PK IN SWEDEN

PK IN SWEDEN

Saturday, January 5, 2019

HOLY COINCIDENCES AND EPIPHANIES IN OUR OWN LIVES

      In the late summer of '76 I was up late one night, telling the nurse on duty how good I felt about myself. I had seldom felt that way before, but suddenly... I was seeing things in a new way. Pastor Lu had visited me and through him, God assured me that His grace was sufficient, even for me. Lu led me in what he called a "sinner's prayer," and after letting go of a lifetime of anxiety, guilt, and fear... my world was brighter than it had ever been before. It's going to be okay, I told the nurse, but at breakfast the next morning, a woman named, Nancy, told me in no uncertain terms that I was full of something other than hope. She went on and on about how I was never going to be more than I had been before... but it was too late! I had already experienced an Epiphany and it didn't matter what Nancy or anyone else said!
      Thomas Merton is famous in religious and spiritual circles. He is a thoughtful man with considerable depth, but at least some of his insights came from epiphanies, rather than arduous study. In 1958, he had an epiphany that changed his entire way of seeing others. Here are his words: “In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs.... It was like waking from a dream...of spurious self-isolation in a special world. … (My) sense of liberation...was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. … I have the immense joy of being a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate.... And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” These are Thomas Merton's words, and while I never had the same epiphany in a single moment, I've come to see that we are connected, with one another, and with every living thing. Once our eyes are opened and we see that we're all created in God's image- really and truly, in 3D- it's not that hard to love "all those people," although you may not want to run around telling either men or women that you "love them." Some people may have learned that we are "one in Christ" in the same way they learn arithmetic and history... but for many of us, seeing that we are connected in love... is a "God thing."
      Few people have done more for the world that Bill Wilson, who developed a 12-Step program of recovery for alcoholics. Wilson's ideas have saved and restored millions of men and women throughout the world and they have spread to people who are in the grips of other addictions as well. Wilson's simple program is the work of a genius, but it did NOT come to him because he had studied abnormal psychology in depth. On the contrary, he was given his idea for AA in a spiritual encounter, He had an epiphany! In part he describes it with these words, "In 1934, my alcoholic friend and schoolmate "Ebbie" had fallen in with (the Oxford Group) and had promptly sobered up. Being an alcoholic... he hadn't been able to "buy" all the Oxford Group ideas.... (But), he was moved by their deep sincerity and felt mighty grateful for the fact that their ministrations had, for the time being, lifted his obsession to drink.When he arrived in New York in the late fall, Ebbie thought at once of me. On a bleak November day he rang up.  Soon he was looking at me across our kitchen table at 182 Clinton Street, Brooklyn, New York.  As I remember that conversation, he constantly used phrases like these: 'I found I couldn't run my own life;' 'I had to get honest with myself and somebody else;' 'I had to make restitution for the damage I had done;' 'I had to pray to God for guidance and strength, even though I wasn't sure there was any God;'  'And after I'd tried hard to do these things I found that my craving for alcohol left.' Then Ebbie would say something like this: 'Bill, it isn't a bit like being on the water wagon.  You don't fight the desire to drink -- you get released from it!'" Ebbie left and went about his life, but Bill W. entered a hospital for alcoholism two weeks later. He had been there before, but soon after he arrived this time, he had a an epiphany. God appeared to him and showed him a way in which hopeless addicts could reclaim their lives. Some people laugh at such things, but Thomas Merton didn't laugh and William Wilson didn't either.
      Neither do I because most of what I know that's worth knowing has come to me as a gift, borne of pain and/or joy. I don't much about systematic theology, but I have come to see that these things are great truths: 1) Nothing is impossible for God, 2) Angels (not little cute cherubim, but messengers in many forms) are quite real, 3) the present moment IS God's gift to us because it's the only moment we have, 4) No one is ugly or unacceptable in God's eyes, 5) Love is the greatest healer to be found, 6) Forgiveness is the most Christlike thing that we can ever do, 7) You are NOT who others say you are and your own "stories" do not define you, 8) our journey IS our life, 9) there are no scorecards in heaven, and 10) Jesus loves me and youSome epiphanies are famous. I mentioned a couple of them earlier. Some are Biblical (Paul on the road to Damascus, Cleopas on the road to Emmaus, Abraham beneath the oaks of Mamre, the star that led the Magi to Jesus)... but today, I simply want to... invite you... to consider the ways that God has appeared to you... through "holy coincidences," unexpected helping hands, affirming words when you needed them most, a painful "no," a frustrating "later," a confusing "maybe," the opening and closing of doors, a dream, a vision, perhaps a star. 
      Reflect on all the ways in which God has appeared to you... and keep your eyes wide open from this moment on... because I am convinced that God appears to us in many ways and through a variety of people. Among many other wonderful things that he has written, Frederick Buechner noted that we should "never question the truth of what we fail to understand for the world is filled with wonders." To which I would only say, amen.
last, b the mercy of God, meditating day and night, I gave heed to the context of the words, namely, “In it the righteousness of God is revealed, as it is written, ‘He who through faith is righteous shall live.'” There I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that by which the righteous lives by a gift of God, namely by faith. And thiss is the meaning: the righteousness of God is revealed by the gospel, namely, the passive righteousness with which merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written, “He who through faith is righteous shall live.” Here I felt that I was altogether born again and 

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