Had a
most amazing conversation today… one that has left me smiling ever since…
Went to
Hungry Jacks with the Misses 5 and 14 to kill some time. The only other person
sitting by the playground was an older chap who looked something like a 60’s
rocker or biker – and a small boy. He was trying to get the little bloke to eat
his food while it was warm so I commented about play being the top priority of
a 4yo. He unfolded his arms and I noticed the ‘homemade’ tatts on his fingers
and I thought to myself “this man has a story”. Our little people got along
well, and Miss 14 went inside to get me a coffee. He commented to me that he’d
watched something about Nostradamus the night before and a little part of me
groaned on the inside… I didn’t want to have an ooh-ahh conversation about
Nostradamus. Thinking to myself that a prophet is only a true prophet if they
are 100% right 100% of the time, I decided to deflect him by making light of
it… asking him if he’d seen the cartoon about the Mayan calendar that runs out
of space… he had a laugh and I was pleased to have brought that to a dead end…
After a
while he asked if my two girls were my only children and when I answered no, 7,
he laughed and said we must have taken the Good Book’s words to “go forth and
populate – seriously”. I asked if the boy was his son or grandson – it was his
grandson – they were in town from the country, his wife was shopping and he had
some time to kill waiting to pick up a granddaughter and head home. He then
said they’d had 4 children but that they’d lost their second son when he was
only 4 1/2. I asked him how long it had taken for them to be able to breathe
again after losing their son. I wondered if he wouldn’t want to talk about it,
but thought since he’d opened the subject, that he might. Well, that was the
beginning.
He said
if it wasn’t for the Creator he wouldn’t even be alive. That his boy had been
born at 5.45 on a Friday night, and had died at 5.45 on a Friday night, 4 ½
years later, 27 years ago. That he’d been out ‘doing business that wasn’t good
business’ when he crossed paths with an ambulance and he just ‘knew’. He’d then
held his boy in his arms and SCREAMED out that if God was real, to SHOW him and
he’d read His book every day if He would just SHOW him He was real.
I am
always amazed and yet not, that God shows Himself when we scream out for Him in
this most primal, guttural, empty of everything – kind of way.
The day
after the funeral, he and his wife went to the cemetery. AS they walked in,
BOTH of them had been completely filled up with a peace… he said it felt like
they’d been given their son back but what it was – was instead a peace about
WHERE the boy was. He’d agonised… was there life after death, where WAS his
boy, and when they went to the cemetery, Yah (God) let them know he was with
Him. Amazing flooding peace.
And then
he said, began the cleansing.
This was
when I became certain, that he was for real. A true encounter with God (Yah )
doesn’t begin and end with a mystical moment. It’s the beginning of a lifelong
walk. A relationship. A continuing revelation of our need for and availability
to – His pure waters of cleansing.
All that
was in the first 10 minutes.
Over the
next hour I told him how, having grown up in a Christian home and kinda being
‘secure’ in having been ‘good’, it took me till somewhere in my late 30’s to
really realise in my guts, that I was a sinner. We spoke of how the Tabernacle
is a model (not only of the heavenlies) but of how we come to Him. That we come
first to the alter (the cross) and then to the laver where we are cleansed time
and again through our whole life long.
I asked
him how he came to know God as Yah, Yahweh – and Yeshua and we spoke of the
Hebraic origins of the faith. He grinned when I knew what he meant by the Ruach
HaKodesh (the Holy Spirit) and we flowed in and out of personal story,
Scripture and awe.
He’d been
a Pastor, but was no longer… he’d kept his promise to Yah, and read His Book
every day. Even pointing to it sitting on the dashboard of his car. The proof
was in his speech as he knew what was in passages I mentioned and the
references for the words that I mentioned. Just so LOVE when a person’s LOVE of
the Word just can’t be contained! We spoke too of being viewed as a nutter. A
legalist. Of having gone over the limit. Of the hidden treasures and joys in
the Torah. The feasts. His Name. His cleansing. His Spirit.
He
brought his grandson to his knee and told Him this lady here knew Yeshua
(Jesus) too. And then we prayed. Right there in Hungry Jacks. Sibling strangers
being Church. He prayed blessing on me and my family, and I already knew that I
was. Blessed that is.
Still smiling.
