I wrote the below on July 10th, 2018. I had a dream/stream of consciousness sequence while I was visiting the netherworld of my subconscious while receiving a craniosacral treatment.
I drifted off and began envisioning the downtown Chicago skyline from Lake Shore Drive north of the (now former) John Hancock building looking south. I then saw large rocky projectiles crashing toward earth at a 60-degree angle from the right (from the west, as I was looking south at downtown). I saw what looked like a large storm, a large darkness, a large dust storm that looked like it might overtake Chicago. And more projectiles coming downward at the same angle.
I was at this point at the altitude of a small plane a bit over the lake from northern downtown Chicago but still close to the shore, and I looked northward and southwestward and saw that little pockets of light were showing up across pockets of the Chicago I saw otherwise enshrouded in darkness. (These pockets of light seemed impossible because the darkness from the storms and the clouds and the projectiles were so great!) I then saw people rising up into the clouds via these pockets of light. Not everyone was, though. Just a few people it seemed per light pocket. Then that light pocket would disappear from that one zone, and another would then appear. And then another. And then a few at a time in different zones.
The last significant thing I saw was when I looked upward above the downtown skyline. A door opened up and a person in a large white robe was standing there. It seemed this person was welcoming myself and others who were also rising upward to come in through the doors.
It gets fuzzy after that point. I thought I saw a city burned to the ground. Or just simply darkness overtaking everything.
Tuesday, April 30, 2019
Tuesday, April 23, 2019
A revelation the day after 9/23/17
Some of you may be aware of this, but for those who aren't, September 23, 2017 was a significant date in terms of events described in the Book of Revelation. (Revelation 12, specifically) You can go here, here, here, here, and here, just to point you to a few videos, to get the full scope of it. I'm choosing not to go and analyze each (or any) of the videos, largely because it's above my capability to do so. What I will do, though, is share with you the verses from the Book of Revelation that specifically describe the sign that occurred in the sky that day:
The point of my post is this: the following day, on September 24, 2017, I napped for a couple hours in the afternoon, and had a dream sequence I wish to share that pertains to the above. The below is from what I wrote in my journal that day:
I woke up feeling quite sad. I'll have to punt on the exact details of the earlier dreams in the sequence, but I remember there was some kind of event -- perhaps a large outdoor gathering -- one that also required some shepherding/chaperoning, not unlike when I'm performing for my main job as a pianist at the senior care centers I go to).
The part of the dream that is significant is what came afterward. The gathering which seemed to have lasted most of the day, had moved to a field, and it was now late-afternoon. The last couple hours before sundown, for sure. I'll first record the things that happened, to the best of my memory a full five hours after I woke up.
I first participated in a rock-throwing contest. One other person threw a rock that went up into the east sky, opposite from where the sun was, and where possibly the moon was. This rock that he threw went up, up, and out until it appeared to turn to the right and cross right in front of the moon. The rock still never came down. It kept going to the right. I then attempted to throw my rock. I think I decided to throw it westward, in the direction of the sun. It went up and went back down and hit the ground. I was disappointed of course, but it was close to how far I can throw in reality.
After this, my dream went to the next sequence, but before it did I saw a sign with writing that said something along the lines of: "next scene red scene."
In the next scene the sunlight was in fact not red, but I know that we were later in the afternoon than previously. But the remainder of the gathering of people I was with had moved away from the more-open part of the field to kind of a corner of the field, near some building and some trees with red leaves. (So the scene was slightly red but not red like I was expecting.) In this scene we were all to take stock of our lives with some random equipment provided, either by whoever was hosting this day-long event, or by whoever owned the park. So I stumbled across a very strange sort-of puzzle of the United States. It seemed each "piece" had a few of the states on them, but they were all out of order.
Bottom line, as I went through the United States I put a check next to each state I had been to, and an X next to each state I had not been to. Then I woke up. I was very sad.
What I gathered from this dream:
1.) A sense of not having much time left
2.) take stock of what I've done and what I haven't done (hence the US map/puzzle)
3.) there was to be more to the dream but then I woke up
Now a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a garland of twelve stars. 2 Then being with child, she cried out in labor and in pain to give birth.
3 And another sign appeared in heaven: behold, a great, fiery red dragon having seven heads and ten horns, and seven diadems on his heads. 4 His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them to the earth. And the dragon stood before the woman who was ready to give birth, to devour her Child as soon as it was born. 5 She bore a male Child who was to rule all nations with a rod of iron. And her Child was caught up to God and His throne. 6 Then the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared by God, that they should feed her there one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
The point of my post is this: the following day, on September 24, 2017, I napped for a couple hours in the afternoon, and had a dream sequence I wish to share that pertains to the above. The below is from what I wrote in my journal that day:
I woke up feeling quite sad. I'll have to punt on the exact details of the earlier dreams in the sequence, but I remember there was some kind of event -- perhaps a large outdoor gathering -- one that also required some shepherding/chaperoning, not unlike when I'm performing for my main job as a pianist at the senior care centers I go to).
The part of the dream that is significant is what came afterward. The gathering which seemed to have lasted most of the day, had moved to a field, and it was now late-afternoon. The last couple hours before sundown, for sure. I'll first record the things that happened, to the best of my memory a full five hours after I woke up.
I first participated in a rock-throwing contest. One other person threw a rock that went up into the east sky, opposite from where the sun was, and where possibly the moon was. This rock that he threw went up, up, and out until it appeared to turn to the right and cross right in front of the moon. The rock still never came down. It kept going to the right. I then attempted to throw my rock. I think I decided to throw it westward, in the direction of the sun. It went up and went back down and hit the ground. I was disappointed of course, but it was close to how far I can throw in reality.
After this, my dream went to the next sequence, but before it did I saw a sign with writing that said something along the lines of: "next scene red scene."
In the next scene the sunlight was in fact not red, but I know that we were later in the afternoon than previously. But the remainder of the gathering of people I was with had moved away from the more-open part of the field to kind of a corner of the field, near some building and some trees with red leaves. (So the scene was slightly red but not red like I was expecting.) In this scene we were all to take stock of our lives with some random equipment provided, either by whoever was hosting this day-long event, or by whoever owned the park. So I stumbled across a very strange sort-of puzzle of the United States. It seemed each "piece" had a few of the states on them, but they were all out of order.
Bottom line, as I went through the United States I put a check next to each state I had been to, and an X next to each state I had not been to. Then I woke up. I was very sad.
What I gathered from this dream:
1.) A sense of not having much time left
2.) take stock of what I've done and what I haven't done (hence the US map/puzzle)
3.) there was to be more to the dream but then I woke up
Wednesday, April 17, 2019
2019 Lenten Devotional 8
It is now Holy Week. Even though Lent started a month-and-a-half ago, it feels like it went by really fast. In truth, the whole of this Lenten season has been full of ups and downs, and seemingly more deep downs than ups.
A week or so ago, I saw a license plate: "CAIN." [I pay attention to license plates often when I am driving. Sometimes I believe God can and will speak to me through them.] With my finances being attacked (taxes, estimated payments, and on this day, an expensive parking ticket (the car troubles had not come up as of yet)), I was pretty pissed off at God and told Him so. I believe that the word "Cain" may have been a response in context with all of this.
The passage I read was from Genesis 4:1-16 (New International Version):
Before I was able to sit down and re-read through this passage, I remembered three things: 1.) Cain killed his brother, Abel; 2.) God had rejected Cain's offering, because it wasn't the best of what he could have offered (Abel's was, and so God accepted it); 3.) even though God was angry at Cain for killing his brother, He gave him a ton of mercy, basically by swearing He would punish anyone for murdering him.
[Since reading the passage, two other new observations came up, two firsts that occur in the Bible: 1.) Cain is the first human being to be born, through sex, conception, and childbirth. And 2.) Abel is the first human being to pass away out of the flesh.]
Genesis 4 is really not one of the most fun chapters in the Bible. Heck, Genesis 3, although it tells the story of how Adam and Eve rebelled against God and were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, at least carries historical significance that is referenced much later, particularly by the Apostle Paul. Genesis 1 and 2, well... that's the beginning of time, and how God created the heavens and the earth. Later chapters in Genesis get into some of the more significant early stories: Genesis 6 through 9 tells the story of Noah, his ark, and the flood. Genesis 12 recalls God calling out Abram (whom He renamed Abraham) and telling him He will make a great nation of his descendants, which He eventually does. And so on.
But Genesis 4, in spite of it being less fun and less significant than much of the rest of the Book of Genesis, was impressed on me. I believe it was impressed on me because of how I even now still tend to handle things in my thought and prayer life when life gets tough, even too tough, for me to handle. Below is a brief background for how I've been processing life's current challenges right now:
All of 2017 and into the first few months of 2018 I had a host of car issues, one after another: first, the slow agonizing death of my Prius; then, my first ever experience at buying a car, which gave me an understanding as to what a "used car salesman" was, and why people typically don't trust them; then, to a series of car repairs that sent my new used vehicle (a Honda CR-V) into the shop on average once every 1-2 months (each case including at least a couple "this needs to be fixed now" repairs); not to mention a whole other scenario where my car was hit while parked, and in the end, after a month of body work and car rentals, the other person's insurance reimbursed me for only 1/3 of the rental car costs. The big takeaway from this season was less so the situation around my car but more so the hit on my finances: I barely got by, because I saved up like heck. It was disheartening, in the end, to see the fruits of all my furious saving efforts evaporate completely. And I mean, completely. I never went into debt, thankfully, but still.
Since over a month ago, circumstantially it all appears to be happening all over again, except even worse this time, and seemingly with no light at the end of the tunnel. All of this, even though I believe in my heart of hearts that I've done what I can to save and to maintain financial prudence the best way I know how. I've been in the trenches, sometimes with God, and sometimes without Him, ever since.
Hence the passage about Cain. The two things that stood out to me, after all is said and done, are these:
1.) God only punished Cain after he killed Abel. Previously, somehow, probably because I knew that that was what ended up happening, I had instead believed that Cain was going to get the punishment he got anyway, not because of him killing Abel but because he was simply angry that the Lord rejected his offering. (After all, Jesus said centuries upon centuries later, that anyone who is merely angry with another person is subject to judgment. (See Matthew 5:21-22.)) But in this case, it's not the case. Rather, God punished Cain in this way because he killed his brother.
2.) The verse where God intervenes with Cain before he ended up killing Abel: "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." First, the importance of doing what is right, even when it is hard; second, coming off my previous point, at some point in time Cain shifted his anger from it being about the Lord not accepting his offering, to blaming Abel and being jealous of him. It's why I believe God intervened when He did, to try to stem the tide of what He knew could happen, and, in the end did happen.
There is a third bullet point in there, really about that shift between being disappointed -- and "downcast," as the text says -- to cultivating a vindictive anger. No one, not even myself, goes immediately from "this circumstance sucks and I am upset about it," to "I'm going to do what it takes to get back what is mine, even if that means killing someone to do it." No, there is an extra step that one chooses to take, or not to take, that can mean the difference in everything, including life and death. Cain chose to move from "downcast" to vindictiveness. He refused to trust God.
Good Friday is in two days. So here is my question to close out this post: in the midst of your storms, your fear, even your desire to bet on yourself (because "that's what adults are supposed to do," etc), what is something that you can do differently this time around, to choose to trust God, even when the way out appears to be non-existent? What can you bring to the Cross that will then allow you to respond differently?
A week or so ago, I saw a license plate: "CAIN." [I pay attention to license plates often when I am driving. Sometimes I believe God can and will speak to me through them.] With my finances being attacked (taxes, estimated payments, and on this day, an expensive parking ticket (the car troubles had not come up as of yet)), I was pretty pissed off at God and told Him so. I believe that the word "Cain" may have been a response in context with all of this.
The passage I read was from Genesis 4:1-16 (New International Version):
Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, “With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.” Later she gave birth to his brother Abel.
Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the Lord. And Abel also brought an offering—fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The Lord looked with favor on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favor. So Cain was very angry, and his face was downcast.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it.”
Now Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.” While they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
The Lord said, “What have you done? Listen! Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth.”
Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.”
But the Lord said to him, “Not so; anyone who kills Cain will suffer vengeance seven times over.” Then the Lord put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the Lord’s presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Before I was able to sit down and re-read through this passage, I remembered three things: 1.) Cain killed his brother, Abel; 2.) God had rejected Cain's offering, because it wasn't the best of what he could have offered (Abel's was, and so God accepted it); 3.) even though God was angry at Cain for killing his brother, He gave him a ton of mercy, basically by swearing He would punish anyone for murdering him.
[Since reading the passage, two other new observations came up, two firsts that occur in the Bible: 1.) Cain is the first human being to be born, through sex, conception, and childbirth. And 2.) Abel is the first human being to pass away out of the flesh.]
Genesis 4 is really not one of the most fun chapters in the Bible. Heck, Genesis 3, although it tells the story of how Adam and Eve rebelled against God and were thrown out of the Garden of Eden, at least carries historical significance that is referenced much later, particularly by the Apostle Paul. Genesis 1 and 2, well... that's the beginning of time, and how God created the heavens and the earth. Later chapters in Genesis get into some of the more significant early stories: Genesis 6 through 9 tells the story of Noah, his ark, and the flood. Genesis 12 recalls God calling out Abram (whom He renamed Abraham) and telling him He will make a great nation of his descendants, which He eventually does. And so on.
But Genesis 4, in spite of it being less fun and less significant than much of the rest of the Book of Genesis, was impressed on me. I believe it was impressed on me because of how I even now still tend to handle things in my thought and prayer life when life gets tough, even too tough, for me to handle. Below is a brief background for how I've been processing life's current challenges right now:
All of 2017 and into the first few months of 2018 I had a host of car issues, one after another: first, the slow agonizing death of my Prius; then, my first ever experience at buying a car, which gave me an understanding as to what a "used car salesman" was, and why people typically don't trust them; then, to a series of car repairs that sent my new used vehicle (a Honda CR-V) into the shop on average once every 1-2 months (each case including at least a couple "this needs to be fixed now" repairs); not to mention a whole other scenario where my car was hit while parked, and in the end, after a month of body work and car rentals, the other person's insurance reimbursed me for only 1/3 of the rental car costs. The big takeaway from this season was less so the situation around my car but more so the hit on my finances: I barely got by, because I saved up like heck. It was disheartening, in the end, to see the fruits of all my furious saving efforts evaporate completely. And I mean, completely. I never went into debt, thankfully, but still.
Since over a month ago, circumstantially it all appears to be happening all over again, except even worse this time, and seemingly with no light at the end of the tunnel. All of this, even though I believe in my heart of hearts that I've done what I can to save and to maintain financial prudence the best way I know how. I've been in the trenches, sometimes with God, and sometimes without Him, ever since.
Hence the passage about Cain. The two things that stood out to me, after all is said and done, are these:
1.) God only punished Cain after he killed Abel. Previously, somehow, probably because I knew that that was what ended up happening, I had instead believed that Cain was going to get the punishment he got anyway, not because of him killing Abel but because he was simply angry that the Lord rejected his offering. (After all, Jesus said centuries upon centuries later, that anyone who is merely angry with another person is subject to judgment. (See Matthew 5:21-22.)) But in this case, it's not the case. Rather, God punished Cain in this way because he killed his brother.
2.) The verse where God intervenes with Cain before he ended up killing Abel: "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must rule over it." First, the importance of doing what is right, even when it is hard; second, coming off my previous point, at some point in time Cain shifted his anger from it being about the Lord not accepting his offering, to blaming Abel and being jealous of him. It's why I believe God intervened when He did, to try to stem the tide of what He knew could happen, and, in the end did happen.
There is a third bullet point in there, really about that shift between being disappointed -- and "downcast," as the text says -- to cultivating a vindictive anger. No one, not even myself, goes immediately from "this circumstance sucks and I am upset about it," to "I'm going to do what it takes to get back what is mine, even if that means killing someone to do it." No, there is an extra step that one chooses to take, or not to take, that can mean the difference in everything, including life and death. Cain chose to move from "downcast" to vindictiveness. He refused to trust God.
Good Friday is in two days. So here is my question to close out this post: in the midst of your storms, your fear, even your desire to bet on yourself (because "that's what adults are supposed to do," etc), what is something that you can do differently this time around, to choose to trust God, even when the way out appears to be non-existent? What can you bring to the Cross that will then allow you to respond differently?
Wednesday, April 10, 2019
2019 Lenten Devotional 7
Instead of writing another sermon for a devotional, I thought I would simply share a hymn that a member from my Monday night ministry shared with me. What is remarkable about this sharing is that this person is and has been completely in the dark about the things this season of life is bringing me.
Until Monday, I had never seen this hymn before. Upon some further research on Hymnary.org, the lyric-writer, Frances R. Havergal, has tended to have a slightly Calvinistic theme in her lyrics. (The person who gave me this piece of paper goes to a Presbyterian church.) Yet, what I found was rather interesting was how it also seems to appear in the Lutheran hymnal, at least according to the same site.
Until Monday, I had never seen this hymn before. Upon some further research on Hymnary.org, the lyric-writer, Frances R. Havergal, has tended to have a slightly Calvinistic theme in her lyrics. (The person who gave me this piece of paper goes to a Presbyterian church.) Yet, what I found was rather interesting was how it also seems to appear in the Lutheran hymnal, at least according to the same site.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)