The Spare Room...a Flashback Interlude

"Pray Once Again"

It was stamped in block print letters against the sky. A strange flashing vision. "Pray for what?" I whispered. Then the image of my apartment in heaven and the sweetness of the air in it came to me. The place is a wonder--while I know it is mine, it is nevertheless new by my measure and in many ways yet unfamiliar. Thus it felt like a divine revelation that I came across a door that I should already perceive hid a "spare room" behind it. I knew it to be a room empty, as yet unused, unfurnished and unoccupied. I opened the door to further explore this new space, and immediately upon entering, I sensed that I'd spent the last little while of my conscious life changing it from a junky storage room into this spacious, open spare room. Now that it was clean and ready, I wondered what I was supposed to do in here.

In time, I sensed Christ's with me there. He presented me with a strange bone at first. Then I realized what He handed me: a rib. His own rib. A re-creation of woman out of man, designed for this place. I took the rib and looked at Him, asking, "But how do I make this a part of me?"

Suddenly, I remembered one the earliest dreams of covenant we'd ever shared, my Lord and I. In it, I saw a loaf of bread, already sliced once, but on a cutting board. Somehow I was both the bread and the hand that held a knife to slice it. As I reached out to slice the bread, a Voice said, "This is my body, broken for you..." When my hand had finished cutting a new slice of that bread, and my pinky finger touched the cutting board, a jolt of electric power ran up my arm from that finger so strong that it caused me immediately to wake, gasping. That was the dream that returned to my memory as I held the rib. I also remembered my first dream of the Crystal Spectre (http://sdmen.blogspot.com/2006/04/visions-of-power-danced-in-their-heads.html) and how I joined a circle of prophets praying for power in that dream, only the power was woefully inadequate to match with that Spectre's power. I realized now how slicing this bread was all about releasing power. What's more, I realized how I could be both the bread and something else--like the hand with the knife. Finally, I realized another mystery solved, how could the bread be sliced once before I sliced it for power's sake? So many things I hadn't understood that suddenly now made sense. I realized what I was supposed to do.

And there before me was a mortar and pestle of dark and heavy stoneware. The most painful part of the whole process for me was taking that beautifully perfect rib and beginning to crush it. Accepting that I would be the first to break what had never been broken for the reasons I thought He'd given, a weaker faith would have faltered as I felt practically gnostic. But He has brought me this far, and so I took it and crushed it to powder, chalky dusty bone flour, completely unrecognizable from what it once was, though in essence still the same.

Quickly, I took that flour to a stone altar where I would mix it to batter; but without water, how was I to do this? There was no water in the room. I prayed again, and remembered more yet again--it's all in the remembering, for very little here is utterly new. He reminded me how He had planted water within me. Now in other dreams, that water was a wild spray and out of control. It could strike the stone and blast the bone powder into the very air. But this was another thing, like the room itself, that He had been revising in me: a new level of control. So, in faith, I dangled my hand over the mound of flour, and clear beautiful liquid trickled from my palm. It fairly danced its way to the flour dust, as if it knew it was always meant to make such a paste as this batter would be. Then I did mix the batter and put it on a baking paddle and took it to the grand fireplace at the far end of the long room. I baked that little loaf, and waited with great anticipation for my chance to consume it. (Three measures of yeast were sufficient) I took the little loaf and began to break it, but a hand stayed me. The bread was first cut, not broken in my particular story. So I found I had a knife in hand--how it got there only God knows--and I cut a slice and ate it--consuming and becoming one with the loaf as it began to nourish me, moving into my very cells with its sweetness. And then to seal the dreams together, I saw myself cut the second slice, heard Your voice yet again, felt the power in my arm once more. And then I wept for emotions overpowered me at the promise of Oneness, and I wept for the honor of representing Your Bride in things prophetic--for the two dreams that became as one.

"God hath spoken once, twice have I heard this: that power belongeth unto God." Psalm 62:11