Take Off Your Sandals

At the burning bush God tells Moses to take off his sandals, because the ground he is standing on is holy. Nothing about the ground had changed. What had changed was that God was there, and Moses needed his body to know it before his mind caught up.

Here is the practice for this week. Choose one moment each day when you intend to pray, and give it a threshold. For many people the simplest version is literal: when you sit down to read Scripture or pray, take off your shoes first. If that feels odd, choose another small physical act, such as placing your phone face down in another room, lighting a candle, or standing in the same spot at the window each morning.

The point is not superstition. It is that we are bodily creatures, and the transitions in our day are mostly unmarked, so prayer gets squeezed in on the same footing as email. A threshold tells the body that something different is happening here. Do it for seven days and see whether the ground begins to feel holy sooner.