Chapter 39: One Night
“For whether we live, we live unto the Lord; and whether we die, we die unto the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord’s.” Romans 14:8
Leaving the bus behind him and trudging on in solitary faith, Luke found himself alone in a dry and dusty land. The sky above was hammer-gray, and the ground beneath his feet was anvil-hard. Clearly the two of them had some issues they needed to work out, and Luke was embarrassed to be caught in the middle. The gray deepened, the clouds rumbled, and the heavens scowled on Luke with a restrained wrath: a challenge perhaps, “Who goes there?”
Jus’ me, Luke thought humbly, as he stumbled on doggedly into the falling night, with his new-found faith holding him fast to his hard road to heaven. Finally the flinty sky began to fire its slings and arrows at shelterless Luke: large, pelting raindrops, warmenmean.
Luke looked at the storm and he laughed. “Ha. Nothing can trouble me now,” he affirmed. Not man, not beast, not wind, not rain, and certainly not doubt. Not anymore. For soon he would be in Mexico, and his mission would be finished, and then everything would be beautiful! In his quiet anticipation, it almost seemed beautiful already.
After marching for hours in the relentless steady rain, Luke finally reached a River. A wide and mighty River, and on the other side Mexico. For the sake of argument, let's call it the Big River, coz it sure looked big to land-lovin’ Luke. Luke looked across the river in the darkness, and thought he could almost see the other side, he wasn't sure, through the night rains and the midnight mystery.
He walked along the bank of the river, trying to find the narrowest place to cross.
Squinting hard across the water, he failed to watch what was approaching on his own coast--until he stumbled upon the figure suddenly!
There was a shock and a scare as it emerged quietly, a strange apparition, out of the darkness, out of the rain, out of the mist, out of the gloom A real man, or a real ghost, or a vision, or a dream: Luke was uncertain just whom he was meeting, and the uncertainty magnified his terror. Then the phantasm spoke...and instantly became less frightening, when it introduced itself as ‘Herman the German’.
Coming closer and shaking hands, Luke realized this was nothing more than a sturdy old gentleman, with white hair and a white mustache. Something strikingly familiar about the face, actually, as though he might have been one of Luke’s own ancestors. Which he may well have been, Czechs and Germans being close neighbors--and captured princesses’ heritage being poorly documented by the ethnocentric Huns. (“How do you know she’s a princess then?” they occasionally might ask each other about their captured wives--and then would accede to the answer: “She sure demands to be treated like a princess, doesn’t she?”)
The gentle way the man called Luke “My boy,” made Luke feel a kinship with him, whether there was one or not. “What are you doing out here in the rain, my boy? It grows late. You grow tired. You should be safe at home instead.” Like a grandfather, giving good advice.
Luke knew he didn’t have a polished answer, but, “There is something for me in Mexico. Something good. Something that waits. Something more to be found, before I can go home.”
There was a hint of amusement behind kind eyes. “Ah, a traveler. An explorer. Seeing the world, are you? I’ve seen some of it myself. There are tales I could tell you.”
Luke grinned. Why not spare a few minutes for the old-timer? The rain might stop, and the mist might lift a little. At the very least, he might get some entertaining accounts. Maybe even some pearls of wisdom. “Tell ’em,” he invited.
The old man led him to a not-too-wet park bench, sheltered under a silent tree. Its branches swished in the storm, its leaves filtered the darkness. Like nets, like webs. Catching what? Dreams, perhaps. Or Love. A good enough place to learn, Luke decided.
Luke listened while the man told tales of walking across countries, taking rides from strangers, perilous encounters, and of course committing his own occasional hijinks and misdemeanors. “I thought the Huns had the monopoly on that kind of wild stuff,” Luke interjected.
“Son, you don’t have a monopoly on nuthin’,” the old man informed him, with eyes twinkling. But then he came to his point. “We all have our travels. We all have our tales, from when we are young. Quests, journeys, missions, and adventures. But what do they add up to? Just stories. You want to make a difference in the world? You go home, son. To your wife. To your children. Make a difference to them. They wait for you.”
“I don’t have a wife. Or children. Actually,” Luke pointed out, a little uncomfortable for having to correct the old-timer.
“They wait for you,” Herman repeated.
Luke liked the sound of that. But still, he thought the man was underestimating the importance of his mission to Mexico. “I’ve come to find God.”
“‘And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,’” Herman quoted. “You already know all you need to know about God. Now what’s left is to serve Him. Go home. You serve God by loving those whom God loves. By providing for those whom He has provided for you. Home, lad.”
His tale told, Herman the German got up to leave. “Where are you going?” Luke asked, and instantly rolled his eyes: The answer was predictable.
“Home.” There was a trace of a grin, and the old man added, “Got a big golf game tomorrow I’ve got to get up for. And you?”
“Something good,” Luke vowed, vaguely. After the man was gone, Luke had to decide what it would be though.
Had he been sent to Mexico for this, perhaps? For all the encounters he would have on the way? The Bus to Glory, the lost hitchhiker, prayers with Julie, Dennis the Driver, and then to hear Herman the German’s simple orders: Go Home. Why not? It would make sense. He had the faith he needed now, didn’t he? And people waiting to share it with him, after all...
After reflection and prayer, he knew the answer. If he had been sent to learn from those others, then he had also been sent to a lacrosse game, where Kip had reminded him, ‘A time for war and a time for peace.’ And there would be a time for going home too. Soon. But right now, seein’ as he was right here on the border, Luke figured this was the time to go to Mexico. Nothing wrong with that other stuff, just that he would never be able to enjoy it the way he was supposed to, if he didn’t finish up here first. After all, the Angel had sent him to Mexico, and to Mexico he must go. (An angel outranks a German. By a slim margin.) Without that obedience, the rest would be meaningless. ‘Hath the LORD as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the LORD?’ Prob’ly not.
Still, there was the little matter of the Big River. Kind of a problem for a Hun with no boat, no bridge, only one aborted swimming lesson, and an instinctive aversion to water (bath or otherwise.) It gave Luke a moment of pause, but gradually he steeled himself to take the risk. Then he found himself going past resolve, into readiness, eagerness, even delight! Remembering the martyrs, from Mark’s account. “’Bout time I showed that same courage,” Luke instructed himself. “Time to take a few risks for the Lord! I’m a believer now...” he proclaimed proudly into the empty air. His voice had a bright ring in the silence, as he said on, proudly, “‘For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake will find it. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’” Then Luke grinned. “Besides--it’ll be good practice for me, if I’m really planning to risk my life taking the Word back to Hun-Country!”
Luke the non-swimmer placed his football shoes, Bible and baseball cap carefully under the bench, then took a deep breath, prayed for strength “That I might see you, Lord”, went down to the river, and plunged in.
He began with a strong dogpaddle. Slow but steady. “Goin’ to Mexico. Oh yeah.”
It weakened into an erratic puppy-paddle. Tired and awkward. “Hmm. It sure is a long way across this river.”
That degenerated into t
reading water. Cramped and desperate. “Wow. These wet clothes sure do get heavy.”
Finally panicked flailing. Wild and useless. “Uh-oh! Troublations!”
When Luke realized that he had lost all momentum, and was quickly losing strength, energy, and life’s own heat, smack-dab in the center of the river, there was shock first of all, then disbelief and confusion: “But I prayed... For strength so that I might see you!”
Then he clued in that it was only that strength that had gotten him as far as the middle of the river! Where, if he had been looking to meet his Maker, he was just about to get his wish! Luke tried to laugh at the bitter irony, but in doing so he swallowed a mouthful of water, and his lungs didn't feel like laughing anymore.
One more frenzy of kicking, after being surprised by the sudden taste of river water. It really wasn’t supposed to end like this...so close to Mexico, to finding everything out for certain, to becoming the ‘Witness to the Huns’ and doing some good for once in his life! What about that? he wondered anxiously. Then a calming voice: he remembered Bert’s mantra, and repeated it to himself, “Must trust that God is just.” He couldn’t understand it, though. Couldn’t comprehend why God would ‘refine him in the fire’ all these days, only to drown him in the water. But it’s not necessary to understand, he remembered. Only believe. So he did. He went on and believed that God must have a plan. “Even if it’s something as simple and elegant as just making sure there is one less Hun in the world. Make it a safer place for everybody! Shoot, I’m surprised He didn’t do it a long time ago!” Luke thought, and laughed again. And drank the water again. Too much thinking, not enough splashing! This time he found himself going completely under.
As he submerged, waves of despair gripped him. It’s a terrible thing to realize that you’re about to perish, and to be powerless to prevent it. Luke wondered if he was weeping. His face sure felt wet. But for what would he be weeping? An outcast and an alien, few friends and little family, no wife, no children, and trained not to fear death, Luke really didn’t have that much to lose. That was how he got onto this journey in the first place. But what had he found on this journey? Something that might be worth living for? Ah, Faith.
But the flood would never wash that away from him anyway. Never. So what then? One more word came to mind: Jenny.
Now Luke knew he was weeping! (Making the river even deeper, he reflected.) It just seemed so unfair--they had never had a chance to even begin! Then instead of weeping, Luke got a little angry. Struggled against the water with new strength, vowed not to go down without a fight, tried to survive somehow, for Jenny. He had made promises, after all. A covenant. “I’ll meet you there,” she had said, when he had assured her he was moving towards grace.
Thinking of that, Luke realized this might be their way of meeting: to return to God, each in their own time?. It was a comforting thought and Luke stopped struggling and sank again. He smiled peacefully, thinking of Herman the German: ‘They wait for you’. “Or maybe I’ll wait for them,” Luke amended. What else had Herman told him? ‘Go home’. Luke hadn’t guessed he meant this! But why not? Why not go to his ‘long home’, his ‘heavenly country’? He continued to slide toward the bottom, pleasantly awaiting God’s mercy.
But thinking of home made him think of the Huns. The rough Huns, the warlike Huns, who were in anything but a state of grace! “For them, I must live,” Luke realized. “To share this faith. To speak of salvation. To tell of Christ.” And he clawed his way frantically to the surface again.
Now in the movies, when the person goes under for the third time, you better save ’em quick coz otherwise that’ll be it. Well, Luke was either harder to kill than those formulaic drowners, or somewhat less buoyant, coz he found a way to go under five or six times before he was done--fighting his way back up again first on behalf of Jenny and the Huns, then for his brother, his father, and his mother’s memory. But even a Hun can’t fight forever, and Luke finally admitted tearfully that for all his thrashing, he wasn’t getting any closer to making it out of the river. So he prayed. “Lord, please send someone to my people.” Never guessing that he might still be that someone.
That loose end wrapped up, the Huns’ future protected by his prayer, Luke felt that he could finally perish safely, with a clear conscience. So he asked for forgiveness of his sins, thanked God for mercy, and then submitted: “My life is yours. Thy will be done.”
Then there was no more struggling, no more tears, as Luke began sinking under the waves for the last time. Only the strange smile of a dying man with high hopes for his future.
He stopped smiling when something struck his head sharply...Kronk. He recalled his friend Garbandal the Vandal, who when he hit people in the head, was “always surprised how often it sounded like wood.” That did sound like wood, Luke agreed. ‘My head is made of wood’. A little embarrassed, he hoped that God wouldn’t notice. ‘Still, it explains why I had so much trouble in Calculus,’ Luke nodded. Then a brief feeling of having been cheated somehow: ‘Hey, I thought wood was supposed to float.’ Finally, shaking off the fog of death, Luke remembered nosebleeds from his brother, concussions against the Cornhuskers, and a particularly difficult Calculus final that had made him bleed from the ears, and he realized, ‘My head is definitely not made of wood! Which means...!’
He scrambled for the surface again, and caught hold of the wooden boat that had struck him: an empty rowboat that had miraculously come unmoored and was drifting slowly down the river in the darkness. With a last effort, Luke clambered aboard, coughing and sputtering, and lay spent, face down praying thank-yous, without even the energy to steer the boat to shore.
Eventually the wind pushed it over to Mexico, it beached in a shallow bend, and Luke dragged himself onto the shore, and stretched himself on a flat stone. He patted it lovingly, a kind of Morse code prayer, whispering with each pat, “Glory praise glory glory! Praise! Praise praise praise!” (and why not a little more--’s not every day you get flat-out saved like that) “Praise glory praise praise! Glory glory glory! Praise glory praise! Glory praise praise!”
A line from Bert’s poem came back to him: ‘Cast my past to the wind, drown in green rain, and in dawn-blue memories, am born into youth.’ Luke had drowned in green rain all right. And yet here he was, as new as each dawn-breaking day! “By God’s mercy alone I live,” Luke acknowledged, thankfully. Then added, pleased, “So this is what it feels like to be born again...”
It was awesome! But kinda tiring. The rain having ended, Luke slept right there, spread upon the rock, with the same strange smile, safe in the care of a merciful God. Above him the new-born silver stars twinkled Welcome.