"A Sign and a Wonder"

"The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders..." Deuteronomy 26:8

So, here I am beginning a paragraph with the word "So." How "millennial" of me! But enough about me. Yesterday, on the Lord's Day, I was in the Spirit (wait, that's from Revelation...one too many sermons from that book...Cathy did warn me) and after going forward to the altar to take the communion wafer, and dipping it into the cup, I really felt the Lord's manifest presence filling the sanctuary. That's holy talk for "God is in the house." As I walked back to our pew (yes, blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, we HAVE them in our church) I was suddenly filled with lots of faith and just plain felt different o.k.? Not the normal Ralph.

Backtrack to a not-so-wonderful week. One of the things I'm learning in seminary this quarter is that I am right smack into what sociologists call a season of spiritual"isolation." Figures. That must be why no one returns my calls these days. Smart people like Bobby Clinton and Shelley Trebesh have written whole books about this season in the life of a leader. Isolation is defined by Trebesh as "wilderness time when one is removed from his/her normal daily routine." During this time, Trebesh, basing her ideas and definition on the examples of many Scriptural characters, writes that "the person consequently walks through a stripping process after which his/her character becomes transformed." Stripping is the key word here. Transformation is cool. Stripping is nasty.

But, back to yesterday. As I come back to my pew and sit down, before I partake of the bread and the cup, I begin to pray softly asking the Lord to "accompany the preaching of His Word with signs and wonders." I honestly don't know why I prayed that at that particular moment - but I did. Moments later, at the direction of the person who was giving the announcements, I turned to greet the people sitting right behind me. I stretched out my hand and said to a gentleman, "hi, my name is Rafael." When his eyes opened wide and filled with tears, I thought, "gee, this is unusual." After all, meeting me can't be all that depressing! But, the man, who told me his name is Edgar, shook my hand all the more earnestly, and then said, "thirty-seven years ago, you were my first pastor, at a church in Hollywood (I lolled internally...how...on...earth...did he even recognize me? Grey hair and and additional 65 lbs! Later, he told me it was my voice!) He continued, to my sheer amazement: "you helped me find a job, and gave me my first Bible! We drove to work together in your Subaru." Upon hearing this, my own eyes flooded with tears, and we embraced across the pew both of us openly weeping. The poor announcement person must have wondered why, several rows from the front, a small crowd which included my wife, Cathy, and our dear friends from Miami, Jose and Mary Alvarez, remained standing - chattering on about how wonderful this whole thing was!

In a effort to maintain some level of respectful decorum and not continue to interrupt the announcements, we composed ourselves and sat. I had my face buried in my hands, trying to compose myself. Edgar was only nineteen when, at the invitation of a young woman named Gloria, he came to our church, heard me preach a simple Gospel message, and, afterwards, when I invited people to come for prayer, Edgar gave his life to Jesus. I was twenty-four in 1979.

Now, here's the sign and the wonder. What are the odds of all of this? We've had zero contact for nearly thirty-eight years. And not only that, Cathy and I had moved away to South America, then lived in Miami for over twenty-years. What are the odds, in a sprawling metropolitan area such as Los Angeles County, that Edgar and his wife Penny would, on this fine Sunday, accept an invitation to visit our church and then to be sitting right behind us in this small church of one-hundred congregants? Yes, God, in his providence, knew that I would be praying that prayer, on this Sunday. He sure knows how to cheer us up doesn't he? This also made me think of how the One, who allows us to enter these difficult seasons of life, also knows how to encourage and strengthen us in them. He was saying to me,"I remember all that you have done in my Name."

There is more to this story. Later, that night, at the evening prayer meeting, Edgar and Penny brought the actual Bible I had given them almost four decades ago (see photo above.) There was my name on the front name plate. There were the underlinings, the highlights, and margin notes in my handwriting. Amazing. (Penny told me that this was still her favorite Bible!) Thank you Lord. You are truly a faithful God!