When God Came

Eventually you will hear or read me use the phrase, "When God came."

Most people don't know what to think when I use this term. I suppose that for the sake of clarity I could stop using it, but it's the best way I know to describe what I mean, and a sincere term of affection toward God because of what He did. I have used this term almost since the time of its occurrence, because nothing else quite describes it properly. You see, I wasn't looking for Him at all when He came to me, and no human being came to witness to me about the wonders of God or my relationship to Him. I did nothing to deserve it, I am no one for Him to do such a thing, He doesn't deal that way with everyone, but while I was not looking for Him in the slightest, He came to me.

So let me explain.

I worked for years in the Pre-press trade.

Starting at a German owned company that lived and breathed process control, I worked my way upward from there learning the trade. Never turned down OT, and usually asked for more. I thought that was what you were supposed to do. I advanced in pay –  and into the city – eventually specializing in high-end Photoshop work. The retouching suites there looked like a set from CSI: cushy leather chairs, nice stereo systems, stainless steel, black walls and just a hint of purple glow from black-light accents. Clients from national ad agencies paid a couple hundred dollars an hour to walk in and sit down with the retouchers. Very avant-garde.

Then God came.

It was a literal epiphany. I was minding my own business at work late one night when the Holy Spirit of God filled the room with a presence so thick...it wasn't visible, and you couldn't smell it, but it was heavy–like the room was filled with thick smoke. I could barely breathe and time stood still on that spot while all the world silently revolved around me. The finger of God touched the very heart of my being; I gave my life completely into His hands.

When it was gone, I was a completely different man.

Well, very different anyway. And getting more completely different. Work I had taken pride in I now felt convicted by. And since such work is common fare in the world of printing you might imagine there isn't much room for conviction about righteousness and sin. Of course, the true majority of work wasn't sensual revealing stuff, but mundane staples like important fried chicken, major jet liners in majestic vistas, and the famousest of soft drink brands. But the sensual stuff was now a real sticking point, and where I had fit in nicely before, it was like oil and water. Or maybe more like water and old grimy built up grease that really smells from not being cleaned in a long, long time; but the people are so used to it that they have no idea what you are talking about, and you can't understand why the health inspector hasn't shut the place down a long time ago.

Well, The Health Inspector is going to shut the whole thing down pretty soon.

But in the mean time I had this peculiar situation: Talent, skill, and experience in a field for which my relationship with God made me unsuitable for regular employment; The Holy Spirit like an Olympic home remodeling team tearing out the old and building new; And a family that had a well fed bank account, but was dried up and starving for anything that might be called a husband or a father. So I walked away from my primo position downtown, and took about a year sabbatical with my wife and (now) five children and God – until the money ran out. After that I learned trim carpentry, and branched out into some things I never had time or inclination to try before in the pre-press grind, like logo design, graphic design, and photo restoration. (That one I especially like: taking old battered and faded memories from the past and recapturing them for the future. That's much more satisfying than helping an older gentleman with phony military status sell buckets of chicken.)

Along the way I have learned a few things.

The average American family doesn't need nearly as much money as we think we do. Children do better in the daily presence of their mother and father than with all the schooling, entertainment, activities, programs, gaming, friends and even Vacation Bible School that you can think up. Wives need their husbands at home as much as children need their mothers at home. Men were not intended to spend the majority of their lives out of the home interacting with women to whom they are not married. People waste their time and money on hobbies and entertainment and leisure-time activities galore trying to fill their lives with meaning because they have abandoned A: God, and B: The Home; and thus are spending their 40 - 60 hours a week on a hamster wheel building nothing with any real meaning. The Western church is far, far afield of the Bible we think we believe, running hard after the society we think we're separated from, yelling, "Wait for us! Wait for us! Wait for us!" while waiving our Bibles in the air instead of reading them.

That really doesn't do it justice – just a few words straining at the limits of human language to try and express inexpressible things – but if you hear me say, "When God Came," that is what I mean.