In The Beginning

It all began as I sat uneasily in a high-back chair while 14 men in a semi-circle studied me intensely through dim candlelight rippled by rising smoke from white sage incense.

I was attending my first Christian men’s retreat. It was May 2015 a few days before my 65th birthday, and it was my turn to be in The Chair.

After long moments of silent prayer, each man, in turn, told me what the Holy Spirt was telling them to say as they studied me. I was not to respond – just listen and be present to their words.

Today, I can’t recall most of what was said to me in that room. What I do remember, because it struck such a powerful chord in me that night, was three of the men had said, “I see you as a tall shining beacon.”

I can assure you, up to that moment I didn’t see myself as anything close to a tall shining beacon – quite the contrary – but from that moment on I gradually began to see me as God intended. Something else happened that night in the cabin on the San Saba River in central Texas. Without me knowing it, the Holy Spirit had planted a seed that three years later would become my first novel, “The Hidden Saboteur.”

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