Chapter 37: Rendezvouz and Road Games
“Night and day praying exceedingly that we might see your face, and might perfect that which is lacking in your faith...” 1 Thessalonians 3:10
Not too late in the morning, not too many miles out of Trammelmaris, still somewhere between the hamlets of Lemonruth and Brookensmantle132, Luke was thankful to catch another ride. Along the road came a weather-beaten bus, and Luke stuck out his thumb and it stopped.
As he boarded, Luke was startled to see that it was unlike any bus he had ever been on before: The back four benches were all stacked with cut flowers, and the front of the bus was packed full of lacrosse players!
Once they started calling him by name, he recognized them too! It was his friends from The Garden! All their tough lacrosse players, and a few of the girls were there too. “Um, Hi,” said startled Luke. There were lots of happy hellos, but Louise was the first one to rush up and give him a hug. Whispering in his ear, excitedly, “Are you?”
Luke whispered back, “Yes!” That brought another hug, and a bright laugh, and a little dance. She pulled him to a seat near hers, and demanded to hear the whole story of Luke’s journey, and Luke’s believing. Most of the other people listened in too.
The whole time, Louise was just on the edge of her seat, wiggling and fidgeting, so excited for Luke! Elbows in, fists clenched, like she wanted to jump, if not for the low roof. “Do you know what this means? You’re saved, Luke! Saved!” Luke smiled himself, and remembered that word for his list. “Everything from now on will be different, Luke. Everything you do from now on will be for Christ! And everything you do will be blessed, protected, guided!” Luke took down those words as well.
On a more practical note, big Kip chipped in, “Yeah, and it also means you can play for our team this time.” Turned out they were one long-stick short. Their legendary defenseman Mr. Gup had suffered a freak knee injury in Saturday’s game, up in the isolationist empire of Zomanondanay. (Even legends are not immortal.) The team was quite happy to have found Luke just in time, even though he was somewhere short of Mr. Gup’s all-star status. “If God gives us manna, we won’t ask for quail,” was the consensus.
They had two games scheduled, one against a tough team from the ornery kingdom of Boshburg, and the other against their anarchist neighbors from Clash City. “I don’t think we’re gonna intimidate anybody when we come off the bus smelling like roses,” Luke observed.
“Yeah, but you’ll be glad for the fresh scent on the way home,” joked Mike the Middie.
Luke soon saw what all the flowers were for. As soon as the lacrosse teams started warming up, Louise and Susan and the rest of the young ladies started distributing free flowers to the crowd, and asking them if they wanted to hear about the free gift of eternal life bestowed by God through Jesus Christ. “It’s never just about lacrosse. That just makes a good excuse to get together,” Louise explained to Luke at half-time.
“Yeah, as usual; the men do the playing, and we women do all the important work,” Susan winked. “We’re used to it.”
“You don’t get too many separated shoulders passing out flowers, though,” Mike countered. (It was a hard crowd, but still they didn’t resist the gospel that violently!)
Luke started out playing kind of meek and peaceful, but after the Clash City Rockers had scored a few soft goals, Captain Kip reminded him, “‘A time for war, and a time for peace.’” Luke took that to mean this was the time to start knocking people over. Once they had stepped up their defense, the Good Guys roared back to win a hard-fought 10-8 game.
Later in the afternoon, they rolled over the Boshburg Bone Rats 14-4. Luke wondered if this was a result of being ‘blessed, protected, guided’...or if it was just the fact that, “Boy, that Frank Lechowski sure can shoot!”
Back on the bus, Luke asked the ladies, “So how did you-all do?”
“Not too many converts today,” Louise admitted. “But we’ll keep trying! We play there again next season, after all.”
“I think we planted a few seeds though,” said Susan with a straight face. When Luke saw a twinkle in her eye he realized she was being a little sassy.
“You guys did well though,” Luke reassured them. “I saw you. You were talkin’ to everybody! I wish I could be brave like that.” Then he told them about the Bus to Nowhere, and how he had been timid and hadn’t had much success sharing his faith.
“No success at all?” Louise wondered.
“Well, I helped one girl to pray and believe, but that’s it.”
A flowergirl named Renee grabbed his hand. Full of joy and excitement: “Each soul is priceless! She’s just like us: lost once, now found! I’m only one. You’re only one. So each time one more is saved, it’s just like we were being saved all over again! Jubilationexultation-gloryjoyandwonder!” she pattered off a compound exclamation. Luke did feel happier about it when she put it that way.
Susan helped too, pointing out: “Some people go their whole lives without ever reaching a single person for Christ.133 You’re off to a good beginning. The main thing is, don’t stop there.”
Louise simply smiled, and acted like she had expected this news all along: “‘So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.’ Who knows Luke? Maybe even the other people on the bus will take something from the encounter. We leave that in God’s hands. All we have to do is simply to preach the Gospel. God will do the saving.”
“You make it sound like preaching it is so easy,” Luke chuckled, “But you haven’t seen the people to whom I’ll be preachin’!”
Several of the Christians in the neighboring seats leaned in closer. This sounded like a challenge. “So who are they? Hard people, with hard hearts, and hard questions? Which questions?” someone wanted to know.
“Could be they’re not such hard questions at all, compared to God’s good answers,” another added. “‘He that is first in his own cause seemeth just, but his neighbor cometh and searcheth him.’ The world is always finding one ‘flaw’ or another with the Bible, or with the Creation story, or with the behavior of the church. But usually there are good explanations, worthy answers, if only the world was willing to hear them! After all, ‘He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.’ So don’t let your people stop at the questions! Keep reminding them that there are answers!”
“But what if I don’t know the answers?” Luke worried.
Susan was very understanding. “When a baby is born, it doesn’t come into the world knowing everything, Luke. It has to grow, and learn. It’s like that when you’re born again, too. Keep reading, keep praying, and you’ll keep learning. Also, find a good Spirit-filled church and they’ll help you to grow; they’ll help you find each answer! Not all at once, of course, but you can trust God in this: At every stage, you’ll know as much as He needs you to know.”
Luke took a little comfort from that, but then a little shame. The problem with that advice was... “So what if there is no church at all, where I’m from?” (After years of persecution, followed by a spree of martyrdom, the only churches left in Hun-Country were the ones held in the hands of children: ‘This is the church...and this is the steeple... open the doors...and fight all the people!’)
Undeterred, Susan replied, “Then you make one! Did not Jesus say ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I with them’? Which means you only really need to find one more person to go with you. My advice would be to take someone who has been a believer for a while, someone wise and experienced, to complement your youth and energy.134” Luke smiled. He knew just the person. “Then the two of you reach out and touch two more, and then the four of you bring four more into the church, and so on, until your little church is packed to the rafters! Then you move and build another one...”
“In the meantime, you have us,” Louise pledged. “Didn’t I tell you if you had qu
estions you should ask?”
She seemed so friendly, Luke took her up on the invitation. Not only was it a chance to learn the answers to the tough questions his Huns might ask, but it was a chance to sneak in a few of his own: a few of the doubts and problems that had begun to gnaw at him in the time since his first triumphant act of believing. “What about evil? All the bad things that happen... All the bad things that I’ve done,” Luke admitted.
A goalie named Fields turned away this first fear. “Why does a good God allow it? Is that your question? Maybe he’s not so good, or not so powerful as billed? And by extension, if He’s not what people say he is, then maybe the whole idea of God is just what people have cobbled together for themselves. Is that what you’re wondering?” Luke kinda nodded. “An oldie but a goodie,” said Fields. “Half of the answer is to stop seeing things as the world sees them--to change your definition of ‘bad things’. Pain hurts--but in the long run it makes us stronger. Death kills--but does it really? Or does it simply free the spirit to return to God. ‘The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.’ Death is not an end, but a beginning; not an evil, but deliverance!”
Luke hated to speak the words of the other evil things he had seen. The very mention was taboo. So he spoke them softly, “Torture. Rape.”
“On to the second half of the answer then. Who is to blame for those acts? God? Or men? God allowing evil to occur is not the same as Him causing it. ‘Lo, this only I have found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.’ The flaw is not in the way God has made men, but in what we have chosen to do with what he has given us--free will. Without freedom, there could be no evil. But also there could be no real love, no true worship--and hence no purpose for humanity! Is it worth the tradeoff do you think?” While Luke was pondering that equation, Fields went ahead and helped him with it: “It is, when you consider that even those who suffer from the evil, are given the hope of a good which outweighs it: Absolute Love, and Perfect Light. And an eternity of them! ‘For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding weight of glory; While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.’”
“No comparison at all!” Susan summarized.
Luke was thankful for the explanation. He didn’t understand it completely as yet, but it helped. He needed to take back something. After all, “The Huns are pretty well acquainted with evil,” he explained. “I’m sure it will come up.”
Speaking of the Huns reminded Luke of something Chief Otis had said angrily more than once, to Luke‘s mother: “What kind of crazy God would torment people eternally just for not believing in Him?” Luke rephrased it as tactfully as he could for his friends. Thankfully, a hard hitter named Hane135 responded quickly…
“Same answer! First of all, if hell is a place of torment, who is doing the tormenting? Most likely, demons, or whatever godless men become, spend their time biting and devouring one another! If your vicious father and his violent friends want to spend eternity in a place without the Lord, they have no right to turn around and blame Him that it’s not a very nice place! The Bible says God ‘will punish them with eternal destruction from the presence of the Lord.’ Maybe it means they’ll be unmade, like a pot that is unfit for use is made back into clay? Since we too are of no use if we refuse our own purpose: to believe in God, to love Him, know Him, and worship Him. Or maybe being shut out from His presence is its own torment, seeing what could have been, and being tortured by shame and self-reproach at our failure? I know not what God may do, or what form his wrath may take--be it “everlasting fire” or “outer darkness”. For that matter, I have trouble imagining heaven too! But I know which one is better! Let all men choose their course wisely! Actions have consequences, and choices regarding eternity have eternal consequence. But… shall we blame the One who opens a door that none can shut, and invites us to step through into mercy and eternal life? Or does the blame lie with those who turn away, in pride or spite or selfishness? It’s a strange thing for men to rail against God’s goodness because of horrible things like hell and punishment, and then do everything in their power to make sure they end up there, when God has done everything in His power to make sure that they don’t!”
Luke let out a breath, with both relief, and sadness. It was a hard saying, but it was better to accept the hard truth than to pretend it wasn’t true, and find out the hard way that it was. Hane was adding one last thought: “And to dig in one’s heels before the door to heaven in the name of solidarity with one’s comrades who have perished is especially dense--who knows whether the Lord may actually have saved them, with a last moment of epiphany as their soul began its departure? ‘Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant?’ We don’t need to know their fate: We only know that we ourselves are commanded to repent and believe, and it is our duty to obey!” He paused, and summed up grudgingly, “I don’t expect non-believers to immediately take our word for the fact that God’s judgment is all-knowing and just, only to acknowledge that their accusation of ‘injustice’ fails as long as their own judgment is not!” Luke wrinkled his forehead, sorted through that, and finally nodded.
They talked of happier things as the bus rolled on, having a revival meeting right there in their benches. Everyone had a thought to share, everyone had an experience to profit by, everyone had a miracle to describe. They were all so kind and helpful, that Luke finally felt comfortable asking his third big question: “If I go back to Hun-Country with the Gospel, I know exactly what their reaction will be: they’ll scoff and wonder what makes this religion so special: every nation we sack and pillage has its own gods and temples, but none of these have saved them from the Huns.” Luke contemplated this phenomenon for a moment, and concluded, “It’s no wonder we have so much trouble understanding God. God is supposed to be the biggest and most powerful, but so far we’ve never run into anyone more powerful than ourselves.”
“And yet every Hun dies eventually, even if not in battle.” Luke looked like this point had gone over his head, so the speaker, a gentle Attacker named Ernie, went on penetratingly. “I’m saying, someone has the power to create your lives, and to set their limits. You do run into someone more powerful than yourselves, every time you breathe, every time you eat, every day that you wake, and every time you look upon the world! You just don’t realize it!”
“But Luke did realize it,” Louise pointed out. “So what changed, Luke?”
Luke replayed his thoughts on the day he first believed, and he realized that Jenny’s word was true, it was Love that had brought him there. “I’ve been learning more about Love this whole journey. Hearing about it, feeling it, seeing it in action. Your promise of ‘a thousand years’ was huge,” he said deferentially, then added the rest of the equation nervously, afraid of her reaction, “but it was Rebecca’s sister, Jenny Harris, who really made the difference.”
Louise wasn’t upset at all, only thoughtful. (Coz she didn’t have a crush on him, she just loved him. There’s a difference.) “Love. Why not? If one doesn’t even know about love, how will one return God’s love? Or even understand the first thing about God, who ‘is love’? He would remain unfathomable.”
It was the word ‘unfathomable’ that reminded Luke of a parable that had crossed his mind while he was crossing the ocean, hands wrapped around Helena’s unfamiliar flesh. “But what about that old story? About the three blind men touching an elephant: One of them holds its tail and says an elephant is like a rope, one feels its leg and thinks it’s like a tree, one touches its trunk and thinks an elephant is like a snake. None of them wrong, but all of them only partly right. How do I know your... our... religion, isn’t like that too? Partly true, but no more special than other various conceptions. My Huns will want to know,” Luk
e added, a little embarrassed for revealing his own doubts.
Mike the Middie scooped up this question with a peculiar blend of seriousness and silliness. “That might make a better parable to express the various Christian churches--not quite in agreement, but still feeling around the same source. But if the blind men represent all the different religions on the pretty planet of Timnalauren, then why would we assume that they would all be clustered around the same elephant? The world is a pretty big zoo! If we start hearing the fourth blind man say that the elephant has a hump, or a long neck, then maybe he’s gotten in with the camels, or the giraffes. If a fifth one says the elephant has a big horn, he’s petting the rhinoceros--ya better get him out of there! If a sixth one claims that elephants have little wings and skinny legs, he’s flown his chicken coop! the rest of what he says is liable to be no more accurate.” Mike looked around quickly to make sure he wasn’t getting any dirty looks. “You did say they were blind men, didn’t you? So who is to say where they might wind up? And the spiritually blind face the same problem! ‘If the blind leadeth the blind, they shall both fall into a pit.’ But meanwhile, we follow Christ, who made the blind to see...”
Luke didn’t want to fall prey to any smooth-sounding sophistry, and demanded, “So why would the first three blind men, the ones with the elephant, still have such different ideas? If their blindness is healed by Christ...”
“Oh, it’s not that they’re still blind. It’s just that the elephant is too big to see it all at once! Who is gonna know if the elephant has a tattoo on the top of its head? Unless you climbed up there... Which is why we trust Christ, who was lifted up to God, to teach us about God. How does that part go? ‘neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.’” Mike smiled, pleased for having remembered. “Like the big elephant, we have a big God, who can’t be fully comprehended by humans--so churches with different viewpoints see Him slightly differently. Just don’t let anyone tell you God has a long neck and skinny legs. Certain things just don’t fit in with what we do know.”
A feisty lacrosse coach named Feargal added some motivational advice: “If you want them to know that our faith is special, you have to show them it’s special, by being patient, kind, forgiving… Christ-like! You can do it, son! Sure it’s challenging: coz the world will always be skeptical, ready to prematurely call you a hypocrite (though we’re not claiming we are Christ, only that we desire to be like Him.) So they may resist seeing the changes, and focus instead on seeing your flaws--but you’ll see the changes! That’s how you know you’re on the right road! And if you follow that road long enough, praying and asking God to shape you, eventually they’ll see changes too--and they may start to realize how special Christ is!” Then he calmed down a bit, a thought occurred to him, and he tempered his enthusiasm with discipline, “But if, while you’re praying, you ever notice that you’re putting more emphasis on the ‘forgive us our sins’ than you are on the ‘Hallowed be thy name’ or the ‘on earth as it is in heaven’, it’s a good sign that you’ve gotten off track. Fix that, fast--coz you’re not the only one who could be hurt by it. You’ll be weakening the team, and letting down the spectators! …And I‘ll have you runnin’ laps!”
A pretty flower-girl named Shannon took over next, tired of biting her tongue and a tad miffed by Luke’s little parable. “Partly true? Did you really say that? How would that work? Is that like ‘partly crucified’? Christ claimed to be the Son of God! The Bible is said to be the God-breathed word of truth! Where’s the partway in those claims? They’re either true, or they aren’t! Which is it?” She made him go ahead and say it. It never hurts to say it again.
“True.” Then he balked, and added, “I think.” Thus came his last big question: “But how do I know? The God part, I’m pretty sure about. I reasoned that out a little. There would have to be God, wouldn’t there? For there to be anything? But, would it have to be the God of the Bible? Would it have to be the gospel about Jesus Christ? I’m not saying I don’t believe it... I’m just saying it was never proven to me. It just seemed to fit, and I believed it. Maybe that’s just because the Bible was the book I was given to work from. It could have been different...” He looked at Mike: “I could have been the guy in there with the rhinos.”
“And maybe God would send a brave Christian witness to open the gate and lead you out,” Mike parried.
“K, so long as he sends me one who can explain it all to me logically. Coz I have a scary feelin’ that I’m starting to re-order my life, based on nothing more than a leap of faith.”
Mark the equipment manager was appalled. “Nothing more? There is nothing more than faith, if that faith leads you to Christ! Faith is not a small thing. Remember this verse? ‘If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place, and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.’ All the logic in the world won’t get that done for you. Nor will the world’s logic get you into heaven. Then again, neither is reason the enemy of faith. They work together! Reason tells us what things make sense, what we should know. Faith tells us what things are true, what we do know. Your faith tells you to believe in Christ. Amen! Good goin’! But what would reason tell you?” Luke looked unsure. Mark set in order a parable of his own, to clear it up for him--maybe a little sarcastic, definitely a little stern:
The Would-It-Hold-Up-In-Court Theory
“Hmm, let’s see. There’s a court case. Somehow you wound up on the jury. Looking at you, I’d guess it’s coz you’ve got no job and nothing else to do. The defense attorney starts out by bringing out hundreds upon hundreds of character witnesses. Trying to show that the accused is a heckuva guy, so there was no ill intent if any law was infringed. One of them says, ‘I was blind, and this guy made me see!’ Another says, “I was lame, and he made me walk!” A third, “I was dead, and he restored me to life!” Well, you’re sitting on the edge of your seat by now; those are quite the character references! So this has your interest at least. A curious case indeed. Some more witnesses come, and describe the time he turned water into wine; others swear they saw him walking on water; someone tells about him stopping a storm with his command; and a whole bunch say they were there eating the very meal, when he fed thousands with only a few fishes and a few loaves! Now you’re thinking, I gotta get to know this guy. Very impressive. Not only that, but it’s starting to have the makings of a pretty strong case. This is the story of the ministry.
The next day, the defense attorney brings out a ton of old official state documents, written before the guy was born, promising that he would come and do this, that and the other thing, exactly as he now had done! His birth and identity are specified, ‘But thou Bethlehem Ephrathah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, out of thee shall he come forth who is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.’ His calling and his healing ministry are foretold! ‘I the LORD have called thee in righteousness, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant to the people, for a light to the Gentiles; To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.’ His divinity is proclaimed! ‘Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for, lo, I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the LORD. And many nations shall be joined to the LORD in that day, and shall be my people, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, and thou shalt know that the LORD of hosts hath sent me unto thee.’ His suffering is foretold, ‘Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.’ Forget Psalm 23, the one everyone memorizes; read Psalm 22: His Crucifixion is described! ‘I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint: my heart is like wax; it is melted in the midst of my bowels. My strength is dried up like
a potsherd; and my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death. For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet. I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me. They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.’ Some pretty specific stuff, some quite convincing prophecies. Plenty more material to wade through as well, but it’ll be worth the search, I’d say. You’re going to be asking to have the bailiff bring those documents into the jury room, aren’t you? Before you reach a decision you’d want to dust off those parchments and check them twice to see if it’s for real, wouldn’t you? At least you’d do that much! This is the story of the prophets.
The court, on the other hand, already has its mind made up. Judge sees you guys looking sympathetic. Can’t have that. So he makes the decision himself: Guilty! Sentencing time... Guy violated some lawyers’ interpretation of various laws but he didn’t actually hurt anybody: in fact he healed them time and time again. So what punishment does he deserve for that crime? Kill him! Pick the most bitter death possible and make him suffer, too. A little overboard, don’t you think? More like, all the injustice of the world, all the wickedness of men, distilled into a single moment. This is the story of the crucifixion.
Well, now you’re personally involved in the case. You go to the execution. You don’t want to, but you’re hoping to see another miracle, or a reprieve. While you’re there you get something better... You hear some talk: somebody says the guy told people in advance that he would be killed all right, but that he would come back to life on the third day. Peculiar? To say the least! So, where do you think you’re going to be, three days after they crucify this guy? Hanging around. Staying in the neighborhood. Hoping to hear some news. Trying to catch a glimpse. Wondering whether it will really happen. Well, guess what. It did. People saw him die, and then they saw him alive again. Tell me which of your other religions have that, buddy. Even among your medical marvel, near-death experiences, has there ever been any among them who called it in advance, who said of his life: ‘I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This commandment have I received of my Father.’ And then did it?! This is the story of the resurrection.
Now that won’t do. Executed prisoners are not allowed to come back to life: Talk about a parole violation! So there’s talk of a second trial. Never mind any provisions against double jeopardy. But Jesus is translated into heaven before the trial date, before they can crucify him a second time. Fitting, coz his one perfect sacrifice brings eternal redemption, we are told: ‘And every priest standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins: But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down at the right hand of God; From henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool. For by one offering he has perfected forever them that are sanctified.’ This is the story of our redemption.
So they try him in absentia: if they can’t kill the man, they’ll settle for killing his memory. You feel compelled to go watch from the gallery, see how this ends. On the first day of the trial, strange ways! Here come all the same witnesses from the first occasion, plus a bunch of new ones. No one subpoenaed any of them: no writs or summonses were presented. The court didn’t even want to hear what they had to say. Ah, but they wanted to tell it! They describe his miracles, his teachings, once again. But this time they add another story, the one that unites them and draws them... They say they have seen him alive, confirmed ‘by many infallible proofs’, including feeling the nail marks and the wound in his side! What a turn this is! But maybe he just had a good attorney, found a bunch of deadbeats to lie for him? The prosecution implies as much, and they start threatening the witnesses with perjury charges. None of the witnesses backs down. The court ups the stakes, threatens the witnesses with death. Nobody breaks. So the court follows through--starts offing the witnesses, while the others watch! After the horror, your next thought is, Now they’ll admit the truth at least. But the remainder hold onto their testimony, proclaiming “This is the truth. I have seen this with my eyes!” Then as they are killed, they don’t spit the earthly ‘Curse you!’ but the heavenly ‘May God forgive you.’ Hey, where did that come from? This is the story of the martyrs.
With all the witnesses slain, the court declares a recess until the next morning. (Might as well, eh.) As you walk home, you wonder, is this the most messed up conspiracy I’ve ever seen? or were they simply telling the truth! Two things that tilt you towards the latter explanation are, you’ve never seen anyone so gladly lay down their lives for someone they know is a liar, a cheat, a fraud, (as those who said they had seen these alleged miracles would well know, if the miracles had indeed been embellished); And, you’ve never heard a reckless, malicious, and egotistical madman or deceiver speak so sagely as the countless shining words you keep hearing attributed to the accused. Just like the miracles of healing: they fit better coming from one who is really of God. Anything’s possible, but: ‘Since the world began was it not heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born blind. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing.’ This is the story of our choice: of common sense, and its call to faith.
Speaking of shining words... you’re hopeful now, longing maybe, but you still have questions, still have problems. So you seek out the disciples that remain, run things by them. One by one they start to allay your doubts and fears, with reasonable explanations, or with the power of God, which stands superior to human reason! Where you have questions, God has answers. How much greater are His answers! ‘But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you.’ This is the story of the Holy Spirit.
So after you realize this guy is risen, then what? You’ve gone from interested and intrigued to convinced and committed. And then? You find yourself changed, empowered, filled with a willing heart and a true conscience, and all of a sudden, wonder of wonders, what do ya know! You too are speaking in tongues, healing the lame, doing many miracles, preaching the gospel, or building a church in his name! Becoming a martyr yourself maybe... And the church spreads like wildfire, with new believers risking their property, their reputations, and their lives to be a part of it. Why? Because it is a hoax, a myth, a fashionable fad? Or because they too are seeing expressions and manifestations of the same power that the guy’s first followers had witnessed: ‘The power of God unto salvation.’ This is the story of the church.
So who is this guy? This is the story of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
But did it really happen that way? We say that it did. Are you wiser than us? Hmm. The holy and abiding word of God also says that it did. Are you wiser than Him? Careful now...”
Luke was worn out after that long story. He liked it, and jotted down the twice-used word ‘Power’ to remember it by. Mark had taken some liberties to make the point, but it still served its purpose: it didn’t seem like such a leap of faith at all, anymore, to believe the gospel! More like a smooth slide of faith. Yeah! In there! Safe!
It was late when they got back to their church compound. As they approached the camp, Louise finally asked him, having taken it for granted, “You’re staying with us right? At least spend the night, get some sleep?”
“I can’t,” Luke said sadly. “I have a meeting to get to, in Mexico. If I stay with you guys, I’m afraid I’ll never want to leave!”
Louise sighed. “We walk the road God gives us, I suppose. Well, you walk, we ride.” Still, they saved him a couple miles of walking, as they took him two miles further than their stop. Kind of a ‘go with him twain’ gesture. They would have done more, but, “Two miles for you is four for us,” Louise pointed out, since they had to go back two. (Ah, math.) “And the driver is lookin’ sleepy. Safety first, guy.”
Luke assured her that he was very grateful, they had done more than enough already. Eve
n though they were tired, they still took time for hugs all around. Then Luke wondered, “Now that I believe, does that ‘thousand years’ still apply? I don’t like for you to be put to any trouble...”
Louise gave a sweet laugh. “Of course! Only now I’ll pray that you continue to increase in your faith, and that many others will be blessed through your witness. To the glory of God! Besides, it’s no burden at all: the more people I have to pray for, the more time I wind up talking with the Lord! Where’s the trouble in that?”
Luke brightened at her faith, and searched for the perfect word for his notes, to encompass her reverence and diligence and obedience. He settled on “Lord”. He knew she would want it that way.
Finally Luke had one last request to relay before leaving. “Can you tell Rebecca something for me? Just say that her dad and her sister miss her at home, and would welcome her back with love.”
At that point, some very groggy lacrosse players pushed Luke towards the door.