to run some errands, God is there. If we are continuing our daily routine as “essential workers,” God is there. Wherever we are, God is there also.

As part of this session, the group was issued a “photo challenge.” Our challenge was the spend some time outside in the coming week, to take our shoes off and take a picture. We are then supposed to post these pictures on social media with the hashtag #holyground. For where we are, God is also; and the place on which we are standing is holy ground.

We invite you to join us in this photo challenge. As you spend some time outside in the next few days, take off your shoes and soak up God’s presence. Take a picture, and e-mail it to me. I’ll compile all of our #holyground pictures and post them on the church’s social media.