Birmingham April 2021 “The Writing on the Wall”
01/04/21 04:44
After a year away from home and my family I find most mornings are starting to follow a similar pattern whilst I wait for a buyer to appear for my flat. I get up at 0900 and catch up with overnight emails/messages and world events, reading them on my iPad whilst reclining on the sofa and sipping my first coffee of the day. After I have finished that it will then be time to log onto the computer game I have been playing and start my second cup of coffee. I finally put the iPad down around 1200 and well, now it is lunchtime. An hour later I am back on the sofa catching up on more emails and game time before remembering I should be doing my daily Bible reading and prayers. It wasn't always like this.
I returned to the UK a year ago to organise the sale of my flat and move my remaining possessions to Malaysia. Three days after I was back the UK went into Corvid virus lockdown and it became months before I could advertise my property for sale and since then hardly anyone has come to view it. However the first thing I would do each morning after breakfast was to read the Bible and pray for my family and friends, for needs to be met and for their protection against the sickness that was spreading across the world, whilst sipping my first coffee of the day. It felt important for me to put God first in my life and deal with everything else afterwards. A year on that enthusiasm had started to wane. I would still read and pray but now it had drifted into the afternoon, fitting it in between my lunch and going out for some exercise. If I couldn't manage to do it then there was always the evening or maybe time for prayers at least before falling asleep.
I was about to get a wake up call. This particular morning I was relaxing on the sofa, reading the news on my iPad when my eyes caught a glimpse of a flash of light on the wall. A flash of light in that room is unusual but it would be caused by a sunlight reflection from a window being opened in the building opposite my flat. My windows face north and only just see the sunrise and sunset before the sun moves behind the building. But just now I had seen a ragged bar of light appear on a wall, three metres from me. The bar of light was roughly 75cm wide and 5cm deep and had straight flat ends whilst the top and bottom was rough and ragged. It appeared half way between the top of my iPad and a large picture I had hanging on that wall. Having the picture above it enabled me to get a good idea of its size and measurements and, before you ask, there were no words in that light! Now I was immediately intrigued because nothing like that had ever happened before and the wall I had just seen the light appear was next to the only windows in that room. For a flash of light to appear on this wall it must have reflected back off something in my kitchen and behind my head! I started to think about it a bit more. The light was yellow gold in colour and I had seen it on a magnolia coloured wall, which is slightly yellow. It was morning and that meant the light would be more yellow or golden at that time so it could only have come from a window opening in the building opposite reflecting light into my kitchen and then off some surface and onto the wall. Whilst I was considering all this, it happened again.
Now it had my total attention. Same position, size and shape, well I can't be certain about the pattern on the top and bottom but the edges and position were in an identical position. I look at the iPad, had it got a flash associated with its camera that I accidentally set off? I looked at its back, it doesn't have a flash. I get up and walk into the kitchen to investigate further but there are no surfaces that could reflect a horizontal bar of light, there were only vertical brass handles and surely any reflection off those could not appear on the wall in that position. I looked across the room. It might be possible for light to come through my bedroom window and reflect off things in the hallway and then onto that wall. There were no reflective surfaces in the hallway, only a few yellow plastic coat hangers on my clotheshorse and it wouldn't be possible to get a reflection off them. I sat back down my sofa and starred at the wall. Once I could ignore, twice was very unusual but perhaps the person who had opened the window in the building opposite had subsequently decided to close it. I asked the question, half heartedly, if that was from you Lord, do it again. After a minute or so the same pattern flashed on the wall in front of me.
I got up and redoubled my efforts to see what could have caused this reflection. I looked into other rooms but there was nothing as far as I could see so I sat down, put the iPad away and starred at the wall for another ten minutes but the light did not appear again. Afterwards I picked up my Bible, read today's chapters and prayed. In my daily readings I am nowhere near the story of “the writing on the wall” which features in the Book of Daniel (and, spoiler alert, it doesn't end well for the person who the words were for) but I am very familiar with it. I asked the Lord what was meant by what I had just witnessed but I don't get much, only a feeling that I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. That feeling might just have been me trying to come up with a spiritual explanation but I was disturbed because something happening three times is usually associated with God. (When writing this account I looked closely at the windows in the building opposite and they are fixed. They do not open and cannot reflect the light I saw).
That evening I accidentally left my phone on a train. As I stood on the platform and watched the train depart I realised that the internet connection for my iPad had ceased and frantically searched for my phone. I now had no phone/internet access nor any idea when or whether I would ever get that phone back. The next morning there were no emails, messages or game time for me to look forward to unless I ventured outside into the cold and walked to a public wi-fi spot one kilometer distant. After breakfast that morning I read the Bible and prayed for my family and friends needs to be met and to ask for forgiveness for myself, all this before sipping my first coffee of the day.
I returned to the UK a year ago to organise the sale of my flat and move my remaining possessions to Malaysia. Three days after I was back the UK went into Corvid virus lockdown and it became months before I could advertise my property for sale and since then hardly anyone has come to view it. However the first thing I would do each morning after breakfast was to read the Bible and pray for my family and friends, for needs to be met and for their protection against the sickness that was spreading across the world, whilst sipping my first coffee of the day. It felt important for me to put God first in my life and deal with everything else afterwards. A year on that enthusiasm had started to wane. I would still read and pray but now it had drifted into the afternoon, fitting it in between my lunch and going out for some exercise. If I couldn't manage to do it then there was always the evening or maybe time for prayers at least before falling asleep.
I was about to get a wake up call. This particular morning I was relaxing on the sofa, reading the news on my iPad when my eyes caught a glimpse of a flash of light on the wall. A flash of light in that room is unusual but it would be caused by a sunlight reflection from a window being opened in the building opposite my flat. My windows face north and only just see the sunrise and sunset before the sun moves behind the building. But just now I had seen a ragged bar of light appear on a wall, three metres from me. The bar of light was roughly 75cm wide and 5cm deep and had straight flat ends whilst the top and bottom was rough and ragged. It appeared half way between the top of my iPad and a large picture I had hanging on that wall. Having the picture above it enabled me to get a good idea of its size and measurements and, before you ask, there were no words in that light! Now I was immediately intrigued because nothing like that had ever happened before and the wall I had just seen the light appear was next to the only windows in that room. For a flash of light to appear on this wall it must have reflected back off something in my kitchen and behind my head! I started to think about it a bit more. The light was yellow gold in colour and I had seen it on a magnolia coloured wall, which is slightly yellow. It was morning and that meant the light would be more yellow or golden at that time so it could only have come from a window opening in the building opposite reflecting light into my kitchen and then off some surface and onto the wall. Whilst I was considering all this, it happened again.
Now it had my total attention. Same position, size and shape, well I can't be certain about the pattern on the top and bottom but the edges and position were in an identical position. I look at the iPad, had it got a flash associated with its camera that I accidentally set off? I looked at its back, it doesn't have a flash. I get up and walk into the kitchen to investigate further but there are no surfaces that could reflect a horizontal bar of light, there were only vertical brass handles and surely any reflection off those could not appear on the wall in that position. I looked across the room. It might be possible for light to come through my bedroom window and reflect off things in the hallway and then onto that wall. There were no reflective surfaces in the hallway, only a few yellow plastic coat hangers on my clotheshorse and it wouldn't be possible to get a reflection off them. I sat back down my sofa and starred at the wall. Once I could ignore, twice was very unusual but perhaps the person who had opened the window in the building opposite had subsequently decided to close it. I asked the question, half heartedly, if that was from you Lord, do it again. After a minute or so the same pattern flashed on the wall in front of me.
I got up and redoubled my efforts to see what could have caused this reflection. I looked into other rooms but there was nothing as far as I could see so I sat down, put the iPad away and starred at the wall for another ten minutes but the light did not appear again. Afterwards I picked up my Bible, read today's chapters and prayed. In my daily readings I am nowhere near the story of “the writing on the wall” which features in the Book of Daniel (and, spoiler alert, it doesn't end well for the person who the words were for) but I am very familiar with it. I asked the Lord what was meant by what I had just witnessed but I don't get much, only a feeling that I had been weighed in the balance and found wanting. That feeling might just have been me trying to come up with a spiritual explanation but I was disturbed because something happening three times is usually associated with God. (When writing this account I looked closely at the windows in the building opposite and they are fixed. They do not open and cannot reflect the light I saw).
That evening I accidentally left my phone on a train. As I stood on the platform and watched the train depart I realised that the internet connection for my iPad had ceased and frantically searched for my phone. I now had no phone/internet access nor any idea when or whether I would ever get that phone back. The next morning there were no emails, messages or game time for me to look forward to unless I ventured outside into the cold and walked to a public wi-fi spot one kilometer distant. After breakfast that morning I read the Bible and prayed for my family and friends needs to be met and to ask for forgiveness for myself, all this before sipping my first coffee of the day.