Bob Hamp

In some cultures the word “supernatural” does not exist.  In Hebrew the word for supernatural means “above the natural” (thanks AT).  Hollywood  has done us no favors with the kind of extremes and mysticism it portrays, in the name of “supernatural phenomena”.  

Americans as a whole are intellectual and material.  I do not mean we are smart and rich.  I mean we define reality based on what we perceive in the mind, and what we can touch or interact with physically.  Two primary sets of data for all of reality.  Sounds a bit limited to me.  How do we discover radio waves if we stop at the edge of the visible?

How do you know if you are in love?  How do you know someone is sad?  How is it you know that a particular person needs a phone call at just that time of day?  How do we write music?  Come up with amazing inventions?  What is that sense of “shift” or “change” in a room?  What senses might we use to perceive those life experiences?

How is it that I used to be able to pull up to work when I worked in a Juvenile Detention Center and know when things had gone awry.  And all this while still in the parking lot?  

The word “supernatural” does not have to refer to a vaporous being clinging to a home or plot of ground.  It simply refers to the idea that more is going on at any given moment than our senses and intellect can discern.  There is an element of reality that is above, or higher than, that which our natural self can perceive.

The natural world ends with our ability to perceive through our senses and process with our mind.  Seriously…what if that’s not even fifty percent of the reality around us, yet we operate as if that is all truth.  Someone asked me the other day what it would take for someone to change in a specific area where they were stuck.  The answer was difficult because I could “sense” it more than I could “know” it.  It was more than natural.  Change, real change, is often more than natural.

If the word Supernatural refers to things that cannot be perceived through our senses, or processed through our mind, and the Hebrew word means “above” or “superior to” the natural realm, it occurs to me; this means that one of the most supernatural  experiences of our lives is to love and to be loved.

For more on tuning in to this Supernatural realm, read Alan Smith’s blog.  His last five or six entries on Hearing God are fantastic.  Click on his name here to see Part 1, but I highly recommend the whole series.