In the recovery community where I volunteer I was recently giving a brief presentation on dealing with our emotions, then we broke off into smaller groups to talk about how to apply the lesson. Roger (not his real name) was in my group. Roger is always quiet and doesn’t say much. He usually sits a bit away from the rest of the group. On this particular evening he was staring out the window, off in what I assumed was la-la land. In an attempt to draw in his attention, I asked, “Roger, what are you thinking about?”  He said, “Well, I was just thinking that last night I was being stingy. It was about a piece of cake. The way I acted, I was being stingy and selfish. My father told me a long time ago never to be stingy.”

Although I had assumed not much was going on, God was working with Roger on a very deep character level. He was going beyond just the emotion he felt to a much deeper place. He was responding the spirit of God. It was amazing to see Roger processing at a deeper spiritual level than I generally do in my own life. At least I had the sense enough to be quiet and not get in the way. The other people in the circle were tearing up; they saw the depths of what he was dealing with.

It was humbling to realize we were on sacred ground. You wouldn’t know it to look around at the place. It was drab and ordinary. Yet the people in this recovery community were making it sacred ground. Their spiritual sensitivity is just as great—if not greater—than most of ours. Too often we load our lives with too much other stuff… and thereby lose that sense of awe and humbleness. It’s in time like this when I watch God working in Roger that I’m aware of the inadequacy of my own spiritual sensitivity. No matter what else we have going on mentally, emotionally, physically, our spirits are not damaged. Our spirits are waiting for God to invade.

As we continued meeting, we read Micah 6:8 and Roger was sitting in his usual spot outside the circle flipping though his Bible. Then he opened it wide and showed me how he had found the passage and it already had a box around it.

He has shown all you people what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.