A sanctuary on wheels
Nancy Kennedy
Recently I read about a group of city bus drivers — all Christians — who wanted to bring the peace of Christ to their passengers.
They noticed many looked troubled.
They asked a local pastor what they could do. He said, “Each morning before you start your route, walk down the aisle and say, ‘In the name of Jesus, I declare this bus to be a sanctuary where passengers will experience the love of Christ through me.’ You can be a pastor in your own sanctuary.”
He added, “See if Jesus honors your daily effort.”
After a couple of months, one driver called the pastor and said, “This sanctuary thing — it changed my life.”
He didn’t say if it changed his passengers’ lives, but it did stop him from getting into a fistfight with a man who cursed at him for not stopping where it wasn’t legal.
“I stayed quiet,” he said, “and when I finally let him off at the right place I said, ‘Have a nice day, sir.’”
The pastor told him, “It’s not that difficult when you’re driving a ‘sanctuary’ instead of a bus.”
I love the idea of making a space a sanctuary, but maybe it wasn’t the bus. Maybe it was the bus driver.
There’s a chorus that goes: “Lord prepare me to be a sanctuary, pure and holy, tried and true. And with thanksgiving, I’ll be a living sanctuary for you.”
As the Bible teaches, every Christian is a sanctuary for God’s Spirit to dwell. He is our comforter and teacher, our guide, our solace and our friend. He also is our sanctuary, a safe place from the chaos without and within.
The Spirit “speaks to us deep in our hearts and tells us that we really are God’s children” (Romans 8:16, Living Bible).
Christian author and pastor Gordon MacDonald wrote, “A sanctuary, no matter what form it takes, is a place where one should experience inner change — a reminder of the beauty and love of God, a fresh realization of one’s brokenness, a chance to give from the fruits of one’s labor, an experience of deep prayer and the sense that God has heard, and a time to hear holy scripture and feel it planting its powerful content in one’s soul.”
Saint Augustine famously wrote: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.”
I don’t know about you, but my default setting is restlessness. I’m an overthinker. I’ve imagined every disaster, even a volcano erupting in Florida.
When I’m overwhelmed, I shut down, shut people out.
I’m desperate to experience sanctuary — and then I do. The Spirit of Christ in me reminds me, “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for anything. He is with me forever, and nothing can separate me from his love.”
Then, as I experience sanctuary, I bring it to others wherever I go. Like the bus drivers who wanted to bring the peace of Christ to their passengers.
Isn’t that what we Christians all want? To bring God’s presence, his hope and grace, into our fractured and frenzied culture and see it transformed?
“It’s not that difficult,” the pastor said, “when you’re driving a sanctuary instead of a bus.”
Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.
