"This is the gate of heaven": a reflection on the quiet places

 “The most important discovery of my whole life is that one can take
a little rough cabin and transform it into a palace just by flooding it with thoughts of God. When one has spent many months in a little house like this in daily thoughts about God, the very entering of the house, the very sight of it as one approaches, starts associations which set the heart tingling and the mind flowing. I have come to the point where I must have my house, in order to write the best letters or think the richest thoughts.” Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank C. Laubach

When I was a young man  learning how to follow Jesus, more often than not my “prayer room” was my basement bedroom in our home on Turner Avenue in Madison. As instructed, I would wake up a little earlier, get down on my knees, quiet my heart, read my Bible and pray. “Quiet Time” was the buzz phrase then (a term that has long since fallen out of vogue). Of course, the purpose was not to simply “punch the clock”; rather, it was to foster a relationship with Jesus. I don't remember any more how long my quiet time lasted but I probably averaged 20-25 minutes depending how late I had stayed up the night before and how soon I had to be to class or work.

During my Bible college years, my prayer room varied from an alcove beneath the basement steps at one town home I lived in to the bedside of the hotel room we were housed in. After I married, developing a new prayer routine was a bit challenging for awhile – Linda and I lived in a small one-bedroom garden apartment – but during that season I recall a certain chair in our living room where I would kneel, read and pray.

My prayer room since 1991

Since becoming a pastor, however, my prayer room hands down is the sanctuary of the fellowship I serve, The Refuge International. As buildings go, our gathering place is fairly simple: a block building 45' by 30' feet with a front and rear egress. Originally a “cry-room” the one room off the entryway serves as a catch-all church/pastor's office. The lower-level contains a fellowship hall, a nursery, one Sunday School classroom, a kitchen, two unisex bathrooms and three closets. After 65 years, we finally replaced our boiler last year. And while it's not a fact to be proud of, we remain the only fellowship in our city that does not have air-conditioning (two large overhead fans in the sanctuary and few others scattered about the room suffice on those real dog-days of the summer). All that to reiterate: there is nothing about this place to write home about.

The altar steps is a place I frequent

But for me personally the steps of the altar (for many years the far
left altar and for several years running now the far right) has become my tent of meeting. In Exodus 33 we learn that Moses would post a tent some distance outside the camp and go there regularly to meet with God.

“It was Moses’ practice to take the Tent of Meeting and set it up some distance from the camp. Everyone who wanted to make a request of the Lord would go to the Tent of Meeting outside the camp.”

“Whenever Moses went out to the Tent of Meeting, all the people would get up and stand in the entrances of their own tents. They would all watch Moses until he disappeared inside. As he went into the tent, the pillar of cloud would come down and hover at its entrance while the Lord spoke with Moses. When the people saw the cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, they would stand and bow down in front of their own tents. Inside the Tent of Meeting, the Lord would speak to Moses face to face, as one speaks to a friend.” Exodus 33:7-11, New Living Translation)

It is at these steps that I still my heart and seek to practice the presence of God. I used to pace more while I prayed. It kept me from falling asleep and somehow the movement helped focus my thoughts. But over the last few years, that practice has grown less. More often than not, it's getting easier to quiet my thoughts than it used to. Since the fall of 1991, this simple block building has been the place wherein I have developed my craft and enlarged my soul. While others often quip about bulldozing the whole place in and starting over (if God would be so kind to send, say, a natural disaster our way to expedite that), I love this old drafty building and one day – when I will no longer be the pastor here - will miss having it all to myself 98% of the time.

In the movie Dances with Wolves (1990), mule driver Timmons takes one look at Fort Sedgwick and spits. “Ain't much of a goin' concern, is it, Lieutenant?” he remarks to Kevin Costner's character, Lt. John J Dunbar. I suppose some might say the same thing of the church at the corner of Eighth and Leonard in Chetek. But to me it is quite literally, Bethel – the house of God (see Genesis 28). Frank Laubach, an American missionary who lived and served on Mindanao in the Philippines for over thirty years said of his small cabin among the Moro people:

“When one has spent many months in a little house like this in daily thoughts about God, the very entering of the house, the very sight of it as one approaches, starts associations which set the heart tingling and the mind flowing. I have come to the point where I must have my house, in order to write the best letters or think the richest thoughts.”

The only missionary to ever be honored with a US postal stamp

I feel the same about Refuge. It is, for me, the gateway to God, the tent of meeting where from time to time the cloud comes down and he reveals something more to me of him, his character, and his purposes. Yes, I sure would love to one day have AC but a fan will work much the same to cool me as I seek to know him better.