After Thanksgiving I was headed back from a snowy Colorado. I was coming back a new way for me, East on I-70 through the middle of Colorado, Kansas and then through Wichita and on south to Dallas. As my cellphone was well charged and I was approaching civilization and the connections were now greatly improved from eastern Colorado, I began calling people whose numbers I easily remembered. I actually have a facility for remembering phone numbers, to the point I don’t store too many of them in my phone.

A number of a friend popped in my head and I quickly dialed him hoping to catch him in his normal sarcastic self, which allows me to do the same and to cut up in a manner very few people understand anymore. Being that sarcasm is not well received by most people.

Instead what I heard was a person in trouble and I was the vessel for hearing his testimony. We talked, and hopefully I did a good job of listening, not offering a lot of advice or trying to fix him or save him. I am not really sure I did him any good at all. We talked for 30 minutes and as I was running out of gas and pulling over to the pump our call ended as he received another call.

I headed back on the road and as I did I thought about all that he said. I knew I didn’t posses enough tools to help him.

All I could offer was my prayers and my Love. So this I did as I drove down the road.

My car has a 10 track CD player that has a random play feature. I have this stocked with rock and roll like Eric Clapton, U2, Bob Seeger (Like A Rock), and more, including the Marshall Tucker Band one of my old southern rock favorites.

So I’m clicking along about 75 miles per hour when this song by Marshall Tucker started playing:

“I Should Have Never Started Lovin’ You”

And as I looked up and to the right I saw a brightly lit cross.

In the middle of the Kansas prairie.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

It ran through my mind that God has a sense of humor. But more rightfully, God has a sense of irony.

I find I can no longer walk away from people’s hurts. Many times I wonder that by opening my heart as I feel I have over the past 8-9 years, that this hurt doesn’t find me more often than it did in the past. Maybe I am just more attuned to it, because I am sure that the hurt in the world existed before me and will exist long after me.

And maybe, just maybe I am doing what the Lord wants me to do.

He never promised me easy. Now that I have started loving God, he is offering me more opportunities to testify of his Love. Not to be right. Not to be wrong. Just to Love.

I drove on through the night thinking of the other signs of light I have received from the Lord, and knowing I was going to pass this way a month later, I marked the miles at between markers 213 and 214 that I saw the cross. It was so late at night and with no moon I wanted to see the church building that had its light burning so brightly for travelers that night.

So this week as I drove with the Suzer and Sarah during the day, I looked forward with anticipation at seeing the church with the bright cross. I started getting excited at marker 215, then 214, 213, 212 and on and still nothing in sight. And, I began to really panic, because there was absolutely nothing of human makings along this stretch of road.

No houses, no buildings, no outhouses. Just miles of strung barbed wire fences.

I didn’t know what to say or feel. Did I hallucinate this sighting? Did I pass beside some revival that had since left the area?  Did I get the mile marker wrong?

I don’t know what to even think yet. Could God have given me this sign, a sign just for me. I do not think myself special in any way. But maybe that is the point, God does think of me as special and so with words and light he gave me a glimpse of what he wants me to do. In a way I can really understand. For when I was younger sarcasm was my armor. Now I know how much harm sarcasm can do to people, so I do my best not to use it. But I understand His message to me. And this message from God was within my ability to understand perfectly what He meant.

And I will walk in the light. For now I know of no other way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 4th, 2007 at 9:26 pm and is filed under RMC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.