Autumn has arrived, and it is breathtakingly beautiful. The air is crystal-clear, and it smells so sweet to a city-dweller like me. I still get to bask in wide-open space and green. But here’s the thing: it’s cold. Or more accurately, it feels cold to me. Like the last time I was here in the fall, it’s taking me a long while to adjust to the change in climates. (Oh. And did I mention the days and days of much-needed rain?)
But Friday and Saturday, I had a reprieve: a couple days of Indian summer. I guess you could call it a sanctuary in time.
Happily, it was also Sukkot, yet another sanctuary in time: the one you might know as the feast of tabernacles, or booths. In Hebrew, a booth is a sukkah (plural: sukkot), and it recalls Israel’s trek through the wilderness, when God camped with them, living in the next tent over. So sukkah-dwelling reminds me that I’m a transient here on earth, that I have a home in heaven — and yet I’m a guest at God’s table today.
Last year, I had no outside spot of my own to build one, so I went sukkah-chasing with my camera. They sprout on balconies, in gardens, and over tables belonging to sidewalk cafes. At the end of the week, ten shekels and a slice of pizza bought me some sukkah-sitting time.
This year I had wide-open space, and so (with the help of some friends), I built a sukkah. On Friday night and Saturday, it was my sanctuary. Its fabric walls broadcast candlelight like a Japanese lantern at dusk, and let in morning sunshine through every inch. At night, a bright, inquisitive moon kept peeking down through the hemlock branches that stood in for palm-fronds on its roof. It was perfect.
But like all sukkahs, it came with an expiration date. Late Saturday afternoon, a wind blew up, my sukkah fell down, and it began to rain. Ironically, just then, a friend was on her way for tea in the open air. So we took our sense of sanctuary inside, and talked and sipped for two delightful hours.
That was Saturday, but this is Monday. Sukkot ends in just a few minutes, my sukkah is just a pile of branches outside, and I woke up this morning, apparently, for the express purpose of feeling down — that (happily rare) inane emotion that scowls at sunshine and scarlet and gold leaves, cheating the beauty right out of a perfectly good day.
But God-with-us is still with me; His invisible tabernacle is pitched over my head at this moment, and His moveable feast is chasing me tonight: sure goodness, sheer kindness, and everlasting life.
It’s here! My sanctuary is here, and my refuge-in-time is now. And He has a name: Jesus, my Immanuel.
He brought me to His banqueting house; His banner over me is love.
I left this draft on my screen tonight while my sister took me to the next town over. There I saw three friends and four strangers who gather monthly, considering their humble surroundings a good reminder of those for whom they pray. There, in an unheated attic room, wrapped in a blanket with my chilly feet on a humble plywood floor — I found sanctuary. And oh, the love and like minds, the listening ears, and the presence of God.
He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may pitch a tabernacle over me.
Elisabeth Adams 