Category Archives: purpose

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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keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

Posted on by January 28, 2025

The cars went up and down the highway, headlights and taillights flickering through the trees. Dusk hits lately around 4 pm, and on this side of the window, my journal was open to page 360-something. I wasn’t sure what to write but I wrote anyway, words about mundane things, hoping something would spark – a theme, an idea, an analogy, a memory of something funny or profound. Just kept the pen moving, pushing it across the lines, because something usually reveals itself.

keep going: a ramble about perseverance & trust

I started this journal toward the end of 2020 and there’s only fifteen or so pages left. Every page doesn’t have to be profound, just like every day of life doesn’t have to be filled with something wildly spectacular. The slow, quiet, routine days are where most of our living is done.

So this journal entry, like the day, was meat and potatoes: books I’m reading, the project I’m working on, what we were planning to do that evening. A headline or two of what’s going on in the world. Nothing exciting but the ink filled the page, and some of it was even legible, so that’s a plus.

It’s the little things, and our attention to them, that really do add up. Like yesterday, when I put a few extra minutes into cleaning the kitchen – did anyone notice the front of the dishwasher wasn’t as streaky? Or that the dust inside the oven was cleaned out? (How do ovens get dust inside them, anyway?) Or that the stovetop was clean? Probably not. (Which is why I’m writing about it so I can get credit, she smirked.)

Those small things are so encouraging to me though, whether anyone else notices them or not. I like clean spaces – just don’t look at my desk – and haven’t always had the margin to notice and take care of those details. I look back on that other season where the air was thick, the noise was loud, and there were so many demands that sometimes only the absolute top-of-the-top priorities, like meals and safety, were taken care of. I can now see how I put figurative blinders on in certain areas, willfully ignoring many peripherals, because there were already too many essentials. It’s amazing how many essentials become peripherals when you’re in survival mode.

I remember telling a friend, a fellow adoptive mom, that I felt like I had some sort of survivor’s guilt as we began to walk out of that other season and into this one. Vin started working with me from home and we could tackle the demands together. There was less chaos, more sleep, and time to process. The kids were bigger and the special needs were less volatile. I had survived, was surviving; we had all made it and were slowly working back toward equilibrium even though we had no idea what that actually looked like anymore because so many things had changed. How do you rest and let go after years of trauma and hypervigilance? How do you know it’s really safe?

I didn’t have to be so strong anymore, and I wasn’t sure that was actually forward progress.

But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”

– 2 Corinthians 12:9a

I felt guilty because there was a sense of ease I hadn’t experienced in years, but many parts of myself and our family had died in the process of getting there. Yes, we survived – but so many other things didn’t.

It was like we had made a trade but had no say in the details of the transaction, and the deal didn’t seem fair. It was too good in some ways, too hard in others.

That was three journals and several years ago, and I still don’t understand it; I’m obviously still working my way through it.

In many ways it’s best to not look too close. When we look at those details it can quickly lead to a naval-gazing, toxic cocktail of blame and regret. We have to surrender the past, the decisions we made and others made, and trust that God knows what to do with them. He knows what to do with each of our hearts in all the dynamics of memories and current choices and loss and grief and ideas of how things should have been, and the distance between that and how they actually happened.

So many details are still being worked out. So if it doesn’t look like that yet, don’t linger; keep going. He’s going to show us how those years resulted in honor instead of dishonor; beauty, not regret; healing and growth in the place of trauma and immaturity. Gain instead of loss.

He’s doing it. We don’t have to understand how that’s possible anymore than we know the starting place or destination of all the cars on the highway. And this, too, is surrender.

Vin and I sat on the couch the other night looking at a list of dreams we made a little over three years ago. The challenge was to write a hundred of them but we only got to thirty, and upon review, we’ve accomplished five so far. Publish Risk the Ocean. Finish book #4 in series. Replace the Stagecoach. A few other items were no longer dreams and we crossed them out, then added some more. Healing for my hand. Find a great assisted living situation for Andrey. And after editing, the list had only grown to 36. So it appears we need to work a little harder on this dreaming thing.

Some of the dreams, though, I don’t want to define. I don’t want to name them because they’re still too fuzzy and I don’t want to shoot in the dark, committing something to paper that I’ll have to cross out later. I have books without titles, ideas without structure, colors but no outlines. Or maybe it’s the other way around. And I feel like answers in many areas are on the way, but meanwhile there’s this strong sense of plodding on steadfastly, determinedly, knowing that the Lord is leading and the answers will come in time. Maybe sooner than we think. So we continue to invest, and not bury, the talents, while we wait for clarity to come.

In the beginning of this season – I think it’s still this season, at least; the one where we transitioned out of dark chaos and into a lighter, brighter version of chaos – we unexpectedly got pregnant and had Kavanagh around the same time friends our age were becoming grandparents. That was about six years ago and we were feeling the full range of parenthood with an adult kid out of the house, a high schooler, three 13-year-olds, an elementary schooler, and the two littlest littles, toddler and infant. Never would I have guessed this would be my life twenty years earlier. Or ten years ago. Or five years ago.

But it’s so good. I mean, mostly, of course – not perfect, and there are plenty of things that are expletive-worthy at times (we call this “writing material” in our house) – but overall, it’s so good.

During that other season, I didn’t know things could be good again. And I’m so glad I made it through to this side. I wish I could’ve told myself how good it would be. So instead, if you’re in that dark, painful place, where you never thought you’d see yourself, I’ll tell you: Give it a few years, friend. Or, just give it a week. And then another, and another.

Keep pushing the pen and filling those pages.

You can do this. Cling to Jesus and keep going forward. So much good is on the other side of steadfastness.

Also last week – I think it was around the same day we were working on our list of dreams, but it was definitely the same day I was journaling without knowing what to write about – I had to take all the kids to an appointment. And even though most of our kids are older now I still don’t miss those days of a small child screaming in the back of the vehicle loud enough for other cars to hear as we drive past them on the Parks Highway.

I mean, it’s been ages since that last happened…I think it was last September? But there we were, running late from the wrestle over seatbelts and sliding sideways to a stop at the foot of the icy driveway where I informed my youngest passenger through gritted teeth NO YOU ARE NOT STAYING HOME AND ALSO NO I AM NOT SUDDENLY GETTING THE GAME YOU WHINED ABOUT NOT WANTING TO TAKE FOR THE LAST TWELVE MINUTES BECAUSE WE ARE LEAVING AND YOU ARE COMING TOO so help me.

Eight kids and twenty-four years later, do we get better at this? I hope so.

So we went down the highway amid screaming louder than the traffic, louder than TobyMac, and I prayed in tongues and considered my options. We could turn around and cancel the appointment, but that would be giving in. So we had to keep going.

One thing I have learned and can remind myself in these moments is that even when the noise doesn’t diminish, or the pain stays the same, or the situation doesn’t look any different, God is still working. He is doing. Prayer is changing things whether I see those changes instantly or not.

If we are praying, He is working. And He is working anyway, even when we’re too weak or distracted or exhausted or, or, or…because it’s not about our feelings.

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

– Romans 8:22-26

The tantrum continued all the way into town and finally stopped in the parking lot. We completed our appointment, went back home, assigned consequences, and moved on with the day.

A couple hours later I was chatting with a friend on the phone.

“I have a word for you,” she said. “Keep going. I’m not sure what that means, but I clearly hear that for you.” She didn’t know I had said the same thing in different words in my journal earlier that day, or that I had pondered a 180 on the highway just a few hours ago.

Just keep pushing the pen across the paper, Love. The words will come. And now, as I type this, I’m on page 370 in the journal. Just a few pages to go before this one is filled, and I’ll need to start a new one.

How did I get to page 370? The same way we got to the new year, and the same way we got to every year before this one: We kept going.

We just keep pushing the pen, filling the pages in front of us. We trust, and wait, and persevere, whether anyone notices or not.

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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