Posted by Roberta Grimes • June 06, 2026 • 0 Comment
Jesus, The Source, The Teachings of Jesus, Thomas Jefferson, Understanding Reality
I am weak, but thou art strong.
Jesus, keep me from all wrong!
I’ll be satisfied as long
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee.
Just a closer walk with thee.
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea!
Daily walking close to Thee.
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
Through this world of toil and snares,
When I falter, You are there.
Who with me my burden shares?
None but Thee, dear Lord, none but Thee.
Just a closer walk with thee.
Grant it, Jesus, is my plea!
Daily walking close to Thee.
Let it be, dear Lord, let it be.
Elijah H. Cluke (1907-1974), from “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” (Negro Spiritual, 1930s)
We all generally think that our own lives are lived within a reasonable range of what is normal for everyone else. We think that if something happens to us, then of course it must be happening to lots of other people, too. So, when I woke up to a flash of light in predawn darkness at the age of eight, and then I heard a voice speak to me earnestly from out of that flash of light, well, I simply assumed that even that was normal, even though I never spoke of it to anyone else until the same thing happened to my mother as my father lay dying, almost forty years later. And actually, it was indeed a somewhat “normal” experience, in that Experiences of Light have happened to other people who are somewhat famous in history. God spoke to Moses from out of “a burning bush that was not consumed” (Exodus 3:1-3). Right? And Saul of Tarsus was a zealous first-century Pharisee and persecutor of the earliest followers of Jesus, until Jesus Himself spoke to Saul from out of a flash of light that knocked poor Saul right off his feet; then Jesus said from that light, “Saul! Saul! Why are you persecuting me?” (Acts 22:7) Jesus thereby turned Saul all at once into His Own great Apostle, Paul. So, my light and the divine voice of my spirit guide together constituted a normal-ish human experience, perhaps we might say. It was an experience that was at least shared by Moses, the Apostle Paul, my amazed and confounded mother, and little me.
I think I am the only one of the four of us, however, to have had an Experience of Light happen to me twice in the same lifetime. My problem was that I was simply too young when that first one happened. I was only eight years old! By the time I was a junior in college, I still remembered my Experience of Light; but by then, some of the sense of immediacy of something that had happened more than a decade ago, and had completely shaped my life thereafter, had begun to grow somewhat distant from me in time. And, well, its full effect on me had seemed to be beginning to wear off a bit.
By then, I needed a little booster. Had it actually happened? Was my memory of it, after all, entirely right? I recall, when it was time for the members of my class to choose our college majors, that I was stepping up to that high red Formica counter, and I heard most of the girls around me declaring what were the hottest majors at the time, things like English Literature and American History and something to do with classical music; and for the girls who needed for-sure jobs right away, there still were majors like Stenography and Office Management. I kept hearing these majors, and I thought that what I was about to declare seemed ridiculous now. What, Early Christian History? What ever could I do for the rest of my life with that? But then an extraordinary calm swept over me, and from somewhere came the rising certainty that, Yes! Of course! That would be my perfect major!
Sadly, though, my fresh self-assurance about what I was doing did not last for long. Just as, if you really love sausages, you never should watch sausages being made; so, in the same way, if you have an adoration for the Christian religion, then you might prefer to skip studying closely that religion’s first few hundred rather embarrassing formative years. By the summer before my senior year in college, I was again feeling miserable about my major, and especially about some of its rather messy early details. I was spending that summer with a friend’s family in Cleveland, as I recall, and working in a bank for my summer job. I came home to my friend’s house from work one day, feeling certain now that my major really had been a terrible mistake; and wondering what I could do about it now. And as soon as I entered my bedroom there, OMIGOD, it hit me right in the face: that flash of white light, and exactly the same young male voice. This time, the voice said just, “I will never leave you.”
WOW! Even Saul had needed only one call from Jesus from out of a flash of heavenly light to make him instantly give up his evil ways and become, in service to Jesus, the Lord’s great Apostle, Paul! Moses had needed to see just one burning bush fail to be consumed, and to hear God’s Voice coming from it, for heaven’s sake! My very dear ones, for years I was convinced that I am the literal dunce of the universe, since I had needed to have God call to me twice! Good grief, what on earth was wrong with me?
But I know now that the voice that I had heard speak to me from out of a light twice in my life had been, not God’s voice, but my spirit guide’s voice. He had appeared to me, too, when I was just preschool-age, and able to see a very tall, slender man in a blue robe sitting on a rock in the thinly-wooded lot beside my family’s house as unremarkable. But he first really “came out” to me when I was already sixty years old, and he wanted me then to write a book called Liberating Jesus at Jesus’s dictation. Apparently, I was refusing to do that, considering myself to be entirely unworthy of the honor of doing anything so intimate for Jesus. My initial refusal apparently confused poor Jesus, Who considered me by then to be one of His familiars, since, as you will learn next week, I had unknowingly been visiting him just about every night for most of this earth-lifetime.
When my Thomas realized that his jig was finally up with me, and he had better ‘splain to me a whole lot more about what had been going on in my life; then with what I gather was a rather large sigh, Thomas impressed upon me the need to contact a medium. Through that medium, he then came out to me as my spirit guide, he told me that he had been the American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson in a prior earth-lifetime (I assume he thought that identity would be a good calling-card, which indeed it was); and he asked me please to allow Jesus to use me as His channel to write a book, to be called Liberating Jesus. Wow, that was a whole lot of information for me to have to swallow in one big gulp!
But as big a gulp of information as it was, in fact, it turned out to be just the beginning of my need to come to understand what had been going on around me for my entire life, without my having realized any of it. Now, those Experiences of Light had been unusual; I will grant you that. But I have lately come to realize that many more people beyond just the four of us, just Moses, Saul-to-Paul, my mother, and I have had experiences of light, where a flash of bright light happens, and then a voice speaks. Those Experiences of Light are rare. True enough! But still, other people beyond the four of us have had them, too!
So now, next week I will tell you much more about what I have been learning about the oddities that have been happening, both to me and around me, throughout my earthly life. A lot of this has really been due to my Thomas, because of the life that he has been living with Jesus while he also has acted as my spirit guide. He has been serving two people at once, and he continues to do that, even now. I can’t fault him for that; and indeed, I think my life has been made much the richer for it. But not until very recently did I understand what was going on, at all! Now, though, I am old enough, and close enough to my earthly journey home to be more comfortable, and actually even at peace with it all. I know now that God is real, beyond all question! And I know Jesus’s whole genuine, entirely human, and amazingly complex, although altogether divine eternal history. I know now indeed that Jesus is fully God and fully Man, in truth and in all perfection!
For most of my life, however, I have still felt some troubling remnants of religious fear and awe. So I wondered what was mine to say, and what I couldn’t say. I had to somehow get rid of all that religious confusion! I wanted to share this with each of you, because certainly, I had no more right to know it than you did. So, I have wanted you to know God as your own gentle Pappa, as well; nothing less than the deepest and the purest love. No fear at all! And I wanted you to know Jesus as the purest friend of your own deepest heart! Oh, my beloved darlings, now it really does begin….
When my feeble life is o’er,
Time for me will be no more.
Guide me gently, safely o’er
To thy kingdom’s shore, dear Lord, to thy shore.
– Elijah H. Cluke (1907-1974), from “Just a Closer Walk with Thee” (Negro Spiritual, 1930s)
(Most photos are from Vecteezy.com)
