Leaning Into Holiness

Oh, the holiness of God! Does anything inspire more awe? Who is like Him? His ways are above our ways, His thoughts above our thoughts. He is infinite and perfect. So “other than” us. So far above all other piddly gods. Above every other rule, authority, power and dominion in every realm and every age. His name is holy, hallowed, set apart and above.

The worship around His throne never ceases, and what do they cry? Holy. Holy. Holy. Inexhaustibly, preeminently, majestically holy.

Demons were undone when they were called out by the Son of Man they recognized as the Holy One of God. Isaiah was undone by his encounter with the lofty King worshiped as holy by the seraphim. Even the land was undone in Isaiah’s vision as the foundations of the thresholds quaked.

“Worship the Lord in the splendor of holiness; tremble before Him all the earth.” Psalm 96:9

He is not a God to be trifled with. He is majestic. He defines awesome.

And thus, with this framework, I entered quite unexpectedly into my own appointment with the Holy One.

I was sitting outside, listening to Scripture and pondering His holiness. I closed my eyes as a breeze brushed my hair, and I set my heart to engage with holy God. I so longed to see Him more clearly, to experience Him more fully in greater and greater awe.

The sunlight warmed my upwardly tilted face, and my whole body began to relax. I slumped back in my chair like a beachgoer, would be more accurate.

With my legs stretched out in front of me, I felt like I was being rocked in a hammock.

The last time I felt this peaceful was listening to waves lap the edges of a boat while I fell asleep on vacation in the Florida Keys decades ago. Somebody might have to scoop me out of this chair when it’s time to move.

Wait, is this disrespectful?

I mean, trembling thresholds and all, what would Isaiah say? Am I being lazy or insultingly casual before the Majestic Holiness? Seems like I should be more comfortable falling on my face than leaning back the other way. Is this really hammock material?

But I rocked and rocked in my “hammock.” Not sleepy but so happily restful. And completely puzzling at my posture like I was two separate people.

If this wasn’t sacrilegious, what is the connection between holiness and rest?

Over the next few days, I followed a thought trail. Genesis 2:3 is the Bible’s opening reference to holiness, interestingly enough. “Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.”

Hebrews 4 picks up this theme of sabbath rest and says, “We who have believed enter that rest.” I’ve never really understood most of that chapter and will leave it to a scholar. But a phrase in verse 3 jumped out and grabbed me: “His works were finished from the foundation of the world.”

That phrase was strikingly familiar. As I had spent some days reading about holiness, a couple verses had become “mine.” One was Ephesians 1:4, “He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world that we would be holy and blameless before Him in love.”

It fascinates me that nothing contaminates God’s holiness. If I’m wearing a white shirt, I worry about spilling something on it that probably will still show after I’ve washed it. Happens too often.

Not so with God’s holiness. His holiness is so utterly powerful that it makes other things holy…or consumes them. It’s contagious in the other direction. Isaiah’s lips were cleansed and his iniquity removed in that same quaking throne scene.

Jesus touched a leper. The leper didn’t make Jesus unclean. Jesus made the leper clean.

And before the foundation of the world, the Lamb was slain and I was chosen to be made holy.

Because He finished that work, Hebrews 4 invites me before the same awesome, holy throne of God—with confidence to receive mercy and find grace.

There is a hammock in this holy place.

It bids me lean back in trust, resting in a finished work that was settled even before I needed it. I am “found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.” Philippians 3:9

Who could accomplish such a thing except the Holy God?

On the other hand, if I am wrong about who He is or my welcome here, a duck-and-cover stance would be safer. Not really, but it would feel like it. Leaning backwards is about as vulnerable as it gets. I cannot escape the tension that He will always be somehow “other than” I have figured out. To stay in this hammock may alternately feel as risky as it now feels safe. I can’t strive, exert, or control much from here.

Holy mercy. Holy grace. Indeed, so far above every notion I have of what to expect from mercy and grace. By His mercies I am not consumed. But more than that. Allowed to come in and fall on my face in worship. But more still. Offered rest in the Presence of the Earth Shaker. Invited to come near with confidence because He has shared holiness with me.

Yes, this is bigger than I bargained for. More immense than my bitty theology. He is “other than.” And wonder of wonders, I come and lean back into His holiness.