Every now and then, salvation implodes in the most unlikely setting. Mine took place inside my head.
If I follow the kerygma of Paul's New Testament thought, alongside his disclosure of regeneration in Christ, he makes references about emancipation from ourselves. The theological jargon was sanctification. The daily slang is evacuation.
I was hit by a depressive storm.
Anyone who has gone through this deep dark night of the soul recognizes the utter loneliness of its unseen yet brutal incarceration. No one speaks of its looming reality. One can be at the eye of its swirl while camouflaged.
I know this by heart: I roamed the earth with cunning invisibility.
I slept through its tectonic murmurs hoping for breath to snap. It was a hole too deep for hope.
If it were not for God's extrication, I would have long been gone. He used a most unusual rescue operation: the mind of a stranger:
I do not quite know him well, but ...
He loves vintage.
He spits words that are best processed by dissertation proctors.
He is young and restless.
He longs for sabbath every single day.
He is depressed by this world.
He is addicted to thoughts.
He is a pseudo-modern monk.
He is broken and healed.
He is quite unaware that perhaps, through his own struggles, God had used his moorings to keep me afloat.
It is amazing how a mind so little can affect a prodigious gloom.
I recently peeped into the metrics of my blog and was amazed how 30,000 viewers might have actually been affected by my puny thoughts just as I was altered by AJ's inklings.
Please forgive me, for stealing this shot from your crib.