Waking from a hard sleep

This is the 11th in a series on why some LCMS pastors have converted to Eastern Orthodoxy. The series has highlighted the public testimonies of:

1. Thomas L. Palke
2. Ezekiel

The next few posts will look at the testimony of Benjamin Harju, another former LCMS pastor who recently converted to Orthodoxy.

This morning during the Liturgy at my local Antiochian Orthodox Church I had an interesting experience. For a moment I felt as if I was “waking up” or like “scales were falling from my eyes”. It only lasted a moment, but it was like everything was coming together and making sense. I then felt myself falling back into my normal frame of reference. However, this was a very exciting and interesting experience.

Benjamin Harju shares a similar experience. He states:

"It's like being born, coming into Holy Orthodoxy, or like waking from a hard sleep. Everything you once knew or experienced before birth or while asleep is suddenly removed, but in its place is simply what is real and true.

Unlike birth or a dream, though, a person must choose to wake up or to pass beyond the birth canal. Even if he is utterly convinced it must be done, he must still apply his will wholeheartedly. He will not know what that waking or birthing is like experientially, and when it begins it can be quite frightening, because it can sometimes push you along like a current. But in this way God means to bring you from sleeping into waking, from dreaming into the real of His kingdom - what the world calls the Orthodox Church."