Monday: There Is Nothing Holy but a Holy Person
WEEK 9
MONDAY
THERE IS NOTHING HOLY BUT A HOLY PERSON
Acts 7:46-50
We are meditating upon the fact that the Holy Spirit came upon the people not in a temple but in a home. Suppose the Holy Spirit had come upon them when they were in the temple, what would have happened? Then we would have associated the Holy Spirit with ornate ritual, sacred vestments, and awesome precincts. That would have been the native air of the Spirit. To get the Spirit, we would have to repair to the temple. The Spirit would be found there and only there. And if we didn’t really find the Spirit there, we would try to bring him there by hocus-pocus—as is often done in East and West.
All that had to come down that real religion might live. It was no mere chance that Jesus predicted the temple would be destroyed and not one stone be left upon another. It had to be. The center was now the human heart; religion was moralized in that it was put down within the heart amid human choices. It was not something done to us by sacred places and sacred services; it was something done in us and through us. God now made every human heart that would let God in, the place of the Shekinah Glory.
Does that mean we should tear down or desert all our churches and cathedrals? No, we simply put them in their places. Their place is that they have no inherent holiness, only derivative holiness. The place in itself is not holy; it is holy only when holy people use it for holy purposes. The center of holiness is in the persons and their purposes. If the people come to the church or the cathedral in pride, in self-seeking, in narrow exclusiveness of race or class denomination, in an unconscious attempt to attain approval of their fellows, then the place is unholy, regardless of who dedicated it to a ritual holiness. It is intrinsically unholy.
The Holy Spirit makes holy persons, and where holy persons are, there the place is holy. Where the Holy Spirit is, there is the church; where the Holy Spirit is not, there is not the church. No holier spot on earth than the Upper Room.
O Holy Spirit, here is my heart. Make it your temple. I would offer the sacrifice of a continual flame of devotion to you, to the Son, and to the Lord. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I shall be the center of holiness this day, for my choices will be God’s choices.