The Eye of God 8-14-9

Anderson, South Carolina

Recently I was on retreat and perhaps the most important thing I learned during those nine days of relative solitude is that God is speaking to us all the time. The issue is whether we turn off the noise in our lives and listen to what He has to say to us. When we listen, the results can be astounding. We can experience a peace that passes all understanding; we can have a sense of safety that transcends our circumstances. I think of a fine artist who described a profound sense of God’s care, even during the five and a half years he spent in the Nazi hell that was Auschwitz.

This morning I was stung by a cloud of very angry wasps while working in a friend’s garden and suddenly found myself dancing and running with great animation to avoid further collateral damage. I fled to a wasp-free region of the universe and debated whether to go home and eat a bottle of Benadryl. I opted to skip treatment, figuring to trust that my recent miracle of physical healing was not being usurped by some wasps and simply went back to clipping blackthorn holly and camellia bushes. Unexpectedly, the pain from the multiple stings was completely gone a minute afterwards. Suddenly, an amazingly beautiful moth of gargantuan proportion appeared at my feet. This moth must have had a wing span of six inches and looked much like one of the stunning giant tropical moths that are found in the Amazon rainforest. What was such a magnificent creature doing here 4,000 miles from its usual home? Bringing me a message? I learned anew on retreat God uses plenty of modalities to deliver messages besides carrier pigeons and e-mail.

In the tropics a number of giant moths are protected from predator birds by the defensive device of mimicry. These moths have vivid pigment patterns on their wings that clearly depict the eyes and face of a predator owl. When the moth opens her wings, the result is the airborne food chain of hungry birds leaves the succulent moth alone, duped into thinking the defenseless moth to be a predator with a strong beak and talons. I realized in a moment that I was being given a clear sign from a supernatural source that God had His eye on me and was paying attention to the details of my life, even the presence of a wasp swarm about my head. If He is taking care of these matters in my life, giving me miraculous healing of my leg and sparing me from allergic reaction to a wasp swarm, then I can trust Him with some profoundly important decisions that need to be made in the next few days.

Some of the great cathedrals in Europe once were in the practice of painting the Eye of God onto the ceiling of the crossing tower, often 150 feet above the floor of the sanctuary. This giant image of an all-seeing, all-knowing, and all loving God was very powerful to a mostly illiterate congregation. I remember the powerful numinous awareness I had standing under the Eye of God in the magnificent St Jin’s Cathedral in Dembosch, The Netherlands. The sensibility was the same when I held this amazing moth in my hands today and again when I took it home and carefully photographed it.

It has become clear that God pays close attention to the micro details in our lives and yet even with fresh powerful evidence of this, it is easy to relapse into fretful self-sufficiency and try to help Him out with the management of my life. At present I am a bit under the gun to hear from God - fast. A week from today I must be able to give a foreign airline the name and immigration data for a travel companion who will accompany me on a journey around the world - destination yet unknown. I was just awarded the grand prize in a writing contest sponsored by an airline and must fax this information - information that I presently don’t have. So it is that I am trying to figure out where I am supposed to go, with whom, and why. In a lucid moment I asked for signs from God that he is taking care of these not so small details - including telling someone he or she needs to be packing for a very long journey, on almost no notice.

In a swarm of wasps He sent a gentle messenger that He has his eye on things and to take it easy.