Mike Paschall . com

I don’t eat just one scoop of ice cream. Frankly, it’s a ridiculous notion. You can’t even get your teeth dirty with one scoop of ice cream. You’ve got to have two to make it remotely legit. One scoop is tasting ice cream. Two or more scoops is eating ice cream.

There should be a two scoop minimum. Period. No exceptions. Can I get an Amen?

Last week’s blog got a lot of attention. It’s been almost five years since one of my blogs had that many eyes on it. I rarely pay attention to the whole metrics thing, but it’s strange to me why a blog about heaven would get that many hits and another blog focused on equally important spiritual topics barely get a glance. I just don’t get it. It probably says something about us.

Read Mike Paschall’s Blog Post: Heaven

Let me be clear about this: This blog was already on my mind before last week’s post materialized. But, it does feel like the right time to allow today’s post to surf on last week’s wake. Thus… another scoop.

Last June, I rode the Indian down to Wimberly, Texas, to connect with an old buddy of mine from days long ago. Mark Roye is the founder of Blood-n-Fire Ministries in San Antonio. He was in Wimberly to help with the relief efforts after a horrible flood. Our spiritual histories are definitely intertwined, but despite all of that, I just like the guy. He’s got a monster heart that’s filled with compassion for the marginalized and burdened. He and his wife Suzie are doing their passion to add value to the “least of these” and the outcast. That says a lot about who they are. As I said, I really love these people.

It had been a while since Mark and I had really caught up and visited. While sitting under the shade of Texas live oaks, he spilled the goods about his stint in the hospital for a heart bypass not too long ago. I knew he had the surgery, but I didn’t realize the juicy contents of a story he told me. I’ve asked Mark to put it on paper. He has obliged.

My name is Mark Roye and I was 56 years old when I had an experience that has radically changed my perspective of life. My father had died at a young age due to heart problems. Because of my family history, my primary care physician began setting me for a series of test. In December of 2014 those test involved me having a heart cath procedure. After that particular test, I found myself facing heart bypass surgery. I ended up having 5 bypasses. I say all of that to share with you an experience I had post surgery.

In my second night of recovery after the surgery I was having a pretty calm night given the circumstances. My daughter Ashley (RN) was spending the night with me. At 2:30 in the morning, my heart began to go into arrhythmia. In other words, I woke up with a heart racing out of control. My daughter looked at the monitor and knew something was wrong. I won’t go into all the details, but things went south very quickly.

As I was in my bed, my heart going crazy. I began to experience the feeling that I was about to die. The thought of dying brought many things to my mind. My first thought was that I was excited to be going. I was so excited to see my family and friends that had already gone before me.

Then I began to experience something that I have never experienced before. I was on my back looking at the ceiling, and I began to see faces of people. It was as if they were pressing their faces through the ceiling. They were all in black and white. As I looked at the faces, I could see that they were faces from all different types of people—people from every tribe and nation—from all over the world! I was reminded of the scripture found in Hebrews 12:1 where it speaks of the great cloud of witnesses.

I am not one to see things like this, and it was an amazing experience. I feel like I experienced just how thin the veil really is between this world and heaven. It totally changed the way I look at life.

In talking to Mark, it was obvious that the encounter had narrowed his purpose, and minimized the fluff. Touching our sliding mortality is supposed to have that effect I think.

Last week I mentioned that there really must be a “great cloud of witnesses.” Not that I have empirical data on the subject matter, but it’s more of a hunch of faith. I know you Bible thumpers are losing your mind right now, but throwing your proof-text at every problem (especially the grieving) might not be helping the broken with their healing process.

When Mark was telling me this story, his eyes filled with tears and he could barely talk.  I too swallowed hard and batted away falling tears. It’s not all that uncommon for me, for I often find myself overwhelmed when I feel the tangible presence of God, and it just overloads the system and I start shutting down. Holding on with all my plastic bravery, my little kit of courage, and a genuine hope for a better today with no guarantees of tomorrow… well, it can all be quite exhausting. It helps to have a little breeze of hope—one more scoop of faith. And frankly, it’s just too crazy here to do life without some semblance of a comforting thought of more in your heart. Peace (The Ghost peace) in our heart goes a long long way. That doesn’t require chapter and verse.

So, yes, I’ll have another scoop. What about you?

Love you all,

-MDP-

xo