Chapter 32: One Day
“Therefore also now, saith the LORD, turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: And rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the LORD your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.” Joel 2:12-13
After a brief but meaningful rest on the most comfortable bed he had ever met107, Luke awoke from his wonderful dreams about his dear friend Bridgette with whom he had fallen in love, so long ago, so early in the journey. He laughed upon awaking, happy to have thought of her, and then he sighed wistfully recalling her beauty and charm, and he wondered with amused regret what the young woman was doing now. Living in holiness, innocence, and the love of God, no doubt. Luke sighed again, coz that sounded good to him too. But how? Then he shrugged and smiled out the picture window at the picture-perfect southern autumn day. Seeing the Top-Notch Day made Luke remember what else Bridgette had advised him: One Day, or One Night, is all it would take, to come to know the Lord.
Maybe it was like Bert had said, when you get farthest away God draws you near, coz Luke was tired of searching, tired of traveling so far away from home and from people he loved, tired of hearing but not understanding (all the Greek-speakin’ people lately were an even more concentrated example, of what he had begun to think had happened all along!) Tired especially of being old, godless Luke. New day, new chance, Bert had told him. So Luke quickly got an idea, a hope, a wish, and it just as quickly turned into a prayer: “Lord, let this be the day!”
A broad smile, and a feeling of weightlessness. As soon as he had said it, he realized it was more than a request: it was a commitment, a contract, a covenant. So why not try to keep it? There was a strong sense that it would be well worth the effort. Words floated through his head. Who was it that had told him that, ‘My yoke is easy and my burden is light’? Oh yeah, that was Jesus... Luke began to feel even more sure about this decision, with every second. What was the rule Sister Kitt had made for the sick children? ‘Only good things can happen now’.
My rule too, vowed Luke. After doing twice as many push-ups as usual108, and hitting the shower, Luke stepped strongly down the staircase to the lobby, where he met his friend and host the noble Hough, still a little bloodshot and bleary, yet already about an owner’s numberless tasks, carrying pliers and a case of detergent. “You’re up early,” Luke remarked.
“That’s how it is when you run your own business,” Hough said back. He steered Luke to the breakfast table and ordered cornflakes, and some very delicious pancakes prepared by the better-than-Che-Vanier chef Roland Thompson. Luke said Grace real quick, remembering how that was done from having watched his friend Sarah at Iowa State in the old days. But then Luke got an idea: he remembered reading how the Israelites had often fasted when they sought God’s favor. Couldn’t hurt, he decided. Not that it was part of any magic formula. Just a gesture of selflessness... of submission (he remembered Tom’s word, with a tingle) ‘Can I manage that?’ he asked himself. And answered: ‘For God I can.’
Surprised to see a hearty-appetited Hun say no to a good meal, Hough tempted him with the well-meant advice, borrowing Luke’s own formula from the night before: “Might be a good idea to start the day with a good breakfast too, if you’re going to meet God. Plus all that climbing.”
But Luke remembered that it was written also, ‘I have meat to eat that ye know not of’, and repeated it.
“Suit yerself. More for me!” Hough the Hockey Player said quickly, and fell ravenously upon the rest of the pancakes with no more wasted breath. Luke was glad to see them vanish rapidly, coz he reeeally wasn’t all that good around temptation.
‘Well-fed’ and exuberant, it was time to begin his ascent. Not that Luke necessarily believed the Mt. Olympus stories, but hey, it’s as good a place as any. At least it would be free of distractions.109 So Luke shook hands with the good man Hough, and he promised he would be back within a few days to collect his guitar (it’s hard to climb a mountain with your hands full), and to tell the story of his adventures on the heights of Mt. Olympus. Bert was still sleeping, but that was better anyway, Luke decided. Not just that he didn’t want Bert tagging along and getting in the way of his tête-à-tête with God, but also...if he didn’t say goodbye now, then he would have to make sure to come back down and say it later. (Gives me that much more insurance against falling, Luke reasoned with Hun-logic.)
It was a perilous climb indeed; a hard struggle, barehanded and solo. It became all the more challenging when Luke reached the low and sullen ceiling of clouds. Then, pressing on into their cover, he realized fog-shrouded that he no longer had much visibility for finding handholds. Nervous and weary, Luke thought perhaps his best bet would be to turn back, but quickly discovered that it was even harder to find the footholds when one was moving downwards. Oops. Luke shrugged and smiled: “I guess the message is, Go on”. So on he pressed, with many a silent and desperate prayer, made all the more fitting, Luke mused, given the nature of his journey.
Someone must have heard his thoughts, for indeed he emerged at long last safely from the moist and dangerous clouds, and exulted when he felt the warm and strengthening rays of his brother-the-sun. He looked back at the cotton floor, whose highest white wisps still danced around his waist, and he smiled at the sunlit glory. Then he looked upwards, to the unending morning-bright sky, and he knew he had arrived. The last few hundred yards of climbing went swiftly, his strength renewed and his heart impatient to see its desire.
So it was with a little disappointment that he reached the pinnacle. Sure, it was a relief to have made it safely, and quite an achievement, but... “Where is everybody?” He had been half-expecting some kind of big party, and laughed at himself now for allowing such a thought. So much for the stuff about ‘The Home of the gods.’ There weren’t even any tables or chairs around.
But after a long climb, and an even longer journey getting to the mountain in the first place, Luke did the natural thing. He sat down to wait. After all, maybe they had gone to visit friends for the weekend, or were just out mowing the lawn or something.110
Normally, while waiting, Luke liked to sit and play the guitar. But it had been too unwieldy to climb with, and he had left it with Hough. So Luke did the next best thing. He had been able to tuck his Bible into the waistband of his trousers at the small of his back, and so now he was able to take it out and start reading.
It didn’t take long before a verse jumped out at him: ‘But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.’
Luke took inventory again. He asked himself the first part first: Do I believe that He is? Kinda. But ‘kind of’ didn’t cut it. That was pretty far from faith.
Then Luke thought about his friend, the wonderful Miss Hosanna. What had she said? Take the obstacles out of the way one by one, and you’ll get to the Truth.
Hmm. Luke realized that despite his promise to look into it further, he hadn’t even taken away the first obstacle! He recalled what the Caveman had tried to tell him. If God made the heavens and the earth, and all that therein is, well then not only must God exist, but he must reign in power and might! That seemed obvious to Luke: As soon as you believe in God, you must submit to Him and worship Him. What else?
But what of the alternative explanations? Such as the idea that one animal turned into another until they all existed. Now that sounded like a Greek fable, something from Metamorphoses: people being turned into trees, and deer, and whatnot. But then again, Luke didn’t want to dismiss it just because it sounded strange. That would be unfair. There were parts of the Bible that sounded a little strange too.
So how to tell which story was true? Luke decided that he couldn’t help but be swayed by what matched up more with his own experience. Had he ever seen one animal giving birth to another? Hardly. Dogs always had puppies. Horses always had foals. H
uns always begat more ferocious Huns. (Sigh.) True, those who told the story always qualified it with, ‘it happens so slowly that you don’t notice the change.’ Well isn’t that convenient, Luke harumphed. You can’t see it happening huh? So in other words, they’re just assuming that it must have happened, based on the fact that so many different animals now exist.
Laying aside what he thought of people who assume, Luke wondered why they had gone to all the trouble of concocting their own elaborate explanation, when there was already a simpler one available: God created all things. (There ya go.) And wasn’t the simpler explanation supposed to be better? Certainly as a simple Hun, Luke preferred it. But he remembered that there was a philosophical rule, Occam’s Razor, that also favored it. (He had taken a philosophy course in college, just to prove that he could do it. Well, just to prove that he couldn’t, anyway.)
God as Creator was simpler, but was it better? Luke weighed that, and decided that he thought so: It seemed more reasonable to think the same Creator had given each creature those features which it would need, than to try to put together a sequence in which they had “evolved”. The lobster and the armadillo both have armored hides. Does that make them cousins? The bird, the bat and the bugs all have specialized bodies designed for flight. And yet one is a bird, one is a mammal, and one is a bug. Hardly the same evolutionary path. The kangaroo, the frog and the flea all are perfectly put together for jumping and leaping. Did one come from the other? Luke couldn’t see it. Speaking of frogs, did they pass their longue tongue on to their sons the anteaters? It seemed unlikely. And best of all, Luke remembered his own friends the whales. How did the story go? The fish turned into amphibians, turned into reptiles, turned into mammals, and then the whales took back to the seas again and wound up looking so much like fish again that they even had a fish called a “whale shark”. Extravagant, to say the least. It made more sense, Luke realized happily, to believe that God had done just what the testimony said: given frogs the perfect body for a frog, given whales the perfect body needed by a whale, and given humans the perfect body needed to act like a human! (Luke couldn’t help but flex and pose down for a couple minutes, thinking of the ‘perfect body’ part. Lookin’ good after all those push-ups, after all.)
Then again, what assumptions did the creation story itself demand? Miracles would have to be possible. But what’s hard about miracles, for a powerful God? Besides, hadn’t Luke also himself seen some signs and wonders on his journey? Like hints, whispers, promises of miracles! Certainly he had seen them more often now that he was willing to look for them. From the way they talked, he suspected his Christian friends had seen even more certain ones. Definitely the disciples had!
Encouraged, Luke concluded, Yes, God is possible.
But better yet, he could almost imagine what his friend Caveman might say, speaking his lawyer’s language: “Who makes a better witness? The one who can tell you what happened from the beginning , or the one that came upon the scene midway through the event?” Not only did that make an eternal and omnipresent God a more reliable witness than secondhand science, but even the story attributed to Him was more complete. ‘In the beginning God created’ . Not only does the story have a beginning, but it stands as its own explanation: a perfect and eternal God must always exist, by definition. The timeless axiom stands uncountered: Without God, nothing. Whereas any attempt to even conceive of things without God must always reach a point where it fails to answer the questions, ‘before then, what? And why was that so?’ And with no anchor, no foundation, that theory drifts aimlessly, looking for a sucker to latch on to.
So Luke went further than ‘possible’, and decided suddenly, “Yes. I think that God exists.”
Now, that was some pretty hard thinkin’ for a Hun, (any time they use the word ‘whereas’, it’s like to cause a headache), so Luke had to rest for a few minutes, set for a spell, and simmer down. He closed his eyes, and felt the warm sun, and the cool wind, and heard the birds singin’ pretty, far below. He smiled, and enjoyed the silence, and the warmth, and the good feeling all about him.
Then he opened his eyes suddenly, startled, as another idea came to him. He looked around about him for confirmation... At the grace-blue skies, the life-white clouds, the firm and enduring stones, and down below him the thriving trees and the teeming seas. His face shone as he realized they were all telling him the same thing: they too were all perfect, all made to support us, all finely knit into a good habitat, a wonderful home! And the whole planet seemed to be crying out to Luke, (with happy voices), that he was not wrong! that his second thought was also true! “Yes. It feels like God exists.”
Thrilled, Luke tried to calm his quick heartbeat, as it all started to fall into place, as his whole hard journey suddenly seemed worthwhile. He put the brakes on. Whoa, time out. Remember, Luke: Your thoughts have been wrong before. A bunch of times. (A ‘C-minus’ in Calculus, and some poor play selections in a game against the Cornhuskers sprang to mind.) Your feelings have been wrong too. (He recalled his friend Sarah, back in college, whom he had been so sure was in love with him!)
Luke took a deep breath. There was still a piece missing, then. Something to move the way he felt now, from just a thought, just a feeling, to a firm belief. Luke suffered a moment of nervousness, of doubt, of fear. Was he undone? Come close, but didn’t quite get there, like the other times? All this hope and joy about to come to nothing?
Then his lips curled into a grin. Nope, not this time. He had prayed about it. This would be The Day!
It didn’t take long to move beyond that moment of certainty, into actually finding the answer. He thought of Jenny. (Having already remembered Bridgette and Hosanna’s lessons, it seemed appropriate to recall his #1 girl’s advice too!) Her not-the-last words came leaping back to him with electric force, like they were God’s own commandment. Remember Love.
Luke smiled. By now, he knew where to look for love. He looked out at the evening sky, and thought that it looked like love. He closed his eyes and felt the cool breeze without, and the warm fire recently kindled within, and thought that all this felt like love. But then, knowing a better way, Luke very patiently sat down, took out his Bible, and patiently read the full gospel of Christ once again, tears welling up as Jesus gave his life for our redemption.
That was love. Not a thought, not a feeling, but a firm act. “Thank you Jesus.”
Luke rejoiced. Finally, he knew he had arrived. Decades of murk had become transparent. “Yes, I believe that God exists.” But still humble, still knowing he had far to go, much to learn before becoming a good servant, he ventured the perfect partway prayer he had been saving up for so long. In submission and reverence, commitment and desire. “Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.”
What had Karla the Troll said, about ‘the peace that passeth understanding’? “Much better,” she had called it. Better than anything he could have imagined he was looking for. Luke laughed and sang and danced, and jumped, knowing at last what she meant.
Luke jumped even higher when he made another realization: he had asked God to let this be the day, and God had done just that! And now, Luke had just asked for help, sooo...
Luke could barely go to sleep that night, stomach twisting like a tornado, heart rushing like a railroad, knowing that more help was on the way!