Reading Tea Leaves

Unless you’ve lived it, it’s hard to explain. Unless you’ve seen it firsthand, and paid close enough attention to catch shifting of the eye, the licking of the lips, or some telltale sign the individual is wholly unaware they are giving off, you’d be hard-pressed to doubt that they are truly gifted in the mystic arts or some such.

I come from a land steeped in mysticism and folklore, where caravans of gypsies still roam the lands, selling hand-tooled cookware, and offering to read your future for a small, one-time fee, usually determined on the spot depending on how rich the mark seems.

Whether it’s reading palms, tea leaves, coffee grounds, cards, or chicken bones, what the so-called practitioners of the mystic arts actually do for the most part, is read body language and emotion, drawing conclusions based on seemingly innocuous questions they ask as they are getting ready to make a connection with the other side. As I said, for the most part, it’s all a farce, having more to do with perception and educated guesses than it does with anything mystical.

I was seven years old when I had my first run-in with a gypsy woman who was something more than just a con artist. She was part of a caravan traveling through our village, something rare enough even in those days to make me run to the fence circling our property to try and sneak a peek. I was standing on a bench, so I could get a better view, watching the horse-drawn carriages rolling by on the dusty road, when a woman with braided hair and colorful, flowing skirts broke from the pack, walked up, and said she would tell me my future for a cup of water.

For a seven-year-old it sounded like a fair trade, especially since I wanted to know if my grandpa would be taking me fishing later that week, so I agreed to the terms, and she asked for my hand. I extended my hand, palm up, just as she’d shown me to do it, but when she touched my skin, she recoiled as though she’d touched an open flame. Her eyebrows arched, she muttered ‘you’re one of them,’ turned around, and walked away without speaking another word, or asking for her cup of water.

I didn’t understand all that had happened at the time, but looking back, with the benefit of hindsight and experience, I realize she was one of the rarer fortune tellers in the world, who had actually tapped into the esoteric, or what we more readily refer to as the occult. I also realize that she was powerless to do anything because even at that age, He that was in me was greater than he that is in the world.

As servants of God, as Ambassadors of Christ in this world, it is not only counterproductive but outright sinful to pretend at possessing revelatory power, when all that a vast majority are doing is nothing more than reading tea leaves.

Just because someone pays attention and they see the trajectory of something and where it might lead, does not mean they received prophetic utterance or revelation. For them to spin it as such is sin no matter how you cut it.

Yes, I believe true prophecy still exists. Yes, I believe there is divine revelation, whether through dreams, visions, or prophetic utterance. What I do not believe is that God has to compete with the evening news. 

When God gives revelation it is far enough in advance that what is being prophesied seems so out of place and improbable that the vessel chosen to deliver the warning is thought of as mad.

If you do not possess it, pray for discernment that you may know the difference between those who pretend at possessing power, and those who possess it. One clear and undeniable indicator is that those pretending at having power will attempt to highlight, promote, and otherwise elevate themselves. Those possessing true power will always point you to Christ. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.