At Christmas 2007 our organist presented me with a leather journal. It has each day of the year at the top and five boxes of five lines each to write about the day. What this means is each year you can see what happened in the year(s) prior. I am beginning the last year of this book and most days I have a hard time entering anything and I am not reviewing the previous years at all.
Today, however, I did look at the past and I saw an entry from 2009. I was at YouthQuake, a national weekend retreat for youth hosted by Acts 29 in North Carolina. That group is no longer functioning and our parish youth did not go for this year's youth event.
My notes from that Saturday were centered on a prayer experience which we had there. The adult leaders had one separate session and during part of it we broke into groups of four. I did not know any of the people I was with. One woman was a mom who came to be with her daughter. The other two were youth ministers from Anglican parishes in West Tennessee. That was the first interesting sign....
The four of us took turns praying for each other. Basically each person took a turn being prayed for while the other three asked God for insight. Each of the women received some information from the rest of us, usually a word or an image, which was profoundly meaningful or helpful. I was the last one and what happened to me was nothing short of miraculous.
The 'mom' (who had never done anything like this in her life and was obviously way out of her spiritual comfort zone) prayed the blessing of St. Patrick. One of the youth directors told me she heard 'braveheart.' Then she and the other youth pastor each said that they saw me in armor. Lastly, one woman saw God deflecting arrows and spears. When they were done, it was my turn to share with them what the words and images meant.
At that time I had made a commitment to pray the prayer of St. Patrick as part of my morning offering. The 'mom' had no idea what the prayer she prayed was, she said it just came to her. The timeliness was obviously striking. When we talked about braveheart the next woman admitted that she was not sure what it meant. I shared with her about the movie, a Mel Gibson work. She had never seen it. I went on to tell her that I watched that movie (for several years) the night before our Diocesan Conventions. At that time things were very combative (and I was on the losing side) and it provided me with inspiration to stand for the traditional faith, even if it seemed hopeless. At the end of braveheart, the Gibson character is betrayed and killed. There could have been, at that time, no other image which was as powerful to me. The most amazing thing was that she had no idea about the movie and she did not know me. The armor, which comes from St. Paul, was also something that I had personally prayed about in the days leading up to YouthQuake. That two women "saw" that was indeed remarkable. Once again, the timing was amazing.
I am not someone who easily claims to "hear God" but this case certainly seemed to be a clear case of that. I share it because it seems to be a clear case of divine intervention. The specificity of the timing and /or content of what they said were statistically off the wall. Taken in toto, it is downright amazing. I also share it because in an age of such anti-church sentiments it is a sterling reminder that God is at work in His church (and the Bible tells me so!). It is my hope that this is a source of inspiration to others to take prayer in groups more seriously!
No comments:
Post a Comment