Is it just me?

OK – this is weird.
On Saturday Rebekah and I were going up to Vancouver. A church I’m passingly familiar with was hosting a kind of prophetic conference where you could show up and see if maybe God had something specific he wanted to tell you through a team of prophets. Frankly the whole thing is a little outside he box for me, but I admit I was at least interested enough to check it out.

Anyway, as we’re cruising up I-5 at 60 MPH in the middle of downtown Tigard, a doe bounds over the center divider in the freeway and makes a beeline for my windshield. I swerve, she swerves and she misses me by like 5 feet – I kid you not. She makes it across one more lane to the far right lane where she’s creamed by a delivery truck that sends her down the shoulder like a spinning hockey puck. The truck dented its bumper and lost a headlight, but otherwise calmly pulls over and nobody beside the deer is hurt.

You know – it’s a strange thing anyway, seeing a deer jump out in front of you on a freeway. But I have the additional fact that for years, God has specifically used deer to indicate his presence to me. It’s a long story to explain that, but take my word or it for now. And on top of THAT, I’m off to go looking specifically for a sign from God when this happens.

I’m not really hip on seeing omens in things, but this was such a strange and shocking event that I guess I just want to record it for posterity in case it does turn out to be auspicious of something.

Feel free to offer your interpretations by the way...

Dau Luke

I’ve been in a Foursquare church for a long time, like ten years now, and something happened today that I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen even though I’ve heard about it.

There was a missionary couple visiting (TFC supports them) and a few of us were asked to come up and pray over them as they were getting ready to go back to Papua. As I was praying I got a word for them...but...um...it wasn’t English. For that matter I have no idea what language it was. In an effort to spell the thing phonetically, it was basically ‘dau luke’ - I don’t know if that’s one word with two syllables or two words...anyway...

So more than a little scared, as the microphone came to me I said, ‘I think I have a word for you, but I don’t know what it means: dau luke’...then crickets.

The prayer picked up and continued for a few more minutes and I stood there wondering what that was all about and if I’d fumbled that one. But as the prayer ended, there is a guy standing near the stage whispering to the pastor. It seems he had a translation/interpretation of my word. According to this fellow, the word(s) meant ‘life water’ and proceeded to explain the rest of the revelation he had when I spoke those words and it was all about this missionary woman’s mother and how she was spiritually sick right now but God was working this life water into her life like rain water filtering down through layers of sand and gravel to come out in a spring miles away fresh and clean and perfect.

I’m sure for folks more familiar with that phenomenon it might seem like a little thing, or at least a normal thing, but for me it seemed like one of the most beautiful things I’d seen in a long time (and that’s saying something given my recent escapades). It was like this totally practical, and totally mysterious act that drew several people together, each offering only a piece of the puzzle, to speak powerfully into the heart of His daughter who was secretly worried for her mother.

I love the Holy Spirit Mega Power Blast stuff, but I love the Jesus Loves Us Quietly stuff even more.

Really, I'm not stalling

I feel I should say something about all that happened last month in South Carolina. Several people have pinged me in one way or another to say, “well...what happened?”

I’m not stalling, and while I’ve certainly been busy, that’s not really what’s been delaying the post (or several). The thing has just been wicked hard to write about. I’ve tried several times and there are so many things to say, but it’s like I can’t come to any kind of nearly comprehensible (to say nothing or eloquent) way of describing the whole thing.

I think my mother-in-law hit it on the head. She said writing it all down sort of commits the whole thing to a black and white situation, and I reckon I’m just not ready for the whole thing to be black and white. For that matter, it may never be ready for that, but at least for now, I’m still working through a lot of it. In W@H speak, I’d say “There’s a lot to unpack there.”

So, sorry for the additional delay if you’re waiting...something really is coming, but it will have to be in it’s own time.

Kathie – did the apostrophe make you’re eye twitch? ;)