"In seven years, seven months, or seven weeks..."

Rumor was that Karen got run out of her wealthy, mostly white neighborhood.  Something about all that (black) traffic coming to her door.  When I went to see her, narrowly a second had elapsed before I heard the frantic rustling and flapping of wings, saw black birds, as if startled by my presence, flying away from her as if she were a human scarecrow.  But I did not actually see the birds.  Nor did I actually hear those we-must-fly-away-now sounds.  I sensed them.  In that moment, sitting across from Karen, whose head was tilted, eyes closed in meditation, hands shuffling her beloved tarot cards, I was confounded as to who was the real witch, her or me.

Alcatraz, astrology, crystal balls, ghost hunters, ghouls, haunted houses, near death experiences, Ouija boards, tarot cards, telekinesis, UFOs, zombies, everything from A-Z—even the Scooby-Doo in between. . . Anything with spooks or an invisible hidden hand manipulating it, my Christian self was sneaking around corners and bucking my eyes to see.  In my naiveté, I foolishly believed on some level, like Sarah Silverman, that Jesus was magic.  Wrong!  While magic may be as alluring as Jesus, magic embodies deception, sleight of hand, and all sorts of mysteriously unsettling confusion.

DaVId BLainE is ever captivating to me; though a little too light on his feet, that devil is set on mischief.  Criss Angel ain’t hardly no damn angel—or perhaps, he is—damned, that is.  Sylvia Browne’s communion with spirits, sputtering up from below, often misfires.  And the Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo trolls only the past.  Don’t we have grudge-holding relatives for that?  While colorful and magically delicious, silly rabbit, these puffed-up Trix are certainly for kids.

To the naked eye, today’s mind freaks, soothsayers, and mystics may seem like the seers of the Bible.  However, the aura of God surrounding the prophet gives him soul power, not sole power—that stuff the flesh desires.  What Samuel, Daniel, and Elijah had was not of the flesh; it was a gift of the spirit, the rewards of a lifestyle of obedience and sacrifice gained through fasting and prayer.  The holier they lived, the more God anointed them with HIS spiritual power—to hear from Him and to have Him hear and answer their prayers.  Quickly, swiftly, doodadippity.

Society no longer finds magicians, psychics, and Harry Potter books dangerous.  But such practices, when idolized, are still spiritual suicide.  Leviticus 19:31 warns, “Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God.”  Ironically, it has been and always will be dangerous to be a prophet of the Lord.  Ever heard of ‘kill the messenger’?  God’s messages in the Old Testament were wrapped up in curses for sin that nobody was tryin’ to hear.  Ya heard?  New Testament junkies—playing the grace card—only hear and preach the good news of the gospel as if the point of Jesus’ sin-removing sacrifice was to make sin cool, of ought and nothing to be shunned or repented of.

By God’s revelation, my “Harry Potter” moments, though magical, it turns out, were not the stuff of magic at all.  Here is just a bite—a few morsels—of my testimony of miracles:

1. On a very dark road, I was searching for the house where my BFF, who was having car trouble, told me she would be.  No sooner than I had uttered the words, “God, it’s dark,” did the lights begin to flash on my BFF’s car.  When our friend and I arrived at the car, no one was in the car.  And the only time the car lights ever flash like that is when the alarm is going off.  There was no sound.  I was glad that this time someone was there to see that I was not “delusional.”  Psalm 112 says, “…unto the upright, there arises light in the darkness.”
2. When an image of Christ’s frail body suddenly appeared in the grain of a wooden door with his arm outstretched, pointing away from that place, I knew it was the finger of God directing me to leave at once.  (Whether I had the blackbone to obey is another story.)  But, at least, I had a witness.  Psalm 139:7-8 states: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.”  (Oh, yes, I used to lace up my Nikes thinking I could run from God just like you.  LOL.)
3. Standing side by side with my boyfriend in his house before a mirror, I saw only a shadow of myself in the mirror.  James 1:23 states, “For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass.”  James says, ‘he sees himself, walks away, forgetting what kind of person he is.’  I was hearing the word only and doing whatever the hell I wanted and that disobedience effectively rendered the word useless in my life.  If I had examined myself and obeyed then, I would have been saved from the heartache to come.
4. The year was 2005, April.  It was after 2 a.m. and I was lying awake in bed.  I thought I could hear a radio playing, people talking.  Seemed to be coming from outside.  I thought my neighbor (a.k.a. “the loudest neighbor in the world”) was just crawling in from the bars.  Then it became quiet.  I heard many voices close by, a congregation of male voices, a multitude of male voices, all talking at one time, in my room, but as if in a boundless space.  From another dimension?  Then like that moment before the movie or a symphony starts, a single male voice broke through the other voices and it became black hole quiet.  “I am the one,” the voice said.  Not as spooked as I probably should have been, I rose and went to the kitchen to have a drink (not that kind of drink ;-)).  Once the drink was before me on the table, an urge urged me to look to the right.  As my head slowly turned, I felt a sensation of utter peace on my right side.  Seeing nothing, I went black to bed.  While lying on my back, this same deeply intense sensation of indescribable peace “cocooned” my entire body.  So I slept.  So whose voice was that?  It was not the voice of a follower, but a leader, an entity of power.  Jesus says, “…the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.  And a stranger will they not follow, but will flee from him: for they know not the voice of strangers” (John 10:4-5).  Truth is, I didn’t recognize the voice.  So am I a sheep of a different pasture or was this the voice of the stranger?  (Shudder.)  Luckily for you, Jesus also says, “And other sheep I have, which are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice; and there shall be one fold, and one shepherd” (John 10:16).

I could write a book about the right hand of God on my life.  Someday, maybe I will.  But for now and from this day forward, blackbiting aside, it’s satisfying enough knowing that you, too, now know which is witch . . . trick from treat miracle.