Place

The story of my place

I would like to tell you about a place. To me, this place was also called “home” for many years. This place is in the Interior of BC, near Williams Lake. This place is my parents ranch, located on the Fraser river. The 400 acres of fields and pastures gradually increased in incline until the Poplar covered, sloping grassland reaches the base of towering grey cliffs over a hundred feet high. The top of these cliffs gives you an unobstructed view of the Fraser river valley running north and south for many miles until the river disappears around a bend.

The ranch displays the seasons beautifully. It is frosty and snow covered in the winter months, but lush and fragrant in the spring. It is hot and dry in the summer with the spicy notes of Fir tree sap drifting down from the nearby coniferous forests. The heat and long days of summer give way to the brilliant blue of the sky against bright yellow foliage of Aspen trees in autumn. This place is beautiful, but it is also more than a pretty place to look at. It is the home to part of my story. 

Peterson's Place

I have to admit that the significance of place was inspired by reading Eugene Peterson’s The Pastor in which he talks about the importance of his Father’s cabin, which he helped to build, and is now his home in Montana. He talks about how he worked out critical parts of his calling and faith while interacting and living in that place. The cabin, the land around it, and the people connected to it, were the physical, tangible, parts of what life meant to Peterson. I was inspired by him saying that his Father had a vision to provide his family with a little retreat by the lake. I could not help but think of my own parents because I had heard them speak of their own vision for their family in such similar ways regarding the land they had purchased. 

Meeting God in our places

One of the things that Peterson brings up is the notion that to be truly Christian, we should be focussed on spiritual things, and not pay much attention to life here on earth. Peterson outright rejects this view. He says that life as a Christian happens on earth among the dirt and debris that is so common to human life. I agree with him here. My experiences at the ranch were not always nice. There was much tension and grief caught up in life there, but that is where it went down. The arguments were followed by confession and forgiveness. Sin was met with mercy and some times the other way around. Life is not always about things going the right way. It is about living as Christ modelled for us whatever way life goes.  

Created to live in places

We are rooted in place, but not owned by it. We are not souls trapped in physical bodies like a bird in a prison as the early Greek philosophers would have us believe. God created us to live in his good creation. He created us to live in places. It is in “place” that we learn what it means to love God, to hate evil, and to do good. To love our neighbour as ourselves and to do good to those who speak evil against us. Christianity is not meant to be discussed in abstraction. Christ came to earth give us life, that we could have it abundantly, and we live it abundantly in places.

What is your place?

How has "place" played a role in your journey of faith? I encourage you to reflect on how God has used "place" to lead you into new life and faith. On the flip side, if certain "places" have been markers of suffering or discouragement, how has that effected your faith?