Culturally Irrelevant

Driving home from out of state several weeks ago, God showed up in my car. I know that sounds weird…and dangerous, but I promise both hands stayed on the wheel. I was singing along with a song about the Father’s love, and I began to get a very real and overwhelming sense of his love for me, personally. Maybe you’ve experienced this, so you know why I wept. I could see the Father like a burly sea captain at the wheel of a ship. The storm was raging, water crashing over the sides and winds howling fiercely, but there he was, laughing, holding the wheel in his massive hands. Instead of fear there was peace, and a tremendous sense of strength and experience that made the winds and the waves look like they really were: passing, temporary, small. His big, booming voice carried across the deck and washed over me. For a moment I thought, ”How can he possibly be this way when the reality of life is so painful?”

And then I began to see what he sees and feel what he feels: today in the perspective of eternity. Pain that is so temporary, and life that is so lasting and solid. I was overwhelmed by his hope. Hope for me, for the lost, for his bride, for the earth. He sees the end.

I could feel a presence behind me, so I turned my head and, out of the corner of my eye, caught a glimpse of someone who I knew was Jesus. I have to be honest, I turned my head back around and the first words out of my mouth were, “God, I don’t even know him. He’s a mystery. Would you please introduce me to him.” I’ve believed in him since I was 3 years old, and I’ve spent the majority of my life serving and obeying him; but I’m telling you the truth as plain as I saw it that day on I-75. Compared to who he is, my knowledge and experience with Jesus is so small, it’s as if I don’t know him at all. What he has done for me that I’ll never know or realize in this lifetime. What he’s been through, giving up his glory in heaven like he did and becoming a servant…for me, for the undeserving, for the lost! I was speechless, and all I wanted was an introduction.

These days that’s what I’m asking for. It’s pretty much all I want. Just to have an introduction to Jesus. Apart from this man, I don’t have anything. Everything else is unstable. But this man, he’s solid and true.

I have to be honest. I’ve gotten a little glimpse of Jesus out of the corner of my eye and I’m struck. And the more I do life with other people and read what they have to say, the more I realize I’m not alone. I’m just one struck person in a much larger body of people who are completely caught up in Jesus.