The clouds parted today. Through the mist, the sun's crepuscular rays lit the skyline as we reached cruising altitude over the Atlantic.
Last week, I moved out of my 10ft camper (where I had been living during the last year) and stored it in a barn on a friend's farm. I sold my car for scrap, packed my life into a single backpack and bought a one-way ticket to Israel.
On the flight, a woman asked why I was going to Israel. For me, the answer was short, easy and filled with room to breathe.
"I heard God say 'Go' so... Here am I."
During the brief layover connecting through the JFK airport, I met an inconspicuous man with a weathered wardrobe who spoke words of wisdom over my trip. Several years prior, I lived in Manhattan (West Village), so I'm no stranger to delays in New York City public transit due to construction.
In this instance, I was rerouted by a shuttle bus before hopping on the AirTrain to connect to the International Terminal. As is typical in NYC, I passed several homeless bodies bundled in the cold and prayed a blessing over them. These are my people.
When I stepped onto the AirTrain, a tall black man pushing a shopping cart had cleared space around him as he was shaking his fists and muttering incomprehensible words to himself. By all public ways of defining sanity, this man had a few screws loose.
As I boarded the train, however, I heard the Lord say, "This is My Spirit." So, as others backed away, I got close enough to make sense of his incessant muttering. Sure enough, in between an unknown language, I heard various names of our Lord mentioned: El Shaddai, Yeshua, Yehovah Jireh, etc.
Suddenly, the language shifted to something more militant in nature and English broke through. "Touch not my anointed ones. Touch not my prophets. TOUCH NOT MY ANOINTED ONES! TOUCH NOT MY PROPHETS!" declared the homeless man praying in tongues on the gate transfer train.
When he finished praying, I gently touched his shoulder and whispered “Amen”. Startled, he came out of the spirit and cocked a half-smile my way. In that moment, we both knew the Lord had released something through him, and I was the joy-filled witness.
This mysterious man that everyone had shunned was on assignment. With shopping cart in tow, he offloaded on the following stop, but not before he shared the name of his spiritual father and mentor, a well-known man with a large following in Texas, of all places. I left the Lone Star State this morning, and this declaration launched me out of America and into the Holy Land.
On the flight to Israel I looked his mentor up, watched a brief teaching, and grabbed a nugget of TRUTH that applied in this encounter and will undoubtedly have serious implications as I journey through a disputed land set apart long ago:
”Wisdom is the study of difference.”