“Do you have your Gotham?” 12/15/14

“THE ENCOUNTER III” > This story is written as if fictional, but it is not, I’m living this every day. Do you know your specific assignment from God? Have you heard a call in your heart saying, “Gotham needs me?” This is one man’s attempt to take up the mantle of being a Caped Crusader for God. I am caped in God’s covering and Indianapolis is my city.

CHAPTER SIX

Two days later Don felt led to do a daytime trip downtown. It would be another scouting mission as he still had no idea how to enter his Gotham and begin to battle the darkness so deeply rooted in today’s culture. Is Christianity really about just being a “good person”? Is that a Christian? No! It was actually closer to becoming a Batman, than just another good person, and yet how many of God’s children had such a vision? How many really understood this powerful Priesthood they were born-again into?

Don was not expecting what was to come. The bus ride went smoother now that he was an old pro, and being daylight he could see exactly where he was going. He even went farther back into the bus like he had wanted, and sat in the elevated seats. It was actually a relief knowing it was the bus driver flying down these narrow streets and his 1990 Dodge Ram was safely parked.

Once downtown he began to haunt the same familiar areas. His answer was here somewhere. More time was spent setting in the Garden Center, sipping on coffee and snacking on a hot pretzel. Unknown people continued passing in the street below, but everyone of them was known by God.

Walking through the mall he eventually reached the theater on the third floor, and found himself attracted to a movie playing. “Hhmm, this is interesting. I wonder?” It had been a long time since he had been in that theater, and what was this attraction to this one show? It was called “Maze Runner”. Before he knew it, he bought his ticket and headed in.

A week prior to this, at Wednesday night Church, a woman had stood and shared a very vivid dream she had and believed was a word from the Lord. In this dream the lady saw a pool of water, and a friend was with her. In the pool they saw snakes swimming all about and it frightened her friend, but she had advised, “It is not the snakes we can see that are so dangerous, it is the ones we cannot see. She said as they stood before this pool they realized they were boxed in by four tall cement walls representing the Church. And then she found herself saying to her friend, “We need to call for the men, the snake-killers!” And the dream ended. Don had written every detail of the dream down in his journal.

Don knew this movie had something to do with people trapped inside huge cement walls and the only way out was a maze full of danger. As the movie played he felt God speaking to him. He was having a God Encounter right there in that theater! These young men were trapped inside cement walls and there were no snakes, but the maze was full of spider/scorpion type monsters! The woman had said call for the men, the snake killers, but in this movie no hero had yet arrived. Everyone lived in fear, confusion, and no one dared to break the rules! They were trapped by a bunch of rules and a belief they could not kill the spider/scorpion creatures! To be trapped overnight in the maze was certain death! But then one man shows up who is willing to question everything, break rules, and even dare to fight.

It was discovered that the spider/scorpion monster could be defeated and people could survive a night in the maze. However, the monsters may not be their greatest threat, because these young men are being lied to in ways they cannot yet even imagine. The deception of smoke and mirrors are deeper than the ocean, and even when they think they have finally found truth and freedom, they are still in a web of falsehood, lies, and illusion, and they do not even know it yet.

IS THIS WHAT OUR SOCIETY HAS BECOME? The answer was yes. How can anyone find their way through such a maze of deceit? How many layers of smoke and mirrors are we trapped in? No wonder our youth are turning from God’s word in droves! And where are the snake-killers? Where are the David’s that slay Goliath? Where are the Yodas ready to train a young Skywalker? Why is the Church afraid to break culture’s politically correct laws? Are we afraid to run the maze and fight the monsters? Is Gotham not crying out? Lost in a maze of lust and corruption?

After the movie Don made his way straight back to the Garden Center, found his bench and wrote many notes in his journal. His soul was still listening, but had yet to share what it knew. The next day he woke up with the first piece of his puzzle dancing in his head! Immediately he discovered his Batcave, and got to work!

“GOTHAM” 12/11/14

“THE ENCOUNTER III” > The story is written as if fictional, but it is not, I’m living this every day.

CHAPTER FIVE

After enjoying his latte, Don left the Starbucks and walked over to the War Monument he had been staring at through the Starbucks window. Walking up the steps he found another nice spot and spent some time in prayer. The life-blood of a priest of Christ is prayer. Many Christian endeavors have been things other than what God wanted because of a lack of prayer. Prayer opens supernatural portals, and unless a priest is faithful to such a prayer life, these portals never open.

His spiritual walk-about was not over. He still had the canal area, IUPUI campus, and the hospital areas to walk through. It had been dark for a while when he finally left the Circle to head in those directions. He walked and walked, pausing here and there to listen. Listen to what? He could not say. His soul was listening, and many times the soul does not share what it hears, and what it knows, till later.

When he finally stopped walking he was at a bus stop near to the VA Hospital. There was a half tall cement wall to sit on while he waited. He was even closer to the Eskenazi Hospital, and he watched a helicopter with blades turning while it sat upon the hospital roof. When it took off it flew right over him.

His study of the IndyGo bus route had shown this route to run until at least 11:00 p. as he recalled. He hoped he remembered that right. The Internet information also said the bus would come through approximately every 20 minutes, but after 30 minutes of setting there watching car headlights fly by, and no sign of a bus, he began to worry.

He had reached this spot at 10 pm. and now it was 10:30. “I wonder if I looked at that schedule wrong?” he began questioning. He could not be sure, and the longer he sat there, the more he doubted. His emergency plan was to have his wife rescue him when she got off work from her Cracker Barrel waitressing job, and it was time, so reluctantly reaching for his phone, he hit the speed dial.

“Hello? How’s your adventure going? You still alive?” His wife asked.

“Ha! Yes, I am, but I may need you to pick me up.”

“Are you lost?” she asked while laughing.

“No. I’m at a bus stop, but it’s been forty minutes now and they are supposed to come through every twenty. I think I looked at the schedule wrong. Some of the routes end at ten. I may be stranded. Anyway, if you head for the VA Hospital I can meet you there.”

“Okay, dear, I guess I can come to your rescue. Your first trip on the IndyGo and you miss the bus and end up stranded. Sounds like another story I can tell the kids. They won’t be surprised though.”

“Ha ha, very funny. I’m gonna start walking. See you soon. Bye dear. Love you.”

Rising from his cement perch Don begins walking towards the VA he can see just up the road. He is about three minutes into his hike when he hears something behind him. The bus!

“Well if that don’t beat all. I sit there for 45 minutes with no sign of a bus, but I no more than walk 3 minutes away and look what shows up, but no way to catch it now.” Don could not catch it for two reasons. One, if the bus does not see anyone at the stop, it just keeps rolling, and this driver was already passing the stop even as he turned and saw it. The other reason was, after his back surgery, it was all he could do to muster a slow trot! His lower spine was still so stiff it did not allow for running, which was very depressing to a guy that had run a marathon at the age of forty-eight! Depressing as it was, this was the new reality and all he could do was stand there frustrated as the bus he waited forty-five minutes for made the left hand turn to do the horse-shoe up through the hospitals.

“Wait a minute! The horse-shoe! That’s right! The bus will come out up ahead of me! Maybe I can run and find a bus stop before it comes through!” The race was on! Feeling like an old warhorse, Don started “trying” to run. All he could manage was a trot, but he was pushing it hard as he could. He was giving it his very best trot, but would it be enough, and where was a bus stop?

In no time at all he was breathing as hard as a locomotive and his lungs were screaming to stop. He could see it now, “Man Dies of Heart attack while Running for Bus!” Then he saw something up ahead. Was it a bus stop, or simply a structure built by the hospital to protect against bad weather? He did not know, but he was determined he would run at least to that spot, even if he collapsed upon arrival! If it was not a bus stop, then he was done. That spot up ahead was as much effort as he could give, more than he should actually, but try he would!

Fortune smiled and when he arrived with lungs heaving and heart slamming, he discovered a bus stop. The bus arrived and he jumped on. When he looked up he found “standing room only!” He was shocked! He grabbed the bar and held on for dear life as he fumbled for his phone to call his wife. The bus roared away hitting him with G-forces one more time, but he was on a bus!

“Never mind, dear. I caught a bus. I’ll see you when I get home.”

Due to some confusion about the routing, his challenge still was not over and he ended up walking a quarter-mile to get to his truck. It was after midnight when he finally got home to tell his wife the war story. His first IndyGo adventure was over.