Sunday, August 22, 2010

Adventures in Devon

There's a section on the A38 where it always rains. I don't fully understand why; something to do with the relief of the road or the way the weather sweeps across the west country, but whatever the reason, at the hill where the road forks by the Shell Garage, it always rains.


More often than not (and today wasn't an exception) I've taken the right hand fork that is signposted to Plymouth. Here, the A38 climbs into the fog, and trucks and caravans and old bangers get overtaken by flashier cars, beaming their headlamps into the murky mist that lies atop the hill. The left hand road angles off to Torquay, a place made famous by a badly run hotel.


Today I was on my way to see Andrew and Rachel, who live in a delightful place called Bigbury-on-Sea. And so, I took the right hand option. As my car trundled up the steep incline, and the inevitable rain spattered upon my windscreen, I looked back in my rear-view mirror to the road behind. Blue sky and sunlight gradually receded into the distance as I drove into the clouds. Welcome to Devon.


Devon is the 4th largest county in the United Kingdom. It is the only county with two separate coastlines and it has a truly spectacular mix of rolling hills, sandy beaches and undulating countryside. It is in fact, so beautiful, that the locals have decided to hide most of it away from passing travellers, by encasing all the roads with impossibly high hedges. What's more, the yokels must have chuckled at deviously, as they sat round their farmhouse tables, the roads are so incredibly narrow, it takes all the concentration of Lewis Hamilton to drive down them without scraping your wingmirrors or skidding round a tight bend slowly enough to avoid the Unavoidable Tractor chuntering toward you in the other direction. I must admit, today I was a bit cross with Claudia, my Satnav, but it wasn't really her fault.


Bigbury-on-Sea is delightful. It's tiny, like a seaside hamlet. When the tide is out, a strip of sandy beach juts out into the sea to a small island (Burgh Island), complete with pub, hotel and well-kept gardens. Around the island, the tide comes in from two different directions and meets in a crash of waves when the tide is in. Over on the mainland of course, the hill sweeps down to the sea, and houses with huge glass windows face out toward the ocean. A caravan park seems to rise infinitely up the hillside, criss-crossed with static vans and holiday-makers. By the shore, surfers flap and flip in the car-park, their car-boots wide open and towels pinned to the parcel shelves, as the rain-flecked wind tousles their hair. Kites fly, balls bounce, and the sea-tractor chugs its way across the tidal beach like an amphibious prison-cage on wheels.


It's a nice place to live, and Andrew and Rachel and their children, probably couldn't be anywhere better. As we chatted tonight, it became obvious to me that they are really quite relaxed after their short stays in York and London. I think Rachel, particularly found city-life tough.


"It was just like living in concrete," she said, "and no-one could understand what was going on. I felt like God was showing me things all the time and it was just - well I felt like I couldn't see properly, you know, in the Spiritual realm."


Rachel is, what some people might call a prophetess. Actually, she calls herself a 'seer' - and if tonight was anything to go by, she seems to 'see' things pretty much all the time. It occurred to me that seeing things spiritually and continually, would almost certainly be as difficult as it would be rewarding; a little like Agatha and the precogs in the film Minority Report, haunted by the reality of what they saw and could not stop seeing.


As she spoke to me tonight, she interrupted herself to point out angels in the room. She sees this often, and not just angels - demons, visions, dreams, pictures. It seems God shows her things in a way that is quite real. God gave her a vision for me that was identical to one that I had received three weeks ago, and she seemed to know about my struggles with self-esteem and situations going on in my life. It was quite something. For about an hour, she was speaking into my life and encouraging me and reminding who I am.


As she got up, she went on to explain that sometimes in these moments, God sends gold-dust to rest on her hands. I've heard of this. In some circles, people claim to have seen gold flakes tumbling from the ceiling during a powerful time in God's presence. Others have been astonished to find that their fillings have turned to gold. They say it's just a supernatural way of God showering his people with abundant blessing.


Rachel stood in the light and peered into her palms. She looked a bit like a butterfly collector, examining something resting in her hand.


"Oooh!" she exclaimed, "there!"


I came over, excitedly, to have a look. I couldn't see anything, and for a moment the scientist in me was disappointed. I was intrigued though, by the fact that she definitely could see it. How would it be that one person could see something physical, when someone else standing in the same light with the same...ooh.


I saw it. There was something tiny, like a miniscule fragment of a piece of glitter, catching the light. Wait! As I watched, more and more little scintillations were appearing on her fingers and up her hands. It was amazing - and yes, quite inexplicable - but there it was. I was quite astonished, but recognising the Presence of God, it felt like the immediate thing to do was to hold out my own hands.


Before long, the gold-dust was settling on my hands too. Palms and fingertips, sparkling with the glory of God. I was truly astonished and humbled. I wondered for a while, whether God had planned the whole thing of me coming here, and him speaking to me and then... well this - and I purposed to write down everything he had said.


-


"This is normal," said Andrew, smiling. I understood what he meant I think. Things like this do make me wonder about the kind of life we live as Christians sometimes. My friend Peter at my old job used to say he was perplexed by Christians who lived just like everybody else, even though their faith made extraordinary claims about their destiny, their purpose and their existence.


As for me, I've come to realise that the battles I face, reflect the importance of what God requires me to do. My destiny, my purpose, my existence is a threat to the enemy that he can't ignore. In the last two years he's thrown me into depression, cut my brake pipes on the M5, attacked my relationships with the people closest to me, dragged me through sin, pushed me into rejection and hidden away the truth of who I am.


But I am still here and I'm still fighting.

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