While there is much to learn in the Bible, much of it is encoded on several levels, the more advanced available only to initiates. However, there exists a form of practical spirituality within the power of Jesus Christ, by practical I mean available to everyone as their natural heritage, wherein He reveals Himself to work wonders in our lives. I have posted this example in the past, and attempt to do so again. Please bear with me, the devil and his vanquishment is in the details.
My father died when I was ten-years old. He had become alcoholic, been in and out of hospital for most of my life between age five and his death from liver failure in 1955. The second to last time I saw him alive he was standing in the bedroom hemorrhaging blood from his mouth. After surgeons replaced a portion of his esophagus destroyed by cirrhosis of the liver, he wasted away and died. It was a period of riding the bus for miles so my mother could visit him, a disruptive and uncertain time. We were left impoverished, my mother had a few cents left in her purse and had to beg money from her sisters. She secured his Social Security and Veterans benefit, a grand total of $91.00 monthly, she sold off everything she could, and secured a job that week. He was reduced to a few broken watches and spectacles in a drawer and his Army discharge papers. I grew angry at him and alcoholics generally for their failures, their addiction, and the misery they caused for everyone around them.
Then, I forgot the pain and merely went on with my life. Then about 2005, my wife and I visited one of my cousins, the last remaining person who knew my father. We talked about another recently deceased cousin, who received treatment for alcoholism, PTSD from the Viet Nam War, and how he was able to straighten himself out, reenlist in the Navy Reserve and finish out his 20 years. I mentioned how I wish my father could have done the same, given he caused my dislike of alcoholics. My cousin asked if I thought his problem was related to his experience in World War I?
Having heard nothing of this, past knowing he had served in the U.S. Army Expedition Flying Service, I asked what she meant. Seems that my father had led a bombing raid on a French church where the Germans had set up an observation post in the steeple. When the first bombs fell, he saw nuns and children attempting to escape the church as the explosions ravaged the building. He signaled the remaining planes to call off the attack. For this he was not court marshaled, but was jammed up and transferred. No matter that children and nuns were killed or injured, the attack should have proceeded. Could that have been the trauma that was never mentioned? Was that the underlying cause of his drunken nightmares and screaming sleep demons? I realized that he was probably suffering from PTSD, something unidentified at the time. I felt ashamed, as the things we don't know are powerful evidence that cause us to misjudge and condemn. Now the ball was in my court.
Upon returning home, each night for three nights before bed, I prayed to Jesus Christ that he forgive my misjudgment of my father, and forgive him for whatever transgressions he made during his lifetime. I was asking for a reconciliation between us and Him.
One morning, after the conclusion of my supplications, my wife said she had a really strange and powerful dream. She found herself in a hospital corridor, facing a man dressed in a blue and white stripped robe, just on the opposite side of the threshold. She said she knew it was my father, and she knew that she could not step across the threshold. She asked if he was "John's father". He answered that he wanted her to tell "Jackie" that everything was fine there, and that he loved "Jackie" very much. She wanted to ask more questions, but the scene faded away, and she awoke. Strange as it seems, my wife did not know that my father referred to me as "Jackie", he never called me John, my given name. She did know that family referred to me as "Jack", but not Jackie as a child. So that an authentic detail was presented in her vision, as was the description of the robe he worn the one time they allowed him to visit with me in the lobby. We were both astounded, as I had never mentioned my prayers until she related her experience.
Now what can we say about this? First, no one ever dies, we are a soul personality loaded with the experiences of a lifetime. More, that if a father dead for over 50 years, can be summoned through sincere prayer to Jesus Christ, and reconciled with his son for misunderstanding, that is the power of Jesus Christ's practical power of forgiveness, and overwhelming love for us. That the vision of reconciliation was visited on my wife and not me, revealing hidden information only known to the father and son, that adds credence to the experience. As Christ rose, so can we all; while the body falls away, the soul remains, it is "saved", and that is the essence of all being, and the hope for a future bright beyond our understanding. It should also be known that I do not attend a church, but have an abiding faith in the power of Jesus Christ, He is exactly who he claimed to be, and quite alive this very moment.
