Spiritual Retreat Journal Extract powerlines

Categories: uncategorized

Date: 04 August 2005 03:28:52

My feet are cold. I walk, listening to where I should stop. I stop, no a bit further, no a bit further, over towards that tree, another step - there. Stop.

I can see powerlines. They stop not far ahead where the last house stands. Beyond I can see the mountains - huge mountain ash trees reach to the sky.

Earlier God asked me if I wanted to see a picture of the company of saints praising God in heaven. I looked at a huge pile of stones. Was that like the saints, the bodies of martyrs piled on top of each other, their blood calling out for justice - no I think, that's just not right.

I close my eyes excited. I've never 'had a picture' before. I felt God saying to open my eyes. I open them wide, waiting for a vision to appear. Nothing. I feel God saying, "look at the mountain." And there, the mountain, rising straight up out of the ground in front of me, covered in huge trees rising straight to heaven - that is a picture of the saints in heaven praising God.

Now I see in this picure, the end of the powerline, the mountains beyond, I have come to the end of my own power - it's time to look to the saints.

'Struth!' I think. 'What will become of me? Am I going to start praying to saints.' The protestants are going to think I'm going straight to hell.

(Just a little note here dear reader, incase you're a bit worried about me now. I do understand that people don't pray to saints. I understand, perhaps through Orthodox Ian that God is God over the living and the dead, that this stepping over from life to death is not a barrier to God, that he reigns in both life and death, and we are part of God's family in life and after. So people living can ask those who have died, and yet are still in God's family, to pray to God for them in the same way that you can ask your friend at church or your neighbour to pray for you. I hope I have this right.)