I wandering a little further away from Granada last Sunday, and met some really unique people. They live in a place where Christianity is not yet acknowledged as a legal religon, and so they meet secretly. Ironically, the small building is close to the authorities local hq.

I wept as I heard them sing, and wept even more when I heard my dad weep. He and I, and many thousands, have prayed for a long time, and I never thought we'd be a part of the miracle. God's gospel, His good news, changes lives, and in the last year and half, I've seen this over and over again.

In our western mindset and culture, miracles don't happen. We scorn the Virgen of Lourdes, the pilgrimidge of Mecca, the journey to Santiago. We think people are searching for lost causes, and its true, but we don't offer than any other options, so they continue to march around the black stone, worship at the feet of idols and bloody their toes proving their dedication.

We come upon a most holy moment for the Catholic world. In my mind, its both a dark and a light moment. I'll never forget seeing the lone Christ figure on the cross, and hear the weeping of the crowd. In the same breath, I'll never forget the emotion, the excitement that occured when a small, white statue of a woman came out the humble church and people swooned with emotion.

God is bigger than the Virgen de las Angustias, the road to Santiago, and Mecca. However, we don't really believe it until we see it. More of us are like Thomas than we want to admit.

I've been prviledged to see it, last weekend with a small group of hardy souls, who know Christ and his suffering. Take my word for it, its powerful, this crazy thing we call the gospel.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Summer is finally ebbing away from the hot desert of Southern Spain. Don't get me wrong, its still around 90 or so degrees here in the middle of the day, but I woke up this morning to see that it was about 15 degrees cooler outside than inside, so I gleefully stopped the air conditioner, and opened all the doors and windows. I'm wearing long pants and a hoodie because it just feels marvelous after 2 months of intense heat. This blog hasn't always been an every day or an every week thing, but that's how life happens. An interesting thing happened this month with it, so this is what I'm talking about today. Apparently a young Indian medical student was feeling very lonely in the Western Suburbs of Chicago. He was on his way to Spain to study Spanish, and feeling very disconnected from his world. Being a Christian, he was encouraged by his church back in India to Google Granada, and Evangelical Church. My blog came up in the few pages that Google could find. He left me
Read more
 These posioned tables have been like the scene in C.S. Lewis book, The Silver Chair, which is an often overlooked part of the Narnia Series. The Prince is enchanted, and by that, a bettter more modern word would be bewitched, and the Silver Chair is controlling him to stay underground and not possess the kingdom that is rightfully his, and instead and Evil Witch rules over all. The Prince is so bewitched, so possessed by this Silver Chair, that he cannot see what is really happening, and that is he is completely bound to it with chains. It takes courage from a creature called a Marshwiggle, who burns his feet and snuffs out the incense-laden fire which is poisoning the air. The Marshwiggle pays no mind that he might burn his feet, but understands he must do so to end the enchantment. The first poision I realized that so many people have drunk, is that to be a Christian in a respectable church with dignified ceremony and theology, is to give away the freedoms they have. This can be in
Read more
Image
I don't consider myself to be a mystic, but rather a writer. My mom forced us as kids to write, but it wasn't that much of a punishment for me. I've always had my nose in a book. Today I've been reading out of Madeline L'engle's book that is a compliation of her forty years of writing. Its called, Glimpses of Grace. Its divided up into days, and under Sept. 21, part of the reading is this... "As I read the Old and New Testaments I am struck by the awareness therein of our livves being connected with cosmic powers, angels and archangels, heavenly principalities and powers, and the groanings of creation. It's too radical, too uncontrolled for many of us, so we build chuches which are the safest possible places in which to escape God. We pin him down, far more painfully than he was nailed to the cross, so that he is rational and comprehensible and like us, and even more unreal." This month Granada celebrates her patron saint. Named the Virgin of Angu
Read more