In the Secret

God wants to say something profound to us everyday. He wants to whisper a secret in our ear. He is exceedingly creative in His methods and He enjoys surprising us even more than we enjoy being surprised by Him. He speaks to us through His Word as we sit at His feet each day. He speaks through unusual methods like a children’s story book, a song on the radio or the laughter of friends. God is all about relationship. He desires our company above all else. We are created to abide, to hang out with Him. He is crazy in love with us and wants to share His heart with us. The only requirement of us is that we give Him our heart. What happens in this relationship is not what the world says is normal. In fact, it is not of this world at all. The Word says that He has set eternity in our hearts Eccl.3:11. Our hearts crave Him. He is the only perfect fit to the God shaped hole in our lives. We may try to stuff other things into it. But Ps. 63:5 says, “My soul is satisfied as with marrow and fatness”. Speaking of the state of our souls if we seek Him earnestly (Ps. 63:1)
In the last few years I have come to understand more what that state of being satisfied means. As I have made it my determined purpose to know Him (Phil 3:10) I have truly gotten to know Him better. Not that I understand Him or His ways any better. It has been in the most trying of times that I have learned the most about Him. I, quite frankly want a God that I can’t understand. If I can understand Him then we are all in serious trouble. In fact, the more I know Him the bigger He gets and the smaller I get. I have become more intimate with Him. More honest. More real. As I have sought Him His character is changing me. I look forward to getting older, not my body failing but the adventure of walking with Him through many years. None of us will be completely like Him until we see Him face to face, however we should be changed by our meeting with Him everyday in a secret rendezvous where He can direct, correct and encourage.
I have experienced God’s surprising methods of communicating in many ways. I had a beautiful life changing time with God a few years ago. My husband Garry, my 18 year old son Tim and I went on a two week trip of a life time to the U.K in 2003. We spent the majority of our time in the English country side with dear friends. However, we set aside four of the days for an adventure to Ireland that ended up being a series of spiritual mile markers for us all.
First, a little family history. My parents were young newly weds in the early 60’s. My father was in the United States Navy and was stationed in Londonderry, Northern Ireland when I was born. A year or so after my birth my parents returned to the States and continued growing their family. Two brothers were added to the family and we spent our growing up years in the Mid-West, mainly Kansas City. I grew up in a home where my parents took us to church every Sunday and taught us to love the Lord. One of our favourite family activities while we were young was to pull out the carousel slide projector and look at slides. Yes, that is aging me a bit. We spent many evenings over the years sitting in the dark family room as a family looking at slides of castles and green country side. I often said that I would love to go back and see the place where I was born. Those off-the-cuff thoughts were prayers that God would take great joy in answering later in my life. He was waiting for the perfect time.
After spending a week in England we excitedly and somewhat nervously flew from Bristol, England to Belfast, Northern Ireland where we started the quest to reconnect with my past. We had decided to be courageous and act as if we were backpackers. Our preparation for this adventure consisted of two purchases, backpacks and walkmans. We thought that that was all you needed. We were wrong. We soon found out that we were in fact real backpackers. All we had to do was ask our sore feet and our aching backs.
Upon deplaning in Belfast we were presented with our first challenge. How do we get to the train station? We rather hesitantly walked out of the airport not really knowing what to do with ourselves. Here’s an idea how about read the sign. Right in front of my face literally the sign said, “Bus to the train Station”. So we waited for the bus, on the wrong side of the road I might add and a few minutes later our bus arrived. We boarded the bus and sat down with relief until we got to the train station and it looked like we had stepped into a time warp. The weather was turning rather nasty all of sudden so we sat down on a bench on the platform of the outdoor terminal. Thankfully it did keep us protected from the rain but unfortunately it did not protect us from the wind. All I could think was, “I cannot wait until the train comes”. Then the train came. I looked and Garry. Garry looked at me. Tim looked at us both like, “Are you crazy?” I am sure that it was the same train that my parents rode 40 years ago. We rattled and rolled down the track anxious to arrive at our destination.
I have had several experiences that are in the category of gifts from the Lord and what I didn’t know on that rickety train was I was just about to receive one of those precious gifts. The three of us managed to get a whole car of the train to ourselves. So we spread out. Garry napped, Tim listened to music on his walkman and I was reading and staring out the window at the beautiful landscape. We passed through quaint little villages and saw masses of sheep grazing in the fields. As we were passing through one of the small towns I thought that I saw what looked like water off in the distance. I nudged Tim and pointed it out to him. He said, “Where are we, by a large lake?” I had to admit that I really didn’t know where we were. The comment did not please him to much. The look on his face was priceless. As we progressed the thought popped into my mind that maybe it was the ocean. It wasn’t long and we could see that I was right and we were about to get a good look at the North Atlantic. We all stood up and anxiously stared out the window at the ocean in the distance. We were all grinning like ninnies. Shortly after we pulled out of the small sea side village we entered a dark tunnel. We were in the tunnel forever it seemed. My son Tim had picked up the video camera and had been shooting footage of the distant ocean before we entered the tunnel and in his excitement had left the video camera running while in the tunnel. The commentary by the three smart Alecs is hilarious. We could see that we were coming to the end of the tunnel ahead and were looking with anticipation out of the window. All of sudden we were out of the darkness and before us was the ocean. And I mean right before us. It was crashing against the rocks and splashing the side of the train. It was the most magnificent sight we had ever seen. I was screaming and running up and down the aisle of the train in utter delight. The cool thing is that we have all the reaction on video. Most of the video is floor, ceiling, flailing arms and deafening audio. I burst into tears and looked out over the expanse of water. The contrast of the ominous stormy clouds and brilliant rainbow arching over the water were beyond breath taking. At that moment I felt like God was standing in the train with His arms around the three of us saying, “Isn’t that cool? I gave that to you. It is a promise. Enjoy”. We traveled the coast for about 20 minutes with faces pressed against the glass of the train window and then sadly the train headed inland. We just sat and smiled at each other. What a gift!
It wasn’t until we had been home about a year that I really understood the significance of that moment on the train. God gave us that picture because He knew that there were going to be times ahead that were going to be dark, some of them would seem like a forever. He knew that I would be tempted to be scared. But He also knew that the fulfillment of the promise He had waiting for me when I came out of that tunnel would be breathtaking. I will have minute daily tunnels and I will have extended tunnels. I could apply this to a day in my life or my life in its entirety. When this life is completed and we come out of this world that is plagued with sin and its consequences and enter eternity we are going to see God and fall at His feet and worship Him in the beauty of Holiness (PS.29:12) It is going to be spectacular and forever! So hang on…….there is light at the end of the tunnel.
As the trained rocked and swayed into Derry I could just make out the gothic spires of a large church poking up above some buildings. I remembered from the slides that this church was across the street from the apartment building in which my parents and I lived. We left the train station and walked across the bridge over the River Foyle to a round-about where the apartment building sat to the right. At one time the building looked like a piece of pie. Narrow at one end and widening as the two streets veered off in different direction. My parents lived in the third story of the building. The Living room window was at the point of the building overlooking the round-about. I know from pictures that I loved to stand at that window as a toddler and look out over the street below. Sometime over the past 40 years the front part of the building where the living room was had been torn down and a tree had been planted in its place. Spray painted on the side of the building was IRA in black. A lot of history has gone on in this nation since we lived here. We walked by the building and since the weather was so incredibly miserable and we were wet and cold we headed to our goal, a warm dry bed.
We showed up at our accommodations soaking wet which didn’t seem too strange since all the youth in the hostel looked identical to our waterlogged condition. Tim being 18 was the only one that qualified as youth since Garry was 41 and I was fast approaching 40. Thankfully since we were a family they gave us our own room. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon we collapsed on our bunks from absolute exhaustion and slept. I e-mailed my parents later in the evening that we had arrived safely in Londonderry and that we had eaten dinner at ……………Pizza Hut. They were shocked to say the least. I think they expected us to have some fish and chips or something. The three of us, I am tempted to call us stooges in this case because it applies, were green travelers to say the least. If someone had attached a microphone on my backpack I am sure that it would have been good stand up material.
The next day was an adventure in and of itself consisting of Dun Luce castle, which we had all to ourselves and an hour at The Giant’s Causeway. Dun Luce castle, in the rain of course, was a dreamlike experience. I ran through the ruins and yelled “Hail King Jesus”. Yes, I scared my husband and son half to death but I couldn’t resist. I have had an aspiration for the past few years to put my toe in every ocean of the world before I go home to be with the Lord. I thought that this was going to be my first toe/ocean experience. As I headed to the edge of the rock shore of the Giant’s Causeway Garry pointed out a sign that said something like, “Be careful you might get sucked into the ocean”. (That was my paraphrase). I decided against the toe in the ocean experience.
We planned some extended time at the apartment building my parents lived in for the last morning we were there. I was excited and emotional about going. As we approached the building I gasped as I saw the number 77 on the very door my parents would have entered each day, the door that they carried me through when I came home from the hospital. Some of the building was gone but the front door was still there. It was raining of course, so I stood under the umbrella and took in the moment. All I saw were feet passing by on the sidewalk from under my umbrella. In the stillness of that moment God gently whispered to me, “This is not just the place you lived when you where born. This is where I formed you in your mother’s womb. This is where I made you in the secret place. This is where you and I began. I brought you here for a reason. I have brought you full circle. It is time to move on from here and into what I have for you but you must leave some things behind.”
I spent as long as time would allow before we had to make our way to the train station. As I walked tearfully over the bridge to the train station I thought about what the Lord had said to me and looked at the river. I truly felt that I was crossing the River Jordan into the Promised Land leaving the wandering behind and stepping into the victory and blessing the Lord had for me.
I boarded that train a transformed person. I stared intently at the spires of the church until it faded from sight and turned to face a new direction full of hope and courage to walk the unknown path ahead. I will treasure that memory of that moment for the remainder of my life. I was not alone. Even though I was surrounded by people on that wet sidewalk I was in the secret place with my God. He was talking to me and I was listening. It was a profound moment, a moment that compels me to spend time with Him everyday in secret where He can whisper His Word to me. The secret place is where we began, Him and I. It is where He is waiting for me now. And it is where we will be together for all eternity.