The Power of Yes (Part Two)
When I left off at the end of “The Power of Yes (Part One)”, I promised to continue the story of the internal journey that this servant went through in the very moment my friend Tony asked the question “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only living Son of God and that He died on a cross for your sins because you cannot stand before a Holy and a Righteous God without a Savior”?
They say that when you are about to die, (or maybe when you are, in fact dying) that your life flashes before your eyes. When I said “yes” to that pivotal question that came out of the mouth of a man that I knew loved me (and that this love came from the Source of all Love as I later knew to be true), the Lord immediately took me on a supersonic journey back and then forward.
The first thing He brought to mind was a moment that I remembered I had relived once before when on LSD in the 60s. He took me back to a moment when I was just under one year old, and as I remembered it, it was the first time my parents had left me alone with someone other than them (I believe it was my dad’s mom, Mary, who was an austere and very quiet woman who died when I was about two). I remembered vividly being disconsolate and afraid as I was screaming my lungs out for someone to come to help me but nobody came. In my infant mind, as the adult me remembered it (aided by the Holy Spirit of course), it seemed like hours and I became sure that no one would EVER come to help me and that I was to be forever alone. I remember looking up at a mobile that was hanging over my crib and crying, screaming, when all of a sudden an incredible supernatural peace OVERCAME me. I literally felt the presence of God calming me and letting me know that I was HIS, I had nothing to fear, and that the eyes which beheld the mobile hanging above me were only temporary, but the SIGHT was eternal. This was the only way I could fathom with my newly formed brain what He was telling me silently, but that feeling never left me, that I was an eternal being who belonged to my Heavenly Father.
He then took me on to a moment when I was about four years old and my parents took me to downtown (Manhattan, where I was born) on Christmas Eve to see the store windows (Macy’s, Gimbels, Bloomingdale’s, etc. all had displays for Christmas to attract customers), and I remembered thinking, as I observed people smiling, and greeting each other and saying “Merry Christmas” in a warm and friendly way that was very different from the day-to-day demeanor of New Yorkers, that a Baby had been born 2000 years before, that had somehow changed the world. That feeling really never left me, but lay dormant for my entire life until this day, in May of 1995, at the age of 43.
The Spirit then showed me many moments in my life where I would surely have died by my own foolishness, but “His angels bore me up lest I should dash my foot upon a stone”. Other moments He showed me were even more amazing in that He brought to my mind and revealed actual people that had helped me in specific dangerous situations, and showed me that they were a part of what I instantly now understood to be the “Family of God”, the “Called according to His Purpose” who had been given Spirit instructions to be at the right place, at the right time to help this clueless sinner who would one day (this very day as I came to realize), so that I might live to see the day when my earthly eyes were finally opened at the word “Yes”.
I just realized that there needs to be a Part three to this blog. So I leave you here with these words from the Apostle Paul.
Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. – Romans 8:30
In His Eternal Grip of Grace, with Love,
John Henry Raskin, Roadhouse Rabbi