Was that you, God?

So, I hopped in the car and started the drive home. As would be expected, I turned on the radio to listen to the Phillies game. They were playing the Colorado Rockies on this particular evening. As I mentioned in my last post, I was a bit frustrated with and rather pessimistic about the 2007 Phillies at this point. I don't remember all the particulars anymore, but I do remember that the Phillies were losing the game when I turned it on.

I don't recall how long I had listened or what exactly happened, but I was frustrated enough (my general mood given the meeting I had just come from probably wasn't helping) to turn the game off. As I was continuing to drive up the road, grumbling about the Phillies in my head (and quite possibly aloud), just knowing this was going to be another year when they fell short, the words "Don't lose hope" suddenly came into my head. It's really hard to describe what was going on here, but it just completely felt like something that was coming from outside of my own thoughts and musings, like someone else was entering the conversation. Was this God speaking to me?

You have to understand something here - up until about the last year, I had very minimal confidence in my ability to hear from God, at least on my own. On the rare occasions where I was willing to believe God was speaking to me, I would invariably preface it with "I'm not really someone who hears from God" or some variation on that theme. So, for me to quickly tag something as a potential word from God, especially in what was a very "non-spiritual" context, it had to have grabbed my attention pretty significantly.

One thing I immediately understood - if this was, in fact, a word from God, He wasn't just talking to me about the Phillies. I mean, maybe God is a big baseball fan, but I was pretty sure if He was giving me a message, the real point was about the other subject of the evening - Lynn. I believed He was telling me not to lose hope for Lynn, and that the Phillies were his way of confirming it.

Perhaps now you might understand one of the reasons why I've kept this under my hat to a large degree? To this day, it still seems a bit out there, even to me, and I lived it. Needless to say, I was skeptical. Along with my general skepticism about my ability to hear from God, there was the simple matter that I've always, and continue to be to this day, very cautious when I feel like I hear something from God that is what I know I really want - because it's not particularly easy to be objective in these cases. I mean, let's evaluate what I felt like I was hearing from God here - that my good friend was going to be healed from a fatal disease, and that my favorite baseball team was going to finally make the playoffs. There's not much question that's something I could dream up. And let's be realistic, the Phillies were right in the wild card hunt - as much as my past memories told me otherwise, making the playoffs was still a pretty strong possibility.

Still not really knowing what to think, I turned the radio back on and listened as the Phillies came back and won that particular game. As I got home, I determined to file the events of the evening away, taking a "wait and see" approach. I mean, after all, in a few weeks I would know if the Phillies made the playoffs or not, and if they didn't, there wasn't much more to be considered.