My hope is that this story will confirm that God loves you and is working in your life even though you may be unaware of it at the time.
This is a true story. However, anyone trying to convey on paper the inner impressions, feelings and revelations of the love of God experienced through such a numinous experience will always find it difficult to put into words.
(To view last month's article, "Signs of the End Times: Is Jesus Really Coming Back? Go to the dashboard and click on "Archived Articles" or scroll down below this article.)
(To view last month's article, "Signs of the End Times: Is Jesus Really Coming Back? Go to the dashboard and click on "Archived Articles" or scroll down below this article.)
GOD’S LOVE-SURPRISE©
by
Janis Hutchinson
I shall never forget that cold gray winter evening when God suddenly
emerged from his mysterious hiding place to make himself known to me. It was an
unexpected experience¾one that shocked me to the very core.
Widowed, my three small children and I lived in a small town situated on
the bleak outskirts of the Utah desert. After putting the children to bed and
stoking up the fire, I settled back in my Lazy Boy and reached for Saint
Augustine’s Confessions, a
book I had picked up earlier at a garage sale. Flipping through the pages, a
chapter heading caught my eye¾Looking for
God in the fields of memory.
Intrigued, I read the whole section of his analytical search for
God and found myself enjoying his thought-provoking questions¾one in particular. How
is it that after finding
God we recognize him, when we never knew him beforehand? His answer, however, disturbed me.
His assertion was that since the ability to recognize can only
come from our memories, then that is the place where God is to be found.
By re-examining them, no matter how horrendous, we will find Him in the midst
of our story.
I bristled with indignation. There
is no way God can be found by doing that! If there was any truth to Augustine’s claim at all, it
was that by recalling life’s experiences one could ascertain if God was there at all. I could
remember every crucial event that took place in my life and God was definitely not there!
I could, however, understand His reluctance¾there was certainly nothing loveable about me. My earlier years
had been filled with hurt and ugliness. If I could have perceived any incident
in my life that made sense, then maybe I could say God was there. But
there was no rhyme or reason to any of it.
Grabbing a pencil, I began formulating a response to prove Augustine wrong. But
the long day suddenly began to take its toll and I found myself wearily leaning
back in the chair.
Resting in the half-light,
half-darkness behind closed eyelids, something unexpected happened¾certainly nothing I planned. All the events of my life, the
unexplainable setbacks and tragedies of the past with their defeats, failures
and disappointments, surprisingly erupted¾even those
dramas I thought I had hidden so deeply that I would never have to look upon
them again.
I pushed the unwelcome scenes aside but
they kept reappearing as if pleading for some explanation to reveal their
purpose in the scheme of things. This time there was no cramming them back into
the dark recesses of my mind. I could do nothing but helplessly succumb as all
the tangled, chaotic events of my life rushed forward in all their
unintelligible disorder. To make any sense of their purpose was like trying to
read a story composed of incoherent sentences and paragraphs out of sequence.
All they did was re-confirm what I already knew¾God was
never there for me.
I watched a full rehearsal of all the unhappy events of my
childhood and teenage years play out before me—the good, the bitter, the
perplexing and distressing. At the same time I could hear background music¾sometimes harmonious, other times dissonant and tuneless¾as each life’s event, like a musical note, moved forward and
connected to the next in a cause-and-effect manner.
Similar to viewing a movie, I watched myself act out the old,
pitiable scenes, one after the other. The entire cast was there—estranged
relatives, friends, acquaintances¾down to the
last participating, oftentimes unwelcome, actor. I re-experienced childhood
fears, a broken home, boarding at unpleasant places, suffered through
surgeries, tuberculosis, chronic health problems, near-death situations, and
relived the time as a teenager when I tried to end it all. All of it revealed
one indisputable truth. My life was worthless. No one cared¾not even God.
Then, like in a delusive dream, I found myself at a strange and
unusual vantage point—I became both player and viewer. As actor, I was aware of my
interaction with others, but as viewer I had the unique position of standing
afar off and watching the panorama. I could see players concealed offstage
waiting for their cue to enter and my attention riveted on one personality in
particular.
Who was this person, undetected by me as actor but now observed by
me as viewer? Then, recognition sank in . . .
It was God!
There he stood in the middle of my horrible story completely
absorbed in the music, measuring the tempo, calling the cues, skillfully
directing and orchestrating all the scattered pieces of my life.
Under his commanding gestures, the chaotic and fugue-like
events of my life whirled together in a spinning maelstrom of soul-awakening
harmonies. Rhythms, patterns, order and disorders—all the counterpoints of my
life—moved in all their crescendos and dynamics, collaborating in a strange
synthesis of unity and diversity.
I soon noticed, in the midst of all that swelling cacophony,
something surprising taking place. All the disordered array of tuneless
dissonance began to fuse into a single, euphonious composition. Every event and
episode of my life became a musical note, where the value of each depended upon
the preceding one, the one following setting the quality for those to come, and
the arrangement blending into soul-stirring, cathedral-like chords.
Flowing from one to the other in a cause and effect manner,
the melodious, even the ill-sounding, notes mingled and merged into a
connective continuity. They melded into a dynamic whole until the fragmented
events were no longer discontinuous incidences but riding upon a divine
continuum. God was taking up all the jumbled scraps of my chaotic life and
arranging them into a definitive pattern—and the unique process was structuring
the harmony and melody of me!
I watched in amazement, delighting in the effusive
experience. But as with all compositions that must come to a close, the notes
of my life’s events gradually began to dissolve into the silence of the past,
leaving only their combined effect to linger in the last reverberating tone.
And in the flow of quiet that followed¾like the
interpretive hush following a period at the end of a sentence¾the final, impassioned note punctuated the full meaning of my
schizophrenic existence, revealing purpose, design and significance.
I now had to acknowledge a divine structure where I thought
none existed, a stability I thought was missing, a Reality I had assumed was
not there. God had always been there, guiding and watching over
me. He did love me after all!
I have no idea how long the experience lasted but as I opened my
eyes my first impulse was to figuratively leap to my feet, applaud and shout, Bravo!¾not for myself, but for God who had been wielding the baton and
orchestrating my life all along!
Moved to tears, I experienced a brokenness that surpasses
description. My zero-level image of myself changed and I saw the real me as desirable to God. I saw him as
the ever-faithful Lover and myself as the Beloved. He cherished me just as I
was, in the midst of all the unfortunate situations, the messiness, fears and
mistakes. In return, I loved him back with a love that was indescribable.
I immediately fell to my knees to express my gratitude—to call
upon his name and try in some way to say, “Thank
you.”
But the instant those two words formed on my lips, they fell short of their
mark. They were not enough! I panicked—they did not express what I was feeling!
I groped for some way to possibly
rephrase it with more meaning. I groaned in frustration, but try as I could
there were no words in my vocabulary to express what I was feeling.
What was I to do? How could I let Him know?
In a final moment of utter helplessness—in an outburst intended only as
rhetorical—I cried out: “Lord,
how can I say thank you?”
To my surprise, distinct words flooded into
my mind. A scripture. It came powerfully and compelling, yet gently, peacefully
and reassuring.
“Let your
light so shine before men, that they may see your good works,
and glorify
your Father which is in heaven.”
I was dumbfounded. That’s how
I’m supposed to say, thank you?
In joyous relief I responded . . . “Oh yes!”
* * *
In the gratifying days and years that followed, I
have continued to bask in the wondrous afterglow of the experience—also in the
assurance that whatever scenes lay ahead, even if seemingly discordant, chaotic
and tuneless, God will faithfully be there in the sidelines guiding and
orchestrating the whole wondrous composition of my life.
Augustine was right. It is at the point
of deep introspection and the strangeness of remembered experiences that God’s
presence can be found.
The End
The following hymn confirms the difficulties in trying to describe the love of God.
The Love of God
Could we with ink the ocean fill
And were the skies of parchment made
Were every stalk on earth a quill
And every man a scribe by trade
To write the love of God above
Would drain the ocean dry
Nor could the scroll contain the whole,
Though stretched from sky to sky.
(F.M. Lehman)
The above story won Honorable Mention in a five-continent, worldwide literary competition.
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