(Exodus 33:14, HCSB)
Presbyterian minister Frederick Buechner once took a friend to a forest of maple trees in early March when the maple sap was being collected. In the stillness, but with sap dripping into the buckets around them and with sunlight coming in shafts through the trees, Buechner held a bucket of sap for his friend to drink.
The friend paused and said, "I have a feeling you ought to say a few words." It felt like receiving Communion. Neither of them had been talking about spiritual things. It just welled up in his friend--the sense of the sacred, the hunger to go deeper.
Perhaps something like this has happened to you: you were going about your usual business, when suddenly you found yourself in the midst of a special experience that made you sharply aware of the majestic presence of God at that point in time, in that place. In the days, or years which followed, you may have returned to the exact location as before, only to discover it was impossible to recapture the feeling you had earlier. Or perhaps you have heard of the experiences of others, and you tried to duplicate those experiences in your own life. In frustration, you may have even wondered if something was wrong with your faith.
Maturity in Christ, however, brings with it the knowledge that God cannot be confined to one singular experience, nor can He be boxed into one person's experience of Him. The Lord God is much more than that. And while He may be experienced while one is drinking from a maple sap bucket in early Spring, He certainly is not limited to that. Nor is His infinite being defined by any one individual's finite knowledge of Him. He simply cannot be pigeon-holed that neatly.
The Lord God may invade your heart and life in the early dawn, or in the silent darkness of midnight. He may come to you when you are immersed in the pages of Scripture, or when you are driving along the highway. But He comes to each of us, waiting for a pause in our busy lives long enough for us to sense His Presence.
When you really experience His Presence with you, it will be such a sacred moment that you may feel as if you are receiving Holy Communion.
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com