Friday Five: Soon and Very Soon.

You can play here: Friday Five: Soon and Very Soon.

Please share five ways that God has come to you (your family or friends, your church or workplace, our world) in the past year, that God is coming to you right now, and/or that you are longing and looking for God to come.

1. The most significant way God came to me this year was at the ending of a 18-month-long dark night of the soul. What that is, is a period of spiritual darkness where one has no sensation of the presence of God. Prayer seems pointless; it feels like no one is listening and, naturally, no one is responding. Communion is just bread and grape juice. Sermon writing and preaching seems mechanical. And so on. Its not a fun place to be, but like anything we strive against, it is a spiritually strengthening place.

So, I'm sitting on the couch in my office reading A Second Resurrection by Bill Easum for my evangelism class. Then out of the blue, I physically/spiritually felt the full weight of all my sins upon me. It knocked me off the couch to the floor--I couldn't breathe. Then a began to sob. Not crying, but body shaking sobs of pure despair. And in the midst of all that pain--in the midst of 18 months of spiritual loneliness, I cried out to Jesus for help. To save me. To show me what he wanted me to do. And just like that, the weight was gone. I felt it lifted off of me, and my soul was borne up within me. It was my Aldersgate experience. Just as Wesley expressed in his journal, I too ,"felt I did trust in Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that He had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death."

2. A week or two before my Adersgate experience, I had a vivid dream in which I believe God was preparing me for that event. I remember being in the ocean between a large ship and an iceberg. On top of the iceberg was a friend of mine from seminary, Chris. He kept talking about sharks being in the water trying to panic me, but I assured him that the water was too cold for sharks (Though deep inside, I was really panicking about what might be under the dark waters that could eat me.) Then he fell from the top of the iceberg and sunk into the water. I went after him, sinking quickly to save him, but when I got to him, I kept sinking faster and faster into the cold and dark.

I think that the towering smooth side of the ship and the enormous looking iceberg represented all that I had in my life that was insurmountable. There would be no way I could climb out of the water by myself to safety. So I was resigned to living miserably in the cold dark waters. Chris represented myself; he voiced all my fear, and panic and anxiety, while I tried to keep my cool. But when he fell into the waters, I feared losing myself. The state of fear in which I lived was horrible, but comfortable in its familiarity. Therefore, I sunk after him to save him. But then I went deeper and deeper, unable to save him or myself. I think the water was strongly representative of baptismal imagery, of dying to oneself. God was also present in Dr. Elaine Heath who helped me interpret this dream.

3. This summer, after worship at St. Anne's Cathedral in Belfast, Ireland, our group toured the Crumlin Road Gaol (Jail). I won't go into it here, but it was a truly haunted place; it was a summation of all the pain and suffering and evil the hung over the island like an ominous storm cloud. It left me a spiritual, emotional, and mental wreck. After eating dinner at Dr. Abraham's Belfast home, we went down the street to a small Presbyterian church for evening worship. There was so much life in that place as we worshiped. I was filled with joy in the midst of all the despair. In the course of the service I remember this scripture: Micah 7.

4. At the same time Perkins School of Theology opened its new facilities, which includes an outdoor prayer labyrinth, God lead me to discover the Rosary. This past semester, I have spent every day that I am at school walking the labyrinth and prayer the Rosary. I can do this in part because I am a lousy Protestant (but I'm still Protestant because I'd be a lousy Anglican, let alone a Roman Catholic). I balk at a lot of the Marian theology, leaving out the mysteries that I cannot support scripturally. I modified the Rosary to accommodate my particular spirituality. I still pray the initial Hail Mary prayer, but I replace the subsequent Hail Mary prayers with the Jesus prayer, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God and Son of Mary, have mercy upon me, a sinner." I add the praying of the Nicene Creed and Wesley's covenant prayer. But what it has done is strengthen my prayer life, by giving me structure for my ADD riddled mind and drawing my entire body into the discipline of prayer.

5. Every day I experience God through Beth. In her is the closest I have ever been to the grace of God's unmerited grace. Our relationship is the means of grace by which God has enacted the greatest amount of positive change in me. She loves me even when I deserve it the least. She doesn't let me get away with being anything less than growing into the person God is calling me to be. She's shown me what it means and what it looks like to love like God loves.