The preacher asked the question. And like water from a rusty faucet, sputtering and squeaky from years of disuse, faltering words lurched forth.
Was there a moment when God pulled back the curtain…even just an inch?
You may not talk about it often. But you remember.
.
.
.
.............yes.
It happened twice, in vastly different ways.
And suddenly I need to tell you, because they have shaped me, these moments.
I have tears in my eyes even now, remembering.
The first:
I had just completed an agonizing, several-months-long project that—I didn't know at the time—was to lead me into a sort of exile, into deep grief. And in an effort to assuage the grief, it would lead me away from the Lord into grievous sin.
I didn't know all of this; I just knew that I finished the project, and in a state of surrealness, went to lie down. I lay on my bed staring at the ceiling and suddenly the air felt thick, heavy, and trembling, as though "the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters." There was a pulsing aliveness I'd never felt before, nor since, and I could hardly move or breathe or think. All I could do was sort of gasp out a prayer, "It feels like You're touching me."
There seemed to be an affirmative.
My mind could not grasp it, this presence of holy aliveness. I prayed, "But how? I am dirt." And I heard back, "You are. You are holy ground."
The Presence lasted only a few moments, but I inhaled eternity. The intimacy of it felt like a promise of something to come. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has come close. I remember trying to comprehend the beauty and mystery, and was astonished at how, in those moments, nothing else mattered. All else fell away. It was communion in the deepest, fullest way.
I would give my life to be in that Presence again. I've never written of it until now; maybe told two people in the fifteen years since it happened. But I've never forgotten. My entire being longs and looks and aches for it again, for Him again. I believe it was a taste of the presence of the Lord. There was, and is, nothing on earth that transcends what I felt. The most powerful experience you could imagine, the greatest pleasure, faded into absolute nothingness and futility compared to this.
The second:
Maybe a year or two after the first?
I was working a retail job in a relatively upscale shopping center with a "no solicitors" policy. A man came into my store, peddling bread.
And I was rude to him. Exorbitantly rude. Full on ugly. Haughty, cold, dismissive. More awful than you can imagine.
He left.
And it was like the scales fell from my eyes. (I'm crying now as I write this.) I saw the wickedness of my response to him, my pride and lack of kindness. And he was gone...vanished.
I wanted desperately to call him back. I wanted to apologize. To make it right. If memory serves, I cried and sobbed over my sinfulness and ugliness toward this man right there in the store. I was the only one working, so I couldn't leave the shop. Remorse fell on me like a boulder from a cliff above. I went out to the sidewalk in front of my store looking in every direction for him, sick to my stomach with despair and sorrow. I begged God for the man to come back. I didn't see him anywhere. It's hard to describe the regret, the remorse, the horror at my own depravity.
I turned to go back into my store....and there he was. The mercy of God stood right behind me in the flesh, tall, looking down at me.
I could have laid my head on his chest. I could have kissed him, I felt so relieved. It was like receiving life from the dead, a resurrection.
I asked him to come in. He followed me inside. He was so kind and gracious as I floundered through an apology, crying, heartsick, and awestruck over the gift of this chance to see him again, to confess.
In the wake of my unkindness, he was kind. "It's water under the bridge," he said to me.
And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
After he left the store, he looked back once through the window, and I'll never forget the look in his eyes.
These touched my soul!