Just this Sunday, in my youth and young adults Sunday School class, I was talking about how I felt called by God even if I hadn't ever heard his voice speak in my ears in perfect King's English.
I have had God experiences. I have felt the light and heat of the Holy Spirit.
Last night was different.
Like I conveyed to David, another pastor buddy of mine, over coffee this morning, I didn't get everything I wanted last night. Not everyone I voted for won, and ballot measures passed that I ended up not voting for (and the entire state of Washington began singing "Puff, the Magic Dragon").
But I got the big one. I was excited to vote for then-Senator Obama in 2008, and I voted for his re-elect in 2012. I stayed up late enough to catch his acceptance speech (the time change hasn't been kind to me), which gave me gooseflesh. What began as a speech morphed into what felt like a sermon (in the best sense) when he began talking about how our rights come with responsibilties, chief among them love and charity, duty and patriotism.
Selfishly, I had the hubris to think about how I wished I could move people that greatly and deeply and powerfully. I thought about my own preaching and what I could make it sound like.
I went to bed and couldn't sleep. I was too tired to move, too wired to sleep.
But with eyes closed, I saw light dancing across my eyelids.
Earlier that day, in our daytime Bible study, I told a story about how people see God's approval of things in the world--that in the American Civil War, after the Confederacy defeated the Union at Fredricksburg, some southern pastors saw the aurora borealis that followed in the night as proof that God Himself was celebrating a Confederate victory.
I like to think that I thought no such thing...which is good, as they turned out to be the reflection of fireworks going off somewhere outside. I could hear the popping sound from my apartment.
But the light got my attention.
Before a voice--and it wasn't entirely my own, it had forced its way in--said "You are not Barack Obama." (to which every reader of this post replies, "DUH!")
It was all over in about ten seconds.
Now, I get why people say that when you talk to God, it's prayer, but when God talks to you, it's schizophrenia. I've never been mystical myself, nor have my God experiences EVER involved divine dictation. It may be hubris that I even wonder if that was God, and that God felt the need to tell me such a blatantly self-evident truth.
But if God was calling me to humility, it makes perfect sense. Despite my intentions as a pastor, what I want is definitely not always what God wants. God's ways are not my ways. I needed that wake-up call.
And isn't that sort of the trap we fall into with politics? Thinking our ways are God's ways, and that God is a Republican or a Democrat?
One question I have always wrestled with was how God could make room for me and my prayers when I had to think there were--and are--far bigger things on His plate. Starvation and famine. Poverty and homelessness. Terminal illness and injury. War and violence. And I dare to ask for my God's attention?
But...if God took those ten seconds out from being with the victims of Hurricane Sandy, or with the people of Syria, to send me a message, to make a point, and then return to where He is most needed...maybe it makes sense. God appears in a moment of need, then goes to where He is needed next. And surely, God was needed here to offer guidance, assurance, and wisdom to us as we chose our leaders.
None of this means that God isn't present sometimes...but that maybe sometimes, He drops stronger hints than at other times that He is, in fact, here.
If this reads like someone still trying to make sense of a historic night, well, that would be part of it.
But this is also a someone who has no doubt at all that God was present in it. For me.
For you.
For everyone.
There's grace in that. I'm sure of it.
Eric
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