Joe Allotta

I’m not accustomed to grief, despite experiencing it now; but I regularly speak to people in their moments of sorrow.  I think often of a quote from Tim Keller, “We can be sure our prayers are answered precisely in the way we would want them to be answered if we knew everything God knows.”  And when that statement blends in with the rest of the (crazy) thoughts that swirl in my brain 24/7, I start to imagine an interesting way God might be communicated with us.  Now to not sound like a total crazy person, let me preface what I’m about to say with a few thoughts that the previous statement connected with.

~ God loves His followers

~ God is beyond the rules of time and space

~ Professor Xavier could in essence freeze time to have a whole conversation with someone in a single moment

~ Men in Black would flashy-thing people because they weren’t ready to handle what they just saw

When God speaks to people in the Bible we see a couple different reactions of the people around them.  At Mount Sinai the people could see a huge thundercloud descent on top of the mountain as God spoke to Moses.  But God admits that He wanted the Israelites to know He was talking to Moses.  When Balaam was marching on Israel an angel of the Lord stood in the path and Balaam’s donkey freaked out; no one else could hear or see anything (Animals could always see the angels in Touched by an Angel and Al in Quantum Leap.)   In the case of the conversion of Saul on the road to Damascus, the other people could hear the voice of Jesus but couldn’t see anyone.  Other times with Moses, Elijah, the shepherds at Jesus birth, and Job (especially) the person God was speaking to could clearly hear the Word of God coming down like thunder from Heaven but no one else seemed to be aware.

So I have a theory of a way God might be communicating with us, and we might just not remember it.  Of course this isn’t theology.  Let’s call this guessology – when I guess about something and it doesn’t conflict with Scripture but there’s definitely not enough information to even think it’s true.

I think maybe God freezes time and takes our soul to another plane of existence and just talks to us.  (I’m not the only one to ever say this, Ignatius of Loyola in the 1500’s kind of talked about this too, but he wasn’t influenced by the SyFy channel.) Now I have an inkling of a reason to think this.  I’m a logical person.  I say “I think” instead of “I feel” most of the time.  I’m naturally skeptical of things (especially anything on the internet.)  But a few times in my life, when something totally inexplicable happens, something truly tragic takes place; I have felt just a wave of comfort flood over me.  No answer… just peace.

In most other aspects of my life to not know or understand is unbelievably frustrating to me.  After watching the TV show Terra Nova back in 2011, I vowed to NEVER watch a show again until it got picked up for a second season.  You can’t build up mystery and intrigue, then cancel a show and never even make a comic book detailing what would have happened if more people had watched the show.  But somehow, someway I’ve experienced peace in the midst of sadness. I’ve heard others describe the same feeling that they “felt” the comfort of God.  I think we can just chalk this up to God’s loving “embrace” of His children; but for God, the constraints and limits of our mortal bodies and child-like understanding of chronological time would not be hindrances for Him. God could break us from our dimension and just talk to us.

What if Jesus did such a thing and stood right before us.  After a few millennial of jubilation, praise, hugs, and kisses He calmed us down enough to talk with us.  He sits down, holds our hand, looks at us with sadness in His doe-like eyes and shares what is about to happen in our mortal lives.  He tells us about the tragedy we are about to face, the pain we are about to endure, the horrors we are about to experience.  But then like a holodeck mixed with a Christmas Carol mixed with Minority Report Jesus shows us a small glimpse of His plan.  We see how it changes us, how it changes the people around us, and how it sets forth a chain of events that alters all future humanity in some way for His honor and glory.  We hug Him tighter and longer this time – the equivalent of all human existence. He lovingly breaks our grip and says it’s “time” to go back but that He’ll always be there and that we will see Him again soon.  He warns us that we won’t remember any of this because our brain didn’t actually make the journey with us nor would it be able to process what just happened.

So we are sent back into our clueless bodies in the exact moment it left with only a feeling, an inkling, a sense that everything is going to be ok.  We have no great understanding that let’s us think how this could be so, just something inexplicable and deep in our broken heart.  Maybe that’s what He does.  It could be true. But in all honesty, I’m probably wrong.  My bet is that Jesus does something even better than that.

Isaiah 57:15

For thus says the high and exalted One
Who lives forever, whose name is Holy,
“I dwell on a high and holy place,
And also with the contrite and lowly of spirit
In order to revive the spirit of the lowly
And to revive the heart of the contrite.