My friend Bill told me the following story: at one point in his life, his two daughters were both addicted to heroin and the dual addictions were destroying his family. As Bill walked into his house all hell was breaking loose. His oldest daughter disconnected from everyone and stared out the window. In her typical frantic anxiety; Bill’s younger daughter paced around the living room. His wife clung to thread of sanity, but she still found the energy to spray everyone with her rage. The entire house was filled with hostility, stress and despair.
Bill wanted to flee the scene, but instead he clearly heard the Lord say to him, “Go into the living room, gently hug your daughters and your wife and tell them that they are deeply loved.” So he did it. With quiet authority he walked up to each family member, tenderly touched them as he looked them in the eye and said, “I love you and it will be alright.”
According to Bill all the negativity, rage and anxiety left the room. It was like they were breathing in pollution, but then someone extracted all of the poison from the air. They could breathe deeply again. Bill’s slowly learning to walk in that quiet, strong, deep redemptive authority and gentleness, but he hasn’t been able to duplicate anything like that scene.
I have a hunch that God likes to give us these little traces of heaven. In the midst of Bill’s broken life, God let Bill see his new, Christ-like, fully redeemed self. God provided a vision of the end goal, or as Bill calls it “previews of coming attractions.”
I used to think that these traces of heaven were just flukes, like an awful golfer bouncing his tee-shot off a tree, hitting a seagull in the head and somehow getting a hole in one. I don’t believe Bill’s experience was a fluke. Instead, I think God interrupted his life and said, “This is who you will be, Bill. You’re not there yet, but stay with me and I will change you into a strong and tender man who walks into broken situations with my love and authority.”
So I’ll keep hanging around Jesus, letting him into my broken places, trusting and finding little traces of heaven in my life too.
and a wide smile told me that he had shattered his foot after falling off a ladder. When I asked him where he lived he told me the following story:
Some day I’d like to have as much trust and simplicity of heart as my homeless friend.
Perhaps the hardest thing about prayer is that it just feels so powerless. In contrast, when I can do something practical for you – rake your yard, buy your lunch, work for fair housing, solve your problems – I feel powerful; I feel in control. By comparison, prayer feels powerless, quiet, small and hidden. That’s the real “folly” of prayer. It’s so wrapped up with humans and humans are notoriously slow and vulnerable. A colony of bacteria can kill us. A lustful desire can drive us insane with addiction. And then we’re also stubborn, spiritually inattentive and even callous towards God and others. How can God possibly use our prayers to do anything for good in this world? It just seems so powerless.
to get to the end of myself. I admit that I can’t fix you or change you. But I can be with you and we can go together to the Father. So we come as frail and hard-hearted instruments, but we also come as sons and daughters who know their Father’s heart. And on your behalf I do something so useless that leads to such power: I pray for you.
Rummaging 