Interludes: Rediscovering the Sacred Space

In the fall of 2023, I took a world religions class. In the class, the professor talked a lot about the common experience of the sacra, or sacred, as a hallmark of religion. Specifically, he noted the convergence of sacred spaces and sacred times as one of the most common and unifying things for religions across the world, including Christianity.

Sitting in class, I was fascinated by this facet of religion that I had never considered before, and those terms stuck with me long after the semester ended. It wasn’t until recently, though, that I began to understand on a deeply personal level just how impactful those concepts can be. I began to discover (or perhaps rediscover) the beauty and importance of the sacred space in my own life, and that journey of discovery has brought new life into my faith.

Let me back up for a minute and describe exactly what I’m talking about. The Hebrew word translated “sacred” in the Bible can also mean holy, set apart, or something dedicated for a specific purpose. This word in Scripture is often applied to descriptions of God, His temple and the objects within it, or the holy festivals of the Israelites.

In Christianity, sacred places and times are physical places and stretches of time set apart for the purpose of encountering God. Great examples of this are seen throughout scripture, such as the descriptions of the temple and the Passover. The temple was a sacred place for the Jews as the dwelling place of God’s Spirit and the Passover a sacred time of worship and remembrance. Often, sacred times converge with sacred spaces, such as how Jews in the Bible would journey to the temple (sacred space) during Passover (sacred time) to worship and make sacrifices.

Today, sacred spaces look a bit different. Some might consider a church building or cathedral sacred space. Others consider natural surroundings—trees, grass, flowers, etc.—to be a sacred space where they uniquely feel God’s presence. Other’s still might consider a place to be sacred where they have felt happy and at peace in the past, such as a vacation destination or a grandparent’s house.

Many of us, if asked, could identify these places in our lives—spaces where the “sacred” seems just a little bit nearer, the noise in our souls a little bit quieter. Yet for how many of us are those sacred spaces rarities in our lives? To phrase it another way, how many of us regularly seek out the sacred space as part of how we live, rather than as environments that we accidentally stumble into? It seems to me that we, as a culture and as believers, have largely forgotten the importance of the sacred space.

I want to pause here and say that I don’t think can only meet with God in sacred spaces, or that our physical circumstances need to be lined up just so for us to encounter Him. We have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us (1 Corinthians 3:16), allowing us to meet with God anytime, anywhere. However, this doesn’t mean that sacred spaces no longer exist.

The gift of the Holy Spirit is such that we have an immediate and direct line to God regardless of when or where we are. But our surroundings can impact our ability to lean into the presence of God, whether we realize it or not. The ubiquitous distraction and disquiet of our age permeate our environments, threatening to drown out the still, small voice of God’s presence. Thus, I think it’s time for us to renew an emphasis on sacred spaces in our lives.

A key thing to realize about sacred space is that the physical materials it’s made with and its physical location are not the source of its sacredness. Nor is it imbued with some hidden, special power that makes it more “sacred” than other places. Rather, it is made sacred by the fact that we encounter God there.

We reinforce the sacredness of such spaces by making a practice of repeatedly seeking and encountering God there. In other words, we can consecrate spaces in our lives as sacred by setting them apart for intentionally seeking out a meeting with God. A building is not necessarily a sacred space simply because it is a church, but a church becomes a sacred space in our lives as we make it a meeting place with God.

Psychology supports this idea that our minds can grow accustomed to encounters with the sacred attached to certain spaces. Our brains are wired to interact with our physical surroundings. Multiple studies have shown that our brains connect to certain environments in ways that prompt emotional responses, affect mental health, and can even build up automatic responses when habitually placed in that environment (see this study, this article, and this review).

If our brains physically connect with and respond to our environments, it stands to reason that we should consider the environments in which are regularly seeking out the Lord’s presence. Are they full of distractions, waiting to tempt away our focus? Are they uncomfortable for our bodies—too cold, too hot, too harsh lighting, too dark?

For years I struggled with feeling unable to “encounter God” in a way that felt real and personal to me. I was easily distracted during times I set aside for prayer and reading scripture. I believed I should be able to just ignore the things about my environment that were snares for me, rather than actually seeking to change that environment. It has been a serious hindrance to my faith at different times in my life.

Over the past several weeks, I’ve been part of a regular weekly prayer gathering. On Tuesday nights, I join a group of young people in a church sanctuary where the lights are low and the worship music is turned up. Though we enter together, we go our separate ways and spread out around the room to meet with God as individuals. I struggled with it at first, to be honest, but as it has become part of my routine I have grown to love it and look forward to it throughout the week. It has become a sacred space in my life, and has changed me.

I have no list of tips to help you build sacred spaces in your life or pitfalls to avoid to wrap up this blog. This is a place that each of us must come to within ourselves, not through coercion or convincing. So, I will leave you with just that—the invitation to ponder these things for yourself and see what God has to say to you about the sacred in your life.