This is the final in a three-part series on the concept of sacred space and practice.

Last month, the congregation I serve as pastor gathered on a beautiful Sunday morning for worship, just like we do every Sunday.

However, this time, our location of worship was vastly different. Rather than gathering in our historic, traditional sanctuary with the red carpet, pews, and choir loft, we gathered under a large shelter with grass, picnic tables, and the only choir was the birds and crickets offering their beautiful songs.

We met for worship and a churchwide picnic at one of our region’s beautiful resources, Jones Lake State Park.

Jones Lake Park, located just outside of Elizabethtown, is one of more than 40 state parks in North Carolina and one of the handful within an hour or so drive of Robeson County.

On this day, our congregation gathered with sunny skies and perfect temperatures. We brought hot dogs to grill, wonderful sides and desserts to enjoy, and ice cream for the kids.

Later in the day, families would enjoy the gorgeous lake with swimming and canoeing, others would explore the trails around the facility, and still others squeezed every drop of joy out of time shared in fellowship with friends.

As a part of the gathering, we set aside dedicated time for the morning’s worship service. The service was admittedly scaled down from what it might normally be.

Still, there was prayer, reading of scripture, songs sung, proclamation, and adoration offered to the Lord.

Now, some may look at this experience and say, “oh what a nice ‘activity’ for the congregation.”

Others might take a more critical stance and question how one could hold worship somewhere other than “in the church.”

But given all that we have talked about with the two previous entries in this column, I’ll go as far as to say the whole day, and everything and everyone who was a part of it, was a holy time of worship.

I say that because as we consider how we worship God, where we worship God, or all the things we think we need to worship God (lights, preferred instruments, particular clothing, specific songs, determined times or locations), the Bilbe gives us something different to consider.

Over and over throughout Scripture, we see that try as we may, there is no way to confine or contain God to any one place, standard, or process.

It just so happens that on the day our congregation gathered, the Old Testament reading listed for that particular Sunday according to the Revised Common Lectionary came from 1 Kings 8.

In those verses, Solomon, the wise king of the Israelites and son of King David, is dedicating the newly completed Temple. This Temple would be the place where the Israelites would come to offer sacrifice to God, but it was also understood to be the place where God’s presence would reside on the Earth.

Chapter 8 is a lengthy one, but in Solomon’s long proclamation, dedication, and prayer, we find these words in verse 27, “But how could God possibly live on earth? If heaven, even the highest heaven, can’t contain you, how can this temple that I’ve built contain you?” (CEB). It is striking to me that at this moment, a moment of great accomplishment for Solomon, arguably the defining moment of his reign, he admits that what he has achieved is insufficient. He realizes what all of us should when it comes to thinking about the places, spaces, structures, and buildings we erect in an effort to appease, venerate, and worship our God. That try as we may, there is nothing we can build that can constrain God, and there is no where we can go that we can escape God.

Looking around Jones Lake that morning, the beauty of that place drove home the truth of that text for us all. We were living out that very reality in this moment gathering to worship God in a space that we did not build nor had any control over.

Yet as we consider this truth, we need to remember that it brings both a great comfort and a great challenge. We can find comfort in knowing that there is no where we can go that God cannot find us.

There is no darkness of life that can consume the light of God. There is no hole we can dig for ourselves that God cannot reach in and pull us out.

There is no escape we can make that God won’t beat us to the exit. God is an overwhelming presence in our lives, and because of that we can find great strength.

But it is because of that overwhelming presence that we also carry a profound expectation.

The challenge is to live our lives in such a way that they will in fact show our devotion to God. Live in such a way that our everydayness reflects our worship, in all that we say and do.

Some may see that as a challenge, but I like to think of it as a great opportunity. The opportunity to worship God by showing compassion to one whom others have forgotten.

The chance to show adoration to God with our commitment to recognizing the humanity in others. To find ourselves praising the goodness of who God is with the sunshine of the morning, as well as in the storms of the afternoon.

No matter what place we find ourselves in, physically or in the many seasons of life we face, we know that we can always experience the fullness of God. So let us position ourselves appropriately, and worship God fully.