Holy Encounter

                “My Lord, my God, I kneel before You, close my eyes and slowly shed all that I have placed upon myself. I don’t need any of it; it simply blocks my view of You and disrupts our intimate connection. The external facade I sometimes think I need to wear in public actually blocks Your holy light from shining out of me. I take it off, like a mask, because it is of my own creation, not Yours. I place it on the ground and ask You to take it away. I don’t need it. I humbly kneel before You now as I truly am, without any mask or self-made designs. All my strengths and weaknesses are clearly obvious, but they are what make me who I am. You know them all and yet You love me anyway. Let the intense love I feel for You well up inside my soul, permeate my entire being and may that love clothe me instead. It is much more genuine, beautiful, pure and able to show Your glory then what I could ever create for myself. Let people clearly see Your love shining within me and let them be drawn to that.

                “As I humbly kneel before You, I shed all my outer senses. My external hearing simply distracts me from Your voice. I turn off my outer volume and tune in my inner hearing to the one voice of truth and love. I don’t want to hear anything that comes from the current “world;” it is a distorted version of Your Word – like Your voice covered in static. Your true voice is pure, gentle, sweet and speaks only love. In this silence, I close my eyes and turn off all external vision. It too is distorted and full of distraction and imperfection. I wait in the darkness for You to turn on the light of the Holy Spirit in my soul. From the blackness, I see a reddish yellow light slowly permeating the corner of my inner vision, like a sunrise gently lighting the sky. It gets brighter and brighter, causing me to blink with my eyes closed. The warmth of the light spills over my body like a silken summer rain. My internal sense of touch feels the warmth grow both from within and around me. The warmth comforts me and fills me with great peace. As I breathe slowly, my sense of smell goes numb at first and then becomes acutely aware of the scent of incense. In this precious moment, I remain suspended. There is no sense of time or space; gone are the thoughts of what to do today, what to do this week, or this year. My life is momentarily suspended in this encounter of pure love. Nothing else matters, we are intimately connected in adoration. I can’t move. I don’t want to more. You tell me, “I am always here.” I breathe in Your love and I exhale Your love. As I slowly become aware of my external senses, they seem all fine-tuned, cleansed and focused on finding You in the world and in the people You created.

                “My Lord, my God, I am overwhelmed and very grateful for this encounter with You. I have no words to express what You have placed in my heart. I pray that I will always remember this encounter and return to this way of union again and again. Oh Lord, I humbly rise and walk, clothed in Your love, a vessel of Your Holy Spirit, and a beacon of Your light.”