I came across a funny little thing the other day about signs.
Imagine a family you know say that they’re going on a seaside holiday to
Scarborough. All very lovely, sounds great, so you wave them off and they go on
their way, and then later that day you’re driving along on the country roads,
and in the distance, you see their car. And it’s just parked at the side of the
road. And as you get closer you can see that their parked just before a
junction, next to a sign that says “Scarborough”. And
when you get really close you see that they’ve got out of the car, they’ve got
a little table and chairs set up and they’re having their dinner, right there
by the side of the road.
You pull up wind your
window down, and say, “Are you guys alright?”
They smile back and say,
“Yeah, we’re loving it!”
“I thought you were going
to Scarborough…” you say.
They say, “Yes indeed! And
here we are! That’s the sign right there!”
Now obviously that’s quite
stupid, but my point is that when Jesus did miracles, he called them “signs”.
When he turned water into wine, or when he healed people like he healed Tim and
Clare and the woman who came to my Dad, he described those things as “signs”.
And he actually got pretty frustrated when people kept getting seeing the signs
but not bothering to go where they were pointing.
Which is why I think this
is my favourite weird story of all. It’s from Elly, who used to come to my
church back here in Leamington, and then I bumped into on a night out in
Cambridge a couple of months ago and invited her to come along with me to
church in Revs bar that Sunday. And it’s been great because I’ve got to see a
lot more of Elly since then, both in a literal and in a sort of deeper sense.
So I asked her if she could try and summarise her story – and what I love is
that crazy stuff has been happening recently, and she mentions it, but its not
the point. My guess is that quite a lot of it is too personal to be
particularly bloggable anyway – but mainly it’s that she’s not just excited
about the miracles, she’s not getting out at the road sign and having a
barbecue – she’s got to the real thing, and she loves it! And I think that’s
epic. Anyway, here it is…
***
So this is basically about the past two weeks (with a little bit
of before thrown in):
Before the amazing Mike took me to his church I would have said I
was good with God. I loved him, he loved me. Simples. But now I realise that
was a trickle – what I have now is a waterfall.
I loved ‘God the Father’ from before I was born. I wouldn’t be on
this planet without him. He protected me through everything. I loved ‘God the
Holy Spirit’ from thirteen, he was the fire inside of me. He gave me strength,
he taught me to forgive and sent me on a mission to protect the people I loved.
He saved me again. But in the last few years I had started to hate ‘Jesus the
Son’ and I didn’t even realise. In teaching me to forgive, he had become
burdened with so much physical and mental pain that I hated him. This was pain
that wasn’t his to bare. It was ‘that’ man, or ‘that’ boy’s pain, not Jesus’.
Not the man who had died on a cross to forgive my sins. It was completely
ridiculous for me to hate him but I did. I hated him to the point I screamed to
the sky on our Weekend Away with church, but he just replied with one thing:
love.
From that moment he gave up whispering and started shouting. He
gave me instructions so loud they could not be ignored. He answered my prayers
for others. He forced me on to my knees with no option of standing. He made me
truly smile at the world all the time. He performed miracles in my life. He
made me not be scared of death. He provided me with the most amazing friends in
Christ. He let me speak in (baby) tongues. He made his words come alive. He has
just set my world on fire.
Before God was carrying me, he was protecting me as I tried to
protect the people around me. He was my guardian. But now I am free. Now
instead of carrying me, he is holding my hand. Holding my hand as I walk with
him, wherever that might be.
God is not just my father any more, he is my best friend. He is
the constant dialogue in my head: whether it is advice, begging (on my part) or
just nattering about the weather, it doesn’t stop and I love it. He is the one
who will give me a hug when the day has been hard. He is the man I dance around
the house with when the day has been good. He is the one who has me laughing
down the street or walking around with a scary smile on my face. Jesus the Man
was what was missing in my life, and I didn’t even realise. Thanks be to God.
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