Good morning…
I woke early on Saturday morning, surprise, surprise. It was the long awaited day to visit again with Betty Skinner, the 93-year-old Christian mystic whom God has used to shape my soul. Betty’s captivating story, a rise from clinical depression into the joy of oneness with God, is chronicled beautifully by Kitty Crenshaw and Dr. Cathy Snapp in The Hidden Life Awakened. I made myself some coffee and slipped out onto Kitty’s back porch, cozying into the dark, early air hanging over Jacksonville’s St. Johns River.
Betty had asked me to write down any questions, leaving space on the page beneath each one to capture her responses. In my journal I prayerfully pondered several questions, then I texted a few close friends to see if they too had questions for Betty. By the time Kitty woke several hours later, I held pages and pages of possible inquiry. Kitty and I discussed the words resting in my journal. She took notes and typed up key questions, just as Betty had requested. We hopped in Kitty’s car and drove to Betty’s nursing home in Ponte Vedra, Florida.
I was overjoyed to see Betty, to hug her frail body, to hold her aging hands, to experience love-laced laughter naturally erupting between us. Kitty recorded our talk on her phone. Because I listen best with pen in hand, I jotted notes in the open space provided below each question.
“How have you seen God already in this day?” I asked first.
“I am always seeing God,” Betty quietly responded. “Sometimes more intimately than others. This morning I have been praying that the Spirit would be with us as we meet. I am claiming the promise that where two or more are gathered, Jesus is here with us. I can feel Jesus’ Spirit. Already I feel it now.”
“I feel it too, Betty,” I said, before heading into a mesmerizing hour of talking intimately, back and forth. The three of us were carried on the palpable power of Jesus’ Spirit as God’s answer to Betty’s morning prayer became manifest among us. “For where two or three are gathered in My name [meeting together as My followers], I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20, MSG).
Now I have a question for you: “Do you feel the Holy Spirit being manifest among us, followers of Jesus, as we begin this brand new day?”
…Sue…
