In Luke 6:12 it says “One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray,
and he prayed to God all night.” As I was reading this passage it reminded me
of the profane and sacred time and how the two are very different. Personally,
I see profane as this time that one spends living for themselves and not very
focused on the bigger picture. However, when I think of sacred time I think of
one being much more selfless in the time they spend, that their specific time
is very important and has great value. In the passage above it talks about how
Jesus went away to spend time with God, his father. He wanted to make time for something
so significant and made sure he was isolated wherever he went to spend that
time so he goes to a far off mountain. I don’t think Jesus looked at this time
as something profane, something that had a time limit. I think he saw it as so
much more than that, something very sacred to him. He had no sense of time
while on this mountain, in fact, I can picture him being completely carefree
and simply enjoying time with his father. Similarly, when I go to spend time
with God or have a “quiet time” as some may call it, I have no agenda on my
mind. I also prefer to be alone and in my own space so that nothing can
intervene with me as I spend time with God. This is a very sacred time for me.
I never really thought about the parallel of one’s own quiet to how Jesus went
to a mountain to spend time with God. In fact, in both scenarios a very similar
concept occurs. In the passage, God gets away from everything and just spends
time with his father not worrying about anything else. In my own way, I am also
getting away and spending time with my God without weighing down or dwelling on
the things going on in my life. Eliade Micrea says in her except, The Sacred and Profane: The nature of
religion, that “when the sacred manifests
itself in any hierophany, there is not only a break in the homogeneity of
space; there is also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed to the
nonreality of the vast surrounding expense.” When I read what she says, in a
lot of ways I see my own quiet time with God being represented by that. I am
able to escape my life for just a little bit and live in this “absolute
reality” and it just makes everything feel so much different. I feel alive,
whole, refreshed, and it really makes me realize how important and evident the
sacredness of that time really is.
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