015 - Cries

Episode 15 offers two stories about men who cried out and were heard.  Go ahead, do it!  See if you'll be noticed.

Thank you for telling a friend.  Share this podcast with anyone who may be encouraged.  Email Bruce your stories so he can do the parallel for you.  parallelproofpodcast@gmail.com

Transcript

Episode 15: Cries

Wherever you may be.  Whatever you may be doing.  Thanks for telling a friend.  All of the listeners in the United States, thank you for being here with me, but also a big shout out to those pressing play in France, Australia, Germany, the UK, Sweden, Russia, and last but not least Taiwan.  Yes, those are all stats showing downloaded episodes in those countries.  14 episodes in the books.  3 and a half months in.  Over 2300 downloads.  Parallel Proof all over the globe!

Speaking of friends, I had one get ahold of me this past week expressing his like of this podcast, how he loves the storytelling, and how it’s inspirational, but he also pointed out that he thinks I should tell more intimately personal experiences and parallel the more private things.  He states that we are all human beings, and all have failed in quite a lot of areas.  Failures that have never been spoken of.  Those that are hidden away.  He desires that I share more, and in his exact words, get “real-er.”  True, we all have private thoughts and intimate secrets, those unique to our journey.  You are who you are right at this moment based on how you have processed life’s curveballs and unexpected offerings.  In last weeks episode I said, “I don’t know you all THAT well.”  Little by little I share what I am comfortable with divulging.  That is what this podcast is about for me.  Part growth, part hobby, part therapy, but a large part in needing to find meaning and relevance in how God has shaped me to be who I am.  My mind gets clouded in the busyness and I live life walking or sprinting to the next ordinary event already laid out.  Day to day can be unmotivating, void of inspiration.  I have this deep seeded need within my soul to discover how I have arrived where I am right now, and how God has allowed it to teach me to be a better man.  I struggle and I fight.  I fail and I abuse myself.  Many of the uncovering of weaknesses will be between me and the One who created me.  It is for He and I to conversate about, to work through the questions, and to scuffle through the answers.  I won’t share them all with you.

I know you do the same.  There are thoughts for you only.  Feelings and struggles no one needs to know about, that you have to reconcile in your own spirit.  I love the fact that all of us have such different distinct paths to this very time in our existence.  You can’t change how you got here.  Do some investigation and allow your Author to speak through what He wrote and write that next chapter in your biography.  Discover, learn, change if needed, and move on.  I don’t want to be so set in my ways that I can’t expand my reach and become a more meaningful man.  To me, this only comes about by realizing where God was and what He was saying.

This is Episode 15: Cries

One graveyard shift in downtown Sacramento tossed at me a jolting dispatch that not only woke me up out of a dead sleep, but as I look back at it, helped startle me awake as to my own direction and drive.  In the wee hours of most mornings on patrol, a cop is just plain old tired.  It isn’t normal for anyone to work shifts that keep you awake all night and cause you to sleep away most of the daylight hours.  It screws with your body and makes your mind lethargic.  This is a very difficult thing to deal with as a police officer because at any moment, you need to be sharp, and on your toes, thinking clearly and ready for any sort of craziness handed to you.  But, there are times one just cannot keep the eyes open, aside from toothpicks propping up your eyelids.  One such occasion had 5 of us graveyard shift officers hiding in a parking lot behind a building flanked by 2 other structures on either side essentially creating a “U” shaped hole to disappear in.  If anyone were to visit that particular parking lot, they would have to meet us coming from only one side of parking lot.  We wouldn’t be surprised from the left, right, or behind us.  This is common, concealed from the public eye.

What is also common is the way we are parked.  Driver’s side to driver’s side, and literally inches between the vehicles.  We would pull next to the other officer and quite often would have to bend the side view mirror inward, so we don’t hit them.  All 5 of us in a row and the ones facing the open part of the U shape have to be more alert.  And if someone should happen upon us, the ones facing out would immediately put the car in drive and move up because, being so close, you can’t get out of the vehicle.  So there always has to be at least one.  I wasn’t one of those facing that direction this certain early morning, which, enabled me to ease up on the standing guard, and I could, well, rest my eyes.  It IS like 4am in the morning.  I AM a bit tired.  Conversations between officers have subsided and the police radio is silent.  It’s the opposite of GO time, it’s STOP time.  Nighty night time.  You can’t lean back the upper part of your chair due to the cage behind you that imprisons people in the backseat.  I position my body leaning on my left side and use my department issued police jacket as my pillow between the glass and top of the door just above the armrest.  Crack the windows so I can hear what is outside my vehicle.  Close my eyes, take a deep breath, and sink into the driver’s seat, waiting for 5:30am to roll around so I can be outtie.  It is always a beautiful time being able to relax, but never restful.  You have to, or should, keep an eye open and head on a swivel to what and who is around you.  Always one ear bent toward the radio.  Never relaxing, always glorious!

Until it’s not!  I must have been dead asleep deep in REM because I missed everything just blurted over the radio.  I don’t know what happened, what the call was, all I so rudely got slapped out of my slumber with was screeching cop car tires and sirens blaring as the other 4 officers exited balls to the wall like they were shot out of a cannon.  I have no idea where we were all rolling code 3 to because no more updates were coming across the radio.  Here I am trying to wipe sleepy from my eyes as I attempt to read the call notes on the in-car computer screen.  Catching myself up to speed on the dispatch and trying to catch up to the others like the final lap of a Nascar race.

We are headed toward train tracks on the northern side of downtown, lights and sirens screaming through the stark silence.  Here is the essence of the call I find myself perusing on the screen.

Residents in this downtown neighborhood suddenly awoke to the yells and pleads for help from a man some distance away from their home.  It is a little disconcerting to just hop out of bed and run outside to the blood curdling shrieks of an unknown whoever.  But, they called the cops and advised of the direction of the cries for help, found it within themselves to act as good Samaritans, and met the person in dire need.  And now we are on our way.

We all arrive at the destination a short distance from train tracks.  We make contact with the caller standing near, and there before us was a mid-30’s male laying on the ground, no longer shouting, but near dead with a leg cut off.

Let me get back to this true crime story in a few.

If you haven’t read the full account of Samson’s biography in the book of Judges, do yourself a solid and take in the wildness surrounding his life and him being the poster child of God’s power flowing through an individual.  Here are some snapshots of Samson’s life, and the cliffs notes version which starts from birth, ordained to begin the deliverance of Israel out of the clutches of the Philistines.  Samsons father, Manoah, cries out to the Lord asking for help in how to raise this boy.  Samson meets a Philistine woman, orchestrated by God Himself all while God Himself was seeking an occasion to confront the Philistines who were ruling over Israel.  Samson fights and kills a lion with his bare hands.  Later, on his way to get married, he comes across the lion he killed which now has a swarm of bees in the carcass, reaches his hand in and grabs honey for his trip.  Dudes a baller, and also weak toward women.  He’s a riddle teller.  Which in turn causes a bunch of drama between his now wife and her people.  And that fiasco results in Samson beating the crap out of 30 dudes, and giving his wife over to one of his friends who attended him at his wedding.  Later, his pissed off father-in-law won’t let Samson see his daughter so this freak of nature, Samson that is, catches 300 fox, ties their tails up in pairs and affixes torches to each pair, lights the torches and lets the foxes run wild among the Philistine harvest burning up all the grain.  Of course that doesn’t sit well with the Philistines, so what do they do?  Burn to death Samsons wife and father-in-law.  He kills some Philistines, hides, a certain tribe of Israel hands him over to the enemy who, ties his hands up with brand new ropes.  God’s power overtakes Samson and the ropes appear charred and fall from him wrists, dude grabs the jawbone of a donkey and slays 1000 men.  This guy is enraged!  Furious!  I picture him as a demented version of Fabio.  Yoked.  Long flowing locks, which by the way, was commanded by God never to cut.  And a drama queen.  He cries out to the Lord about being thirsty.  He actually says to God, “You have given your servant a great victory, must I now die of thirst?”  Haha.  God of course comes to the rescue and provides water.

Okay, so he’s a leader of the Israelites for 20 years during that time, heads to Gaza, a Philistine port, and finds a prostitute.  Classy!  The enemy surrounds the place lying in wait till the morning to kill him, but in the middle of the night, he sneaks out and rips off the gates of the city displaying yet another feat of strength.  Samson has a propensity for Philistine women and falls in love with one named Delilah.  Samson has to be one of the biggest meathead knuckle-draggers ever in the history of dumb jocks, or Delilah had to have been dripping platinum.  Anyway, the Philistine upper echelon got to her and offered her money to find out what his weaknesses are, and she tries 3 times to find out what the kryptonite was.  3 times he lies to her, and each time gets jolted awake by her yelling, “the Philistines are upon you!”  I mean, c’mon, what kind of superpower seduction does this woman have that he eventually tells her about the fact that God commanded him to never cut his hair and that’s where the strength lies?  Who is this woman?  He was either too dumb, blinded by her intoxicating beauty, couldn’t get enough of the bumpin’, or just plain old playing games with her.  But wait, Oh, you would have already read in chapter 16 and verse 16 that she was nagging and prodding him day after day until he was tired to death.  Ahhh, there it is.  Worn down, sick and tired.

Head now shaved, he’s taken prisoner and his eyes are gouged out.  He’s put-on display at a celebration.  The philistines need a sacrifice to their gods and Samson will do just fine.  With inept engineers in Philistia, Samson is placed between 2 pillars that apparently are the structural centerpieces for this arena.  Great piece of work building that death trap.  Hair now growing back, Samson cries out to the Lord for one more feat of strength, pushes hard and fells the temple.  He kills more people, and himself, in that moment than he did his whole life prior.  This better become a Netflix original one day.

What a rollercoaster crazy tale of this guy.  I’m also going to get right to it.  There are unmistakable unwavering things God has commanded each of us.  Both to do and not to do.  We have to prove our faithfulness and our trust in His direction.  People will come along, things will distract, desires will shroud our thinking, the pushing and the pulling from lies that will sap our toughness and might.  No matter what you are going through, not matter the stupid decisions you may have tallied up, no matter how guilty you are, or how torn down you have become, cry out to the Lord for strength, and he will meet you where you are at, to provide you with the power to overcome and continue on your rightful path.

Back to the guy with his leg cut off.

This man was involved with some very bad people.  A group that doesn’t take kindly to choices contradictory to their purposes.  This individual met up with said ensemble of characters and promptly got beat up and knocked out cold.  He was left injured and incoherent, intentionally placed directly on the train tracks minutes before a scheduled train was to pass by.  There was only one reason he was positioned on top of the tracks while knocked out.  The next thing this man knew, he was startled awake by the searing pain of train wheels cutting his leg completely off mid-thigh.  This dude had the immediate sense as he was bleeding out, to take off his belt and sinch down at the top of his now partial leg using the belt as a tourniquet.  Having lost a lot of blood, he dug deep for any amount of vigor, and began attempting to crawl his way to the nearest house in sight.  All the while, crying out for help, pleading for assistance, in need of a savior.  And help arrived before death had opened its door and drug him in.

If poor decisions have been made, if the direction you are heading is not correct, if you feel overtaken and subdued, weakness prevailing, tired, angry, forgotten, hurt, if you feel there should be more to your life, bound up, pressures to give in, you feel cut off and sapped of energy, dying inside, there is a Savior.  There is help within earshot.  Cry out to the Lord, one more time, or for the first time, for strength to make it through.  Samson did.  God heard his cries and was to him what he needed.  This fellow near the train tracks cried out, and his voice was heard in the nick of time.  What do you need from God to overcome, and move to where you can thrive and live in happiness, contentment, and purpose?  Believe that no matter where you may have placed yourself, or what circumstances have enveloped you, God has a plan, even if we are in dire need and hurting, beaten up by life, spirit severed, connection with God cut off, just believe that when I am weak, He is strong.  If I cry out to Him.

I want to thank you, again, for taking your precious time to be here with so many others.  You all are very encouraging to me.  Tell a friend.  Share these stories and parallels.  Write your own autobiography connecting your life to the inspired word.  And don’t forget to cry out to Him in times of need.  He will be there.  And I will be here next week.