Under a Glass Moon

Why Under a Glass Moon?

The title of my blog is as much an act of love, as it is an act of thievery. I stole it from a song by the same name, that was written and recorded by my favorite band in the whole world – Dream Theater.

I’m not sure the song would carry the same meaning for everyone as it does for me, but let me quote a few lines from it and you can make-up your own mind:

“Beneath the summer sky, under glass moonlight, night awaits the lamb’s arrival.”

“By Your hand I’ve awakened. Bear this honor in my name.”

The story of my salvation is unique, as I’m sure yours is too. We all have a story unlike any other and that’s what’s so amazing. We are all connected to one another through the God who created us. His grace is perfect; His forgiveness has no boundaries. He is always there.

“Tell me, remind me, chase the water racing from the sky. Always beside me, tasting the memories running from my eyes.”

God is always there even when we are not. This is the part of the story when I finally became aware of it. Call it an awakening. He made it so and may I never lose faith again.

This journal entry reveals the 180-degree turn-around I made toward Jesus Christ when I got saved:

The weather had finally arrived at cool that November evening in North Texas. Five long months of unrelenting heat – typical for this part of the country – gave way to shorter days and a breeze folks actually noticed without accompanying it with an exhausted “Whew!” (“Dang, it’s hot!” implied.) Burr! Oh yeah! Fall was in the air.

Halloween had come-and-gone, but only by a few days. City trucks were parked hazard lights blinking yellow along busy Dallas streets, while crews darned all of the curbside trees with white twinkle lights to get ready for the Christmas Season.

That ordeal was still almost a month-and-a-half away, but the lights took top priority over just about everything else that walked, crawled, rolled, or that could be found sleeping on a bus stop bench at three o’clock in the morning. City officials must have priorities and burning millions-upon-millions of lights for six weeks, for no apparent reason except to show off, during one of the worst economic crisis in history, is a must do. That’s what I think anyway!

Hey! How ’bout getting rid of some of those pesky grackles? You can’t walk across the street for a latte near the West End in the fall without risking being pooped on by one of those nasty little noise makers. There are as many birds in downtown Dallas as there are twinkle lights by Thanksgiving Day, but do you think anyone would lift a finger to solve that problem? Noooooo! Let’s hang some lights, shall we?

I said, “Good grief!” to a bunch of fellow pedestrians waiting with me at a cross walk signal. I must have had that “What the…?” look on my face again.

“No shit!” A guy standing next to me shot back.

“It isn’t even Thanksgiving yet!” the woman behind him protested.

A few minutes later I boarded the train home for Ft. Worth ready to tell all my buds about the holiday work being done. I made it to the train without getting pooped on one time. Safe!

Even a commuter train has clicks – a social order of arranged groups. Did you know that? But if there’s rhyme or reason as to who sits with whom, then I am at a loss. I can’t tell you why some folks gravitate together, other than we are all creatures of habit and after enough time passes with the same folks on a train car day-after-day, they will naturally start talking to one another. Well, maybe not if you’re riding in New York or Chicago, but here in Texas you can count on it.

It’s what’s wonderful about being human. Otherwise, we’d probably just bark at one another, pee and sniff, then go home to eat.

This group had been riding together for approximately five years. So, we knew one another pretty well. I’m still good friends with most of them: one goes to my church, another works at the same school where I work, several e-mail me regularly, and one lives in Sacramento now, but I speak to him at least once a week on the telephone. It was a fun bunch and your typical transplant/lifelong Texan mix found often here in North Texas.

This is the Bible Belt after all, therefore one can expect the Christian faction to be represented in almost any loosely assembled bunch of folks. Ours was no exception. In the ranks we had Evangelicals, Baptists, Presbyterians, Methodists, non-denominational, and we even had a Mormon to spice up the conversation. We also had a few in the fallen-away category – myself an ex-Lutheran included – but Catholics mostly. One was just plain atheist.

I guess you would have called us “faithfully diverse” by today’s terminology? By this I mean you had a pretty good chance of hearing “Praise the Lord!” and “God damn!” in the same conversation.

Most of the time, however, the faithful minded the fact that everyone listening did not want to hear a sermon. In turn, those not inclined to believe in God, or those who really hadn’t thought about it for a good long time, took their foot off the expletive accelerator out of respect for those they might offend.

Then one day it happened. It happened for me, a longtime fallen-away from Christianity person. God boarded that train, sat down beside me, and spoke directly to me. No kidding. Praise the Lord!

It was without question the single greatest moment of my life. It was the moment God reached out to me and I got it. I got it! Did you hear me? He came to me and His Holy Spirit entered my body. And I got it!

The train departed right on time. Chugging down the track, the conversation turned in a direction it almost never had – religion. Before anyone knew it, things got out of hand and the Window Dresser let out with an extremely derogatory and totally unprovoked remark about “Bible thumpers” in such a loud and rude voice, that I was certain folks eating dinner in the house we’d just passed going seventy-miles-per-hour could hear it.

Bible thumpers? Who in the heck does she think she is? I was sitting in a car full of “Bible thumpers” and even though I’d heard this label a million times before, this time I was offended. I mean, these were folks I liked; they were good honest hard-working people who happened to be Believers of God and regular church goers.

What’s wrong with that?

I wasn’t offended personally, but for some reason which I still am not aware of, I could feel the angst among the group’s faithful. Looking around the car at some hurt feelings I thought, “Oh, my gosh! I’d better say something and quick.”

So, I went in a direction that questioned why it is that so many folks spend so much time being so critical of so much of what we say nowadays (say: speech police), yet when it comes to Christians (say: Bible thumpers, holy rollers, Jesus freaks, etc.) and other specific subgroups that cannot, or will not, violently react to such vitriol, for example, special needs kids (say: retards, cripples, abnormal, etc.), no one seems to care? These hurtful words just spew from the mouth like poop out of a goose, but no one is any worse for it. Sometimes there’s even a good laugh over it.

Makes me wonder if there isn’t some sort of political agenda behind all this PC nonsense? You just try these same insensitive tactics with some other religious groups and see what you get.

Anyway, I had no sooner come to the defense of my Christian comrades, when all of a sudden the Preacher erupted into a thirty-minute fire and brimstone “Sermon on the Rail” that was just plain old school.

After some “Praise Jesus!” moments, the whole group was chatting wildly, smiling, and listening to the Preacher run wild with the Living Word of God. It was inspiring; he was inspiring us.

The Preacher isn’t really a Preacher. By this I mean, he’s not on a pulpit every Sunday morning, but he should be. He is ordained and does have a good working knowledge of the Bible. God was speaking through him – to me.

The Preacher and I exited the train still talking about the Word. I kept wondering if there was more to this moment. What was God saying to me?

“Get off your ass!” Is what He was saying. “You’re gonna really need Me soon.”

I told the Preacher that I wanted to re-connect with God. That was no lie, because for several months before that train ride home I had been feeling a strong urge to find a church. After twenty-six years why was this yearning coming to me out of the blue?

I didn’t even know what denomination to pick. Lutheran was out-of-bounds for sure – been there, done that. Having known so many fallen-away Catholics in my life, I was pretty sure that wasn’t in the plans either.

So it was that the Preacher and I got together a couple of times a week in the coming months, to pray, read the Word, experience the Holy Spirit’s presence, and chat.

This strategy gave me some time to listen to God speak.

I told you that you’d probably think I was bonkers for thinking God was speaking to me that day. I might have thought so too, until I lost my job three months later and my life was turned completely upside-down.

It was not long after that big life-altering event that I realized God came to me because He knew I would need Him. It was certainly true that I did desperately need Him; I couldn’t have made it through the next three years without Him.

It turned into a whirlwind tour of my mind, soul, and body – my whole life changed. I survived only because God spoke to me through the Preacher and saved me from the coming devastation. No doubt about it, I was living the whole two sets of footprints into one set of footprints on the beach story. It was nothing short of a miracle.

Bonkers? Better than what would have become of me had I not seen God waiting for me with open arms. He was waiting for me, a total fallen-away sinner, an epic sinner, a selfish and irresponsible know-it-all, with a foul mouth and a bad attitude.

I was on the road to perdition, but not anymore.

I was Born Again, a New Creation, because of what the Preacher did for me. And I am eternally grateful to him for it. You never know what the people in your life will do for you. He brought me into a stream of consciousness with the Heavenly Father that I wouldn’t trade for all the gold in the world. It’s that precious!

The following April I found a new church family after more than two-and-a-half decades away from it. My church plays a very important role in my life to this very day. I still have a great deal of personal work to accomplish. Boy… do I ever! I am thankful to God for these new and good fruit-bearing relationships, as they are God-pleasing and have me finally on the right path.

Praise God for His grace and forgiveness. Praise Jesus for what He has done for all of us. He leads me now in this new direction. I’m able to leave guilt and shame behind. I am able to turn away from sin.

He is an awesome God!

The Word speaks through all believers; God works through all who obey the Living Word. This is the story of how God reached me in the loneliness of my own despair, then carried me when I could walk no further on my own. God changed me in order that I may forever walk in His light. After many years of personal rebellion, foolishly thinking that I could do it all and do it alone, I gave it over to God.