"Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground."
I know, Catholicism says there are seven Sacraments. Protestants only think three of them are important. Without any disrespect to them and without trying to devalue the Sacraments in any way, I want to broaden the definition of Sacred.
My perspective is that any time the temporal, physical world overlaps and connects with the eternal world, that intersection is sacred. That happens, for example, anytime I pick up my guitar or sit down at my piano and begin to worship God with music. Whenever I close my eyes and go to God in prayer, that is a sacred thing. Sometimes I feel that whenever I get dressed to intentionally go out and do something that represents God and His character, even the act of getting dressed is sacred.
God told Moses to take off his shoes, for "THE PLACE WHERE YOU ARE STANDING" is holy. Religious people feel that they have to go to someplace sacred or perform some ceremony to enter into sacred things. I think that everywhere I go is sacred - work, the bars, church, even sitting here writing, right now.
Life is sacred, and by design everything with which we have to do is sacred. The problem is in the implementation. Will I acknowledge that the place where I am standing is holy ground, treat it as such and honor the God who made it holy? Will I take off my shoes and eliminate the barriers that keep me from experiencing the holy, sacred nature of this place, right here, right now?
Or will i reject that perspective completely and consider the ground I am standing on as a resource to be consumed, an opportunity to take from it (and others who occupy it) whatever I want and whatever I think I can benefit from?
People who don't get the Christian story (and a hell of a lot of them are in church every week) don't understand that the place where we stand is owned by our family. As such, it already belongs to us. We don't have to take it, drain it, abuse it, steal it, milk it for everything it's worth because it is already our inheritance. Anything we do to extract its benefits for our own gain is counterproductive. We're burning down our own houses and stealing our own money.
The sacred things in life do not involve the transfer of pleasure, wealth, value or recognition from something else to us. From an accounting prospective, those transactions offset each other anyway.
Things are sacred because we recognize, honor, reflect and express the values and character of the One who created them into every nook and cranny of the life we have been given. So let's embrace the sacred things with joy and enthusiasm, knowing that today, this place, this time and this life are sacred.