Epiphany, Age 5

Spooked

The theophany occurred in the basement of the home of

William Jennings Bryan,

which by then had been converted

into a daycare center for the children of

the staff of Bryan Memorial Hospital.

I was in the play room by myself,

surveying the toy kitchen appliances,

the plastic food and dinnerware,

content with my aloneness

because I knew I really wasn't,

God was here and would be my playmate.

As soon as the belief was thought,

I sensed a presence start to move towards me,

from beyond the cinderblock wall to the West.

Suddenly, the room’s atmosphere felt weighty,

as if an intensifying thundercloud was drawing nearer,

the worst storms always came from that direction,

and I knew with awful certainty,

that this room would be too small

for what was heading my way.

The instant I became aware of the limitation

of my current situation,

I fled.

A Gracious Resolve

Our Three Responses to Grace (typically)

The video clip below is from my Wednesday, March 26, 2014 presentation at Rockbrook UMC in Omaha, Nebraska. In it, I tell the audience about an experience I had the Sunday before Lent.  

On that particular Sunday, my husband and I had arrived early for the evening service.  After finding seats, a member of the staff approached us and asked if I would read the scripture lessons during worship. When I told her that I would be glad to help out, she handed me two pieces of paper, one of which contained Psalm 131 in a translation that was unfamiliar to me-

"O Lord, my heart is not proud nor my look haughty; I do not aspire to great things or to do what is beyond me; But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.  O Israel, hope in the Lord from this time on and forevermore."

I almost burst out laughing when I read the second stanza because I do aspire to great things and I do over-reach.  It was a convicting moment, and it was the start of a process in which I moved from repentance to faith to holiness in the space of a few minutes as the service started.

Repentance-Faith-Holiness is the order of salvation in the Wesleyan tradition.  It is the analogy of faith that Wesley followed when he interpreted scripture, and it is how he characterized Methodist Doctrine.  It is the succession of responses that one typically has to an experience of grace when belief is new, and it is a repetitive sequence throughout the stages of the spiritual maturation process.

I shared this experience with the good folks at Rockbrook because I think it's illustrative of what I mean by Wesleyan Spirituality, and because I'm looking for new terms, something other than repentance-faith-holiness, to describe our typical responses to God, and I was hoping that the audience would tell me about similar experiences that they had had and what terms they use when they describe those experiences to others.