Testimony 17
I took part in a retreat called Prayer Experience Retreat (PER). Basically, the program helped the retreatants to experience God through prayers. In one of the sessions, we were supposed to reflect on Mark 10:46-52, which was about Bartimaeus receiving his sight from Jesus and he followed Jesus on the way. An immediate question came: Bartimaeus followed Jesus, but did he accompany Jesus all the way to heaven? I was just curious without expecting to get any definite answers. Anyway, I kneeled and closed my eyes to remain in the silence of the Lord.
A vivid warm imagery came, cars seemed to be moving along an expressway, scepticism and perplexity struck me. I thought I fell asleep, so to test consciousness, I tried to tilt my head and my body responded . This was the first time I was engaged in a vision. Before I even had time to digest the expressway imagery, the landscape turned to a river. At least it looked like one, water was flowing in its bank. There was no time to think because the imagery had switched to cars.
They appeared like retrospective cars in the 60s and again in a flash, they changed to nostalgic looking buildings, perhaps they were from Ancient Rome. The random and intriguing imageries made no sense at all. I was engrossed in analysing when a prompting came; the images originated from different eras, meaning God had answered my question earlier on!
My question was: where did Bartimaeus follow Jesus to? Bartimaeus followed Jesus from one era to another and then to next. It meant that Bartimaeus followed Jesus throughout all ages. It was an awakening experience; I didn’t know Jesus answers prayer in this way. Praying had been always a monologue, asking God for favours, but God revealed how I could establish communication with Him.
In another session, the retreatants were asked to reflect before the blessed sacrament. I was a little tired because we were into the second part of the retreat. All was calm, and I decided not to fight my drowsiness and rest my eyes. Immediately I saw a cross which perplexed me, so I asked whether that was a cross. It changed to something that resembled a staff, again I was baffled. Next it converted to an image of a polygon mesh fence lookalike, it was very closeup so I could only see one part. Once more, it bewildered me. This time an inner voice responded to me clearly: web, there was a web of doubt in me. I snapped out of my lethargy and kept watch with Jesus for moments.