This is what God said to me

I had this experience of God, day before yesterday.
I blogged yesterday about the place itself. That post will probably be a bit more concrete than this one. Consider yourself duly warned. The best I’m going to be able to do today is probably some mystical abstractions…
As I began my hike, I was feeling disconnected. Stressed out. Overwhelmed. Underappreciated. Lonely. Unloved. Over all, I was more or less grumpy smurf.
Partially, I new that I needed to find Jesus where he always waits, right at the very center of me. I’d gotten into this dangerous place, though. Because I’d spent long enough neglecting my relationship with him that it was just sort-of intellectual knowledge, the dangers of being disconnected.
I’ve noticed that when I first start to wander, it’s easy to get myself back. Partially, it’s easy because I’m so close to the knowledge of how peaceful and… right it is, when I’m connected.
But as time passes this awareness is less visceral. I get less desperate for Jesus as time passes because I get forgetful about how very good He is. And then the whole thing snowballs. These are the things that help me to believe that Satan is a personal being quite interested in assaulting our faith. There’s really no good reason for why it should be so very easy to get disconnected from Jesus, otherwise.
At any rate, it was mostly head-knowledge, and no longer close to my heart, the awareness that lots of different things are really just symptoms; the awareness that more than everything else, I needed to re-establish a connection.
As I left the houses behind, as I entered into the forest, the breeze in the trees formed this thing. It wasn’t really a rythm.
That’s actually a lie. It was a rythm. I know that it sounds a little nutty to say that though, and so I tried to resist.
And I fell into this… chanting.
I don’t have much of an opinion about chanting. I’ve never chanted before in my life. I don’t know why I started. It was just barely above my breath, not loud at all.
At first, it was
Connect with me
Connect with me
Connect with me
God

Connect with me
Connect with me
Connect with me
Jesus

Connect with me
Connect with me
Connect with me
Yahwew

And I went through this cycle, maybe 4 times… and I realized that I’m already connected. I’m in Christ and he’s in me. He is everywhere. He never leaves. I felt this, I felt the truth of it. And so my chant become something else…

Let me feel
Let me feel
Let me feel my connection Jesus

Let me feel
Let me feel
Let me feel my connection God

Let me feel
Let me feel
Let me feel you, Yahwew.

For some timeless, time, I went on with is. And I did feel my connection.

After a couple miles, the trail I was on leads to this meadow area. At the point I was at, the trees are close in. They form a cannopy overhead. The plants reach in toward the path. It is all shade.

The meadow is one of my favorite places. Perhaps because it’s just far enough… Not so close that approaching it is easy and overly familiar. Not so far away that I can’t ever get there and spend enough time to form a relationship with that place.

As I felt God’s presence, I first began to pray “God, please just show me your glory in the meadow.” I walked through the shadowy path and I new that if I asked Him, he’d leave me some amazing sign of His presence there.
I know that the skeptic in my brain and the skeptics in the outside world, they’d say my next realization was just protecting my belief system.
Once I would have been interested in that sort-of debate. I’m learning to understand that not much get’s accomplished by treating God like a Geometric Thereom.
What I know is that I realized, as I was hiking that God has been so good to me.
And so everything changed. I realized that God knows what I need so much better than me. It wasn’t quite a chant any more. I don’t think I even vocalized anything.
But it became something else. A nonstop prayer. That God’s will would be done. That I would experience whatever I most needed to in the meadow.
I wasn’t exactly disapointed, as I prayed this newer prayer. But I new that I was telling God that I didn’t need an outward manifestation of His glory. I was telling him that I didn’t need any outward sign or wonder.
In truth, part of me held on to the idea that maybe by saying “God, I don’t need it.” He’d be so impressed that he’d grant it anyway. I thought of Solomon, how when he prayed for wisdom, not riches, he got both wisdom and riches.
I wish I could tell you that a golden eagle swooped down when I entered the meadow. I wish I could say that a legion of Angels stood before me. The meadow… it was just a meadow. Peaceful and beautiful and perfect, but not out of the ordinary.

On the way back, God treated me to this slide show in my brain. I was reminded of all the times he has shown up in some huge and undeniable way. Perhaps I’ll blog about them in the next couple days.
I wasn’t feeling God’s judgement, really. But it was something close, maybe divine bemusement is the right way to describe it… Not with words, but this really complicated emotion, I got this message.
“Yes, knucklehead, you’re right. You don’t need any great sign or wonder today… What about all these other ones?”
The very vividness of this re-esperiencing, though, it was a sign by itself. And as I got close to home, crossed the river not to far the visitor’s center… things took on this whole new solidity. Everything was in extra 3-d. I was so very in the middle of everything. So very in the moment. So connected.

God is so good.

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