Recently, as I was listening to a recording of a talk from the 2008 Kanuga Summer Dream Conference given by Jerry Wright, a Presbyterian minister and a Jungian analyst, I was struck by his description of a numinous experience. He called it “a nod from God.” Isn’t that a great turn of phrase? Can’t you just feel it?

The folks in our lessons for today knew what it was like to get “a nod from God.” In the story of the prophet Isaiah’s call, the prophet had a numinous experience, a vision of the Lord enthroned in majesty surrounded by celestial beings singing God’s praises. In our epistle, Paul mentions that “[Christ} appeared also to me,” referring to his numinous experience on the Damascus road (Acts 9:3-9), where he was struck by a blinding light and heard Christ Jesus speaking directly to him. And in the gospel, we see Peter getting “a nod from God” with an unexplainable and extraordinarily large catch of fish.

In picturing those numinous experiences in my mind, the first thing I notice about them is the awe each one felt on realizing that he was in the presence of God. That seems to be a hallmark of the numinous; whenever we find ourselves stunned with awe in the happenings of our lives, we may recognize that we are experiencing “a nod from God.” The second aspect of their experiences that gets my attention is the abject humility of each one on seeing themselves as they really are in the light of God’s presence. We may kid ourselves into thinking we’re O.K., “better than the average bear,” good enough for all intents and purposes until we are overcome by the numinous and our eyes are opened to see just how far we are from what God wants for us. The third commonality that I notice is that they are all “call” stories, personal calls from God to ministry in the world. That makes me wonder if all nods from God are calls to action in one way or another. What do you think?