Tuning Your Antennae

Watched a documentary called For an Audience of One the other night. It made me groan and cringe. In short, it was about a pentecostal preacher that believed God called him to start a cutting edge movie company. I won't go into detail, but the first thing that was glaringly obvious to me was that he wasn't willing to admit that he might be wrong. And no one was willing to point that out to him. In a paraphrase from one of his congregants, it was obvious that he was sometimes wrong about things, but it was better to leave it alone and let God correct him. Scary.

Anyway, that got me thinking about something I've been thinking about. What I like to think of 'spiritual antennae'. I sat next to a guy on a plane once, that at first glance, thought was a biker. He turned out to be much more interesting than that. I can't remember exactly how he put it, but he was being harassed in his stream of consciousness by people and/or spirits that didn't like him, and he couldn't keep them out of his head. Paranoid schizophrenic or clairvoyant? I won't be the judge, but I wish I knew at the time to tell him that there was hope of blocking that station, so to speak.

Most of the time, we have our antennae turned only to receive our own station. A radio program that is all about self. I have met people that are really good at tuning into something else...

There was a guy named Andy that went to the church we used to go to. He liked to talk about the Holy Spirit as being something like the Easter bunny. The Easter bunny hides eggs for us to find, and these eggs are like little missions of love for other people. I have a good example of what he meant... When I was in college, I went through a rough patch. I remember sitting on the bottom floor of the science building early in the morning, trying to catch up on some work before class started, feeling depressed and lonely. The building was usually deserted at that hour. Andy, who was in the habit of walking the campus and praying in the mornings, got what he would call a little nudge from the Holy Spirit, the random thought to enter the basement of the science building. He had no idea I would be there, but because he was listening, I received some much-needed encouragement.

If God is love, then isn't that good news? Instead of being grumpy people that get upset about every little 'injustice' done to us, wouldn't it be more fun to try to spread some happiness? I've been trying to re-tune myself and be on the lookout. Instead of being upset at the non-attentive cashier, I am trying to be the one that smiles and is thankful (in spite of my unruly children). And I'm trying to remember to be on the lookout for Easter eggs.

Tying this train of thought into the documentary I mentioned at the beginning, it just seems that it is too easy to get wrapped up in what you think might be the 'call of God' for your life, when the most obvious call is to love your neighbor as yourself. Anything else that detracts from that most likely is not 'of God'.