An Insightful Moment at Bethesda

Well, once again, I end up going off in a totally different direction than any of the rest of you! I wrote this last night and then went to post it and almost thought twice about it. Your points all deal with the direct words of Gire and how it affected the religious leaders of the day but I - I get stuck right at the top of the chapter with this verse...

Gire writes:

"There is a set of rhythms we are all affected by because we are all surrounded by them from the earliest stages in our development...After we are born, we experience other rhythms. The rising and setting of the sun. The ebb and flow of the tides. The coming and going fo the seasons. From the life cycle of the mayfly to the lunar cycle of the moon, the rhythms of life regulate our world."

Have you ever read something and thought to yourself, "Nobody knows this about me but me?" This, I think, is one of those things for me. I'm acutely aware of the cycles of our world. I have this odd ability to detect time and movement in things and in people. I don't really know how to describe it so it makes sense, but sense is what it is...I have this other sense.

(And no, I don't see dead people and I can't read people's minds or tell you where the dead person's body is buried...it's not like that. But, there is a frequency that plays in my mind that I'm pretty sure almost everyone else misses because every time I talk about it, people look at me like I'm off my rocker.)

I'm not off my rocker.

I'm more on my rocker than most people will probably ever hope to be.

But in all the times I've tried to describe this trait about myself, everyone has absolutely no idea what I'm talking about it. The only way I have been able to describe it is to tell someone "take female intuition and take that times ten and then stand back and watch what comes your way."

I don't know how or why it happens but it does - and after 46 years of living with it, I can pretty much feel the rhythm of things in this world - both small and sometimes very large - I just get this sense of things.

Gire goes on to write:

"But there are other rhythms at work in the world. Spiritual rhythms. Pulsing from the heart of our heavely Father. Jesus listened for those rhythms the way a migrating animal listens to a seasonal change in temperature or the steady signal of the earth's magnetic field. Jesus sensed the movements of the Father the way the tides sensed the movements of the moon."

This is what GOT me about this chapter because this is how we - to this day - communicate with the Father. We "sense" He wants something from us or we "sense" that He has told us something. Without this "sense" we would have no connection to God...no real ongoing way to develop a relationship with Him. Instead, we would have what I had for him when I was a child - respect, fear, wonder - but I was left with no "sense" of Him. The relationship I now have with God couldn't grow until God Himself made it known to me that the time was right. It was like He whispered in my ear, "It's time now...come and find me."

And me, being able to so easily sense the other rhythms in life, had very little trouble eventually hearing this one- despite the struggles I was having with indwelling sin and my constant barrage of The Enemy. God turned on another "sense" in me that night and I've been plugged into that frequency ever since.

I pray my "dial" never change its stations.