“A-Ha Moments”
In our scripture last Sunday (John 20:1-10), one of Jesus’ disciples had a profound “A-Ha” moment. He’s officially called the “Other Disciple” (as compared to Peter), or “the Beloved Disciple” (because he’s known as the “one whom Jesus loved”). Tradition claims that he is John the author of the Gospel and that’s how we referred to him in the sermon. When he arrived at the tomb on the first Easter, entered the tomb and saw the stone rolled away and linen wrappings on the ground, he “sees and believes.” At that moment, everything that Jesus had done and said came back to him and a light of faith turned on within him. “A-Ha,” he realized, “I get it now.” He didn’t yet understand the full extent of the resurrection, but faith changed him.
As it so happens, I finished a book this past Saturday called “The Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South.” It’s the true story of a former Grand Cyclops of the KKK and an African-American female neighborhood organizer working together on a school desegregation project in Durham, NC, in the early 1970s. From this work developed an enduring friendship such that when CP Ellis died in 2005, Ann Atwater was the only non-family member to attend the funeral. Ellis, the former Grand Cyclops, had an “A-Ha” moment through his interactions with Atwater. But author Osha Gray Davidson writes this about it: “The single unifying element in the history of transformations in the West, (such as) Saul’s conversion on the road to Damascus … is the instantaneousness of the process … the psychological equivalent of a lightning strike…” This was not Ellis’ experience. Just because he had discovered a commonality of experience between himself and Atwater didn’t mean he would immediately leave the Klan and join the NAACP. But still, it is no exaggeration to say that C.P. had been profoundly moved by the experience and even changed by it – although he could not have said how. Perhaps the best way of putting it is to say that a door previously unknown to C.P. had been opened.
Ellis’ “A-ha” moment was not sudden change, but more like a slow, meandering journey of transformation and it echoed in my mind as I heard Jodie Walwer’s testimony in worship on Sunday. She described part of her life story, reflecting honestly on a state of discontentment she was experiencing several years ago; how this led to continual prayer about her situation but the realization that no sudden lights or “neon signs” were given in return; yet how God guided her to a conversation with a career counselor and how that one conversation began a long and slow – but steady – path toward career change, and ultimate hope from an initial place of despair.
God moves in each of our lives in different ways. Sometimes they are with sudden lightning flashes or in single moments of new perspective and understanding. And sometimes they are in ways that shape and refine us over days, weeks, months and possibly years. As you reflect on your own life story, how has God worked in your life to create transformation within you? How has the process of coming to “A-Ha” unfolded in your life?
Blessings – Michael