gathering clouds.

I'm still alive. Still thinking. I just can't seem to write two words next to each other.

But I was reading yesterday when I felt suddenly a powerful and irrefutable urge towards prayer.

It was bizarre. The urge wasn't a normal desire--like I get home sometimes and just think, "Prayer and Old Testament sounds so pleasant for this afternoon." It was a directive. And there was something attached to it. The sense that this wasn't casual prayer. Not that Pentecostal prayer ever really is. But there was this sense that I need to be in prayer especially this week. And not only for me, but for those around me, to strengthen us all. Especially as though I'd need their strength and wisdom.

I can't explain it. I might be crazy. When I was a case manager, I always wondered which crazy person I'd be, and I've long suspected that I'd be the apocalyptic one--the one who walks around preaching repentance and talking about "the coming darkness," and "the gathering clouds." That kind of thing.

So I might be crazy. This urge might be crazy. I recognize that. I'm not chancing it--I'm praying for myself and every person I see on the sidewalk this week--but I can at least nod to the impossibility of it all.

Do you think God gives these senses? Why would He? Have you ever had a sense like this one? What happened?