Modern Circuit Riding Preachers

Circuit riding preachers blazed trails across America bringing good news or bad news depending on your perspective. Several months ago I published a blog titled "JHN 3:16". You can reread that if you need to refresh your memory. It seems that my first encounter with this inscription on a bathroom wall would not only be my first but also not my last. In Starbucks's on the bathroom wall was neatly written once again in the grout "JHN 3:16". It has to be from the same pen it is too coincidental. This person is giving new meaning to circuit riding preachers in the 21st Century. Who ever it is, they are dedicated to their mission and in most causes I would agree graffiti of any kind is defacing public property but as I said before, can anyone deface a public restroom?

I know what you are thinking. Is this blogger obsessed with public restroom's? Is this blogger a germaphobe? No, on the first account and yes, on the second account. But now after four months sharing public facilities with thousands of factory workers, I am just about over it. I have come to realize there is no way to share human life without contact, some good and some bad. Many who pursue some type of vocational ministry have some choice in their placement but not total latitude in the arena of ministry. The bathroom circuit rider has intentionally chosen the domain of his ministry and seems quite happy to circuit Austin spreading the gospel in bathroom grout. This is the new writing on the wall. It calls forth images in the song 'The Sounds of Silence". Relive those words and hear the God of the ages call out through unlikely prophets who write on bathroom walls.

"Hello darkness, my old friend,
I've come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
'Neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dared
Disturb the sound of silence.

"Fools," said I, "You do not know –
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you.
Take my arms that I might reach you."
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed in the walls of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming.
And the sign said, The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls (and bathroom walls)
And whispered in the sound of silence."

God's still small voice is not silence, it is simply a chance for the voice of God to echo off the walls of our heart. It is heard in the eternity that is set within our heart. The reverberation of this interior echo is heard in a life of justice and mercy and occasional bathroom scrawls of JHN 3:16.