Category Archives: prayer

holy of holies: the Presence is closer than we think

Posted on by February 21, 2025

The sunlight of longer days in February produces the same effect as caffeine to someone who never drinks it. Beams splash across the floor and the table, and suddenly everything is brighter, more hopeful, and ambition takes dangerous proportions.

I could plant the celery. We could let the chickens out of the coop. Never mind that it’s below freezing at night; the expanded hours of sunshine throw logic and reason out the window and we start to dream again. I could do this, I could do that, I could do anything.

holy of holies: the Presence is closer than we think | Shannon Guerra

It reminds me of wisdom I learned many years ago: One should never mix an extra shot of espresso with writing the week’s to-do list, because the superpowers from Monday’s latte might become the hole you can’t dig yourself out of by Friday.

By Tuesday I’m already wondering about that as I putter around, cleaning the house between helping kids with school.

“How’s it going up there?” Vin asks as I stop by his desk on the way to drop off laundry.

“My mind is ambitious and wants to do things,” I tell him, “but my body is like Nooo, it wants to get a blanket and lay down on the couch.”

By Tuesday, I don’t want to clean the bathroom or put away laundry. I don’t want to edit three more chapters or format paragraphs or change graphics. I don’t really even want to read email, or journal, or type.

I want to take a bath. I want to shut off the notifications, close the door, dim the light. Turn down the noise and rest.

It’s like the mom-version of the Holy of Holies. This is the sacred space that’s quiet and rarely accessed, and only then once all the sacrifices have been made to get there. We’ve made atonement for sins through the washing of many loads of laundry and dishes, and we silently approach, exhausted, face down, knowing our need for His presence.

The real Holy of Holies, of course, was the innermost part of the Temple of Jerusalem, where God’s presence dwelt. It was the most sacred space, separated by a thick curtain (“the veil”) from the also-but-not-quite-as-sacred space just outside. Only a certain priest could go in, and he could only do it once a year. Praise God, bath nights are more frequent than that.

But also, if you know about the death of Jesus, you know that when He said, “It is finished,” that veil was torn from top to bottom. So we all have access now because the Presence erupted forth and landed within each of us who have invited Him in.

Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

– 1 Corinthians 3:16

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?

– 1 Corinthians 6:19

So now His Presence dwells within us and our hearts are the Holy of Holies. And this is maybe too big of a thought for a tired Tuesday, or a busy Thursday, or a frantic Friday. But it’s still true, and something we should wrestle with until we can wrap our minds around it.

Meanwhile on that tired Tuesday, there are three hours to go until the bath, the dim lights, the restful retreat. He is there in the midst of the exhaustion and to do list, so for the joy set before me – which is not just the quiet bath, but also the accomplishment of a project that is so close to finally being finished – I’ll work on these last twenty pages.

But first I’ll run downstairs to refill my water and grab the phone charger, then come back upstairs to drink that water while reading a few posts in my email. An hour later, I’ll realize I forgot the charger on the first trip and run back down for it again. Because even when the joy is set before me, I tend to get pretty distracted with details.

We must get delivered from ourselves, and His presence is the very thing that will prune us.

– Michael Freeland Miller, His House, His Presence

On Wednesday I am short on time at the desk (“On Wednesday,” she says, as though every other day has looooads of time) and Bingley the Small Puma jumps up and demands attention while I am holding a book in my left hand and typing as fast as possible with my right.

This book has passages that I need to get in me, that might become part of the post I’m working on – or they might not, but the message is definitely flavoring the stew. But Bingley gets right in my face and doesn’t care that my hands are already full or that I’ll need to go back and edit the extra vowels he made me type along with the constant need to insert all the h’s I missed because my keyboard has something miniscule stuck in it (probably a cat hair) and for three years now the H key has been capricious, which means sometimes it works fine and other times it makes me type in a Cockney accent.

Bingley cares about none of those things because his sole focus is the presence of the one who loves him. And if I’m at the desk, then the desk is the sacred space he runs to.

He is learning manners, though: He may not step on the laptop, back onto the keyboard, or knock over my tea. We have standards (not many, but some) and he can’t just walk all over the place, because this is my sacred space too. If he ignores the boundaries, I push him away.

A few months ago in group we were discussing the dwelling place, where the Lord resides – how the Holy of Holies left the building when Jesus died on the cross; the curtain was torn and the Spirit was loosed and tongues of fire emerged and our free access to Him changed everything:

So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone;

in him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

– Ephesians 2:19-22

We hold the sacred place within us, and He is there. Here. Breathing, pulsing, burning, inside.

So we approach Him with awe. But another fascinating thing that came up in our discussion: If we recognize His presence with awe and wonder, marveling at the intimacy and closeness with Him because He dwells within us, then also, in Kingdom culture, do we recognize that He is also within each other?

Do you not know that your body is a Temple of the living God? Yes, we know, it says it right there. But have we considered that when we look at a fellow citizen of the Kingdom, they also are housing the presence of God? They, too, are temples that host the King.

What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God, as God said,

“I will live in them and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they shall be my people.”

– 2 Corinthians 6:16

Temple, in Greek, is naos, derived from the verb naio, meaning “to dwell.” In the New Testament it specifically refers to the inner sanctuary, the most sacred part of the temple where God’s presence dwells, the Holy of Holies. And we clearly see that it’s no longer talking about a building.

Suddenly the world flips inside out as we realize there’s this galaxy within our hearts, the temple where worship is always occurring:

For this reason they are before the throne of God
and worship him day and night within his temple,
and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them.

– Revelation 7:15

At this very moment, worship is happening. We can choose whether or not to join it or be consciously aware of it, but regardless, it is actively occurring, right now, at this very second, always. This holy place is in us and we don’t understand it and can’t wrap our minds around it, but we are here and there all at once, and so much more is happening than we realize.

God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

– Ephesians 2:4-6

A person’s life is a holy thing. So do we recognize the Holy of Holies in each other’s hearts? Do we hold each other’s confidence and trust in fear and trembling? Or do we incautiously push the curtain aside, our recklessness creating a draft of air that causes the flame to flicker? Are we acting as mere men, or are we saints and priests, the redeemed who recognize that each of us is a temple wherein His presence resides?

And in that light, we learn manners and approach each other with a little awe, too. Our kids, our friends, our spouses: I revere the flame within you, and so help me God, I will not blow it out.

So must take care of ourselves, and take care of each other. Caring for the body – literal and figurative – is both a gift and a holy commission.

On the frantic Friday when I am finishing a post and looking at Monday’s to-do list that has no hope in the world of being completed in the next two hours, He is there.

I look at the uncrossed items on the list and know that two can easily move to next week, and the last item is being typed at this second. The holy work of washing the eggs and teaching the kids and sending one kid outside to do chores was finished earlier. The holy work of the moment is in progress. And the holy work that hasn’t been done yet, that was the result of too much caffeine and ambition on Monday, will be just as holy next week.

And so we worship, because He is here in the midst of it, and the joy is set before us.

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lay it on the table: how surrender solves the problems of the world

Posted on by December 30, 2024

Every December we shove other responsibilities aside and spend hours at the puzzle table, solving the problems of the world. It starts the weekend after Thanksgiving, when we smush furniture around to make room for the table and the Christmas tree, which is a cozy alternative to how we smush things around in the summer, when we have birds living in our bathroom for three months of the year.

(Sidenote: You may be progressing in your homesteading efforts if a friend visits and exclaims, “Oh! I’ve never used your bathroom when it didn’t have quail in it!” So fancy.)

lay it on the table: how surrender solves the problems of the world | Shannon Guerra

This last puzzle was difficult because at one point we had sections that started to connect from one side to the other, but there were odd gaps in one direction and tight spots on the other where the frame had warped a bit. We knew the pieces should fit, we just couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t.

At one point I wondered if it was just a bad puzzle. There are some, you know – badly constructed, impossible to solve, and you only find out once you’re about halfway through. Then you have to decide if you’re going to keep going, or toss it and start over with something else.

Also, with pretty much every puzzle, there comes a point when I’m totally confounded and convinced that a certain piece must be a mistake because it has nowhere to go. This has to be a stem, but all the stems are finished…this one has to be a yellow flower, but there aren’t any yellow flowers left…we check and recheck, convinced the maker must’ve made a mistake and somehow this piece, which obviously doesn’t actually go with this puzzle, somehow got slipped into this box by accident.

But eventually, always, we find the place. OHHHHH, we exclaim as it clicks in, eureka. Suddenly it all makes sense: We couldn’t find it because we thought it was this color but it was actually the shading of that color, or we thought it couldn’t possibly attach and go there because of the lines in the drawing, but the cut of the jigsaw hid the transition from the stem to the leaf, or the edge where it changed from petal to background.

So as we sit here and exchange the pieces that confound us, we are recognizing more and more that what we think we’re looking at is sometimes not what it seems. We have the big picture but miss the small detail – or just as often, we have the small detail but miss the big picture.

Our work here, solving all the problems of the world, happens in small increments. With the puzzle that buckles, we have to make tiny shifts, move just a couple pieces at a time. It is gentle, steady work to make room for the sections that are supposed to fit.

We’ve tried it the other way; when we pulled the whole thing, sections tore away from the tension.

But there’s a thousand pieces, and so much needs to move, we think. Changing it all at once doesn’t work, though. We make room and move the loose, extra pieces out of the way, and it’s grace here, gentleness there, self control where we want to force our way…and we move a couple pieces at a time, realizing that tiny moves are the best influence on the big picture, because our forceful moves create disaster.

So this is a patient dance, one step here, one effort there; it helps to recognize every tiny victory, and overlook many forgivable imperfections. Our pieces need to shift and make room for each other, because there’s a gap here, and the space between is too big to fill. And that makes sense, because on the other side there’s not enough space for the other pieces that need to go in.

Washington had spent long hours talking to the officers, showing patience and tolerance, probing their sensitivities, hearing their complaints. It was subtle, had to be, the slow tilting of the level ground about which the men had so much pride.

As the officers themselves began to understand how they fit into the larger army, they began to have pride in their own units, in the behavior and deportment of their own men, in their own ability to command. They began to understand how discipline was of value after all, not just for convenience, but for each officer’s own value to the army.

– Jeff Shaara, Rise to Rebellion

On the other side of the table, Finn is sitting at the couch with a Rubik’s cube and confesses that he has solved it by peeling its stickers off and putting them back where he wanted them to go. I admit this is also how I’ve sometimes dealt with problems I couldn’t solve: We take the broken pieces and superglue them back on so everything looks fairly normal, as long as you don’t get too close and realize what a patch job it is.

But eventually, hopefully, there comes a time when we’re sick of the easy fix that was never good enough, and we want to be done with our inadequate coping skills. We want the real solution, and the real solution is always the work that needs to be done in us, not others, because it is inside us that all of our misperceptions and assumptions are made, our attitudes are born, our wounds are infected, and our potential for joy is hidden, however it is buried under difficult circumstances.

We need real healing, real freedom, and we’re willing to go through the pain or revelation we’ve been avoiding to face the One who knows how to put us back together the right way, because He’s the one who made us in the first place.

And this is where small moves will never be enough, because we’re no longer dealing with other people – I mean, external pieces – but with our own inward parts. Our own tiny efforts err in too much gentleness as we resign to just live with it and deal, and that can go on for a long time, maybe forever, unless we get impatient and move to the other extreme, creating disaster.

So we cannot do the effective work on our own pieces all by ourselves. When we’re broken enough to want real healing, we need to surrender to the Maker familiar with the big picture and all the details, who knows how our inward parts work, where the jigsaw needs to cut, and where all of our pieces go.

There’s a character in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader who, through a series of circumstances and bad choices, becomes something unexpected. He needs healing and he thinks he knows how to go about it, so he starts to cast his skin:

“I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started coming off beautifully….But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before.”

Like we often discover, our own efforts don’t go deep enough. So we try the same thing, harder:

“Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off?”

Eventually, depending on how stubborn – or evasive – we are, we realize the truth: We can’t do this. He has to be the one to heal us. And this is where surrender happens.

“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right to my heart….he peeled the beastly stuff right off…and there is was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.”

– C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

He cuts our wrong edges off in precise curves, not taking anything that needs to stay and not leaving anything that needs to go. But He doesn’t do it the same way in each of us.

A few weeks ago in class we talked about how God moves us in surrender. For the chatty extrovert, sometimes surrender looks like waiting in uncomfortable silence; for the introvert, it looks like reaching out to the person who is new and starting a conversation. For the impatient mom, it looks like listening to the angsty rant of a teen rather than immediately giving the answer. For the overindulgent mom, it looks like setting a boundary and holding to it.

Whatever it is, overcoming our preferred comfort is how we die to self to become truly alive, and it’s the surgery we need, revealing the tender, raw perfection of His design underneath.

Our own vulnerability makes us walk more tenderly toward others. Simultaneously, as we realize how efficient His work is, it makes us want to surrender our stubborn ways faster, and we move in bolder freedom than ever before. Surrender is a cycle that continuously strengthens.

We cannot do the giant work in others. Our own efforts aren’t even enough to do the perfect work in ourselves. All we can do are the small everyday steps of obedience, finding where this piece goes, sorting out those other pieces, moving loose pieces out of the way so there’s room for the right ones to go in.

So we lay it all on the table – the pieces we think we know what to do with, the ones we have no idea what they’re for, and the ones we’ve been hiding in our pocket so no one else could touch them.

It’s all out there. The picture is coming together. We sit in the tension of seeking answers until we have the aha moment when it clicks, and we finally see it the way the Maker does — the details, the big picture, everything in place — and we unbend our twisted frame back into His alignment, making room for all the pieces He designed to be there.

taste and see, or run and hide

Posted on by December 9, 2024

While the boys tangled the tree in ribbon and bedecked it with shiny balls that would hopefully not shatter overnight from the cats’ meddling, I tucked my coffee behind the nativity set and rearranged Wodehouse books in the library.

“Do you know how many Wodehouse books we have?” I asked Vince, and he shook his head. Except for the passages I have read aloud to him while laughing so hard I gasped for air, he has never read Wodehouse.

taste and see, or run and hide: it's all about what we know | Shannon Guerra

“This stack here…” I pointed to a wobbly column over two feet high, and he began to laugh but stopped short when I continued, “and this stack here,” pointing to another stack behind the first one, which wasn’t as tall but probably kept the first column from collapsing, like a literary version of a flying buttress.

“How many books did Wodehouse write?” he asked – envy, inspiration, and disbelief, all in one question.

“Seventy or eighty, I think…not counting his plays and stuff. We only have about half of them.”

(Only, she said, and then wasted thirty minutes searching the internet for the exact number – it’s 71, if you’re only counting novels – and then another ten minutes adding his three autobiographies to her wishlist.)

I’ve spent money on bad books before but I’m more careful now; I didn’t start collecting Wodehouse books until I knew they were worth it. Now, though, I have tasted and seen – or, laughed and choked on my coffee – and I know they are good.

“There are moments, Jeeves, when one asks oneself, ‘Do trousers matter?'”

“The mood will pass, sir.”

– P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

A few days later, the other part of our book order arrived. I cut the shipping bag open with kitchen scissors and pulled out the used paperbacks.

“More Wodehouse!” I grinned.

“More Wodehouse,” Vin repeated, with far less enthusiasm. “Like, more cowbell.“

“Hey. If you read Wodehouse, you’d be excited too,” I told him.

She laughed — a bit louder than I could have wished in my frail state of health, but then she is always a woman who tends to bring plaster falling from the ceiling when amused.

― P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

But he hasn’t tasted and seen yet. He’s only heard and marveled, off and on, as I’ve barely muffled hysterical laughter way too late at night, trying not to wake up the kids.

Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!
Blessed is the man who takes refuge in him!
Oh, fear the Lord, you his saints,
for those who fear him have no lack!

– Psalm 34:8-9

Vin is, however, grateful he married a thrifty woman who hates shopping, whose main addictions are classic lit and wool yarn, both of which can be found in practically new condition at secondhand stores. And they both give a good return, if stewarded well and not just hoarded.

“For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants and entrusted to them his property. To one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away.

– Matthew 25:14-15

So we segue to the parable of the talents, a story of a king who entrusts his servants with varying amounts of wealth to steward for him. And you know what happens: The master returns, and the ones who had five and two doubled their talents and were rewarded, but the one who had only one talent…well, let’s see what it says:

He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.”

– Matthew 25:24-25

Huh. He knew, so he was afraid, so he hid. Where have we heard that before?

Oh, right. Here, in the very beginning:

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

– Genesis 2:15-17

In the beginning there was a certain amount of knowing that we weren’t supposed to have, because it would usurp our trust of God and make us focus on the wrong things. We began with a holy fear of God, which is trust and surrender. But in knowing the wrong things, we moved into an unholy fear that chose to walk in anxiety and control, which is just us saying, I know better than You do.

But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

So the woman takes and eats the fruit, and she also gives some to her husband who was with her (side note: We can stop blaming the fall entirely on women, thanks), and he eats it, too.

They realize they’re…you know, nekkid. Fig leaves, loincloths, strategically placed locks of hair.

We pick up in verse 8:

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.

But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”

And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

– Genesis 3:8-10

Maybe it’s because when they did it their own way, they did it backwards. They didn’t taste and see; they saw and tasted – and then they knew something they were never intended to. They traded intimacy for exposure. They forfeited holy fear and got terror, shame, and separation instead.

We do this when we get things backwards, too. Recently I had a meeting coming up and I realized I was rehearsing information, asking myself possible questions and answers. I wondered if I was being too vulnerable, if I could trust this other person, if they would misunderstand my intentions.

Why am I nervous? I finally asked myself. Because I want this, and I don’t want to blow it.

Also, I felt exposed – like maybe I’d stepped forward where I should’ve held back; should’ve kept that talent under wraps where it would be safe, and do nothing.

Master, you gave me one book and I stuffed it under my mattress and did not read it, did not wrinkle the pages, did not bend the spine or dog-ear the corners, didn’t even take any notes. I did not get anything out of it, but also, look! It’s in pristine condition, so you won’t be mad at me for damaging it. Here you go. Thanks so much for the loan.

It’s the wrong kind of fear. That kind is the fear of man, and it’s all about impressing others, worrying about what someone else will think.

Surrender and honesty disarms it, though. So I asked myself these questions:

Do I want what I want, or do I want what He wants? Can I trust Him to know what I want better than I do, and know how to arrange it better than I could? Can I trust Him with the future, with relationships, with this conversation?

Do I trust Him to direct the situation and the timing? Do I trust Him to go ahead of me, and to give me the right words and wisdom?

Yes, yes, all yes. I have tasted and seen and I know He is good.

So suddenly the pressure is off, and there’s just joy and freedom. Just pleasant conversation and curiosity of what God does through it. The vulnerability doesn’t feel like exposure; it feels like faith that’s spelled risk, and it brings a return.

This is the talent surrendered that grows and multiplies, rather than runs and hides.

I used to know someone who was hurting and fighting and angry most of the time. Now I realize she literally just didn’t know what she was missing. She had not tasted and seen, so she ran and hid. What she knew made her feel exposed, and fear manifested as anger, so she rejected everything associated with God. I knew you to be a hard man…but she missed experiencing Him as the one who laughs and heals and walks in the garden, the one who made mercy triumph over judgment.

We only fight against goodness because we don’t realize how good it is. When we have no concept of real peace or freedom or joy, we think rebellion is better.

It’s changing the way I pray, because she – and everyone – needs to know His goodness. Because if they really knew His goodness, they’d recognize His love for them, and His worthiness of their love.

And their own desire would drive them to Him.

We all need to taste and see. We handle things (and relationships) differently when we know what (and whom) we’re dealing with.

We’re good at following our desires. Where we get it wrong is when our desires are out of alignment, fearful because we know so little, because ignorance breeds fear.

But once we know, there’s freedom and joy and peace, and we bear much fruit, reaping a harvest.

We know what we’re getting into, and we can’t get enough of it.

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‘What ho!’ I said.
‘What ho!’ said Motty.
‘What ho! What ho!’
‘What ho! What ho! What ho!’
After that it seemed rather difficult to go on with the conversation.

– P.G. Wodehouse, My Man Jeeves