A Spirit Not Of Fear

 I was huddled over my psychology book, precariously situated up-top the stool beside our kitchen island. My window reflected the same near-autumn view it has framed since this morning; all of dove-gray and charcoal. A few feet from me, the dishwasher gargled menacingly from its own little corner, loudly proclaiming the fulfillment of its duties as the backdrop for my studies.

Until suddenly, it stopped. Stopped, utterly and completely. I was left with nothing but the sound of... nothing. From a gurgling, muted sort of roar to absolutely nothing at all.

Nothing.

Nothingness.

Nothing.

I lifted my eyes and looked out the window at the gray sky swarming over the trees, heart beating amain as my ears waited breathlessly for the trumpet sound to pierce the utter silence. For surely, that was to come next...? The awful blast, the terrible rending of the sky and the furling of it as a curtain, and then our longing fulfilled; our stealing away into the deep, beautiful mystery that is all of God's splendor, to be secret to us no longer. No more the jeweled veil of the heavens to stand as a shield between us and the terrible beauty of the Almighty, as the glory of our rapture ushers us into His infinity... no more the aching of this world, no more the shadows; everything, everything swept away in the mighty gust of the Eternal's beckoning. All the echoes of eternity to erupt in splendor in the mere breath of one beautiful, awful moment.


A single moment of silence.



Had I held my breath until the trumpet blast, my heart would by now have stopped beating. It never came.

 The house soon returned to sound, my heart to its sighing rhythm, and as soon as this is posted I shall return to studying for my Psychology exam. Yet, I find that I cannot do so quite the same. For in me is a heart within which beats something of eternity, that ever-aching thrum of longing, of tiredness, of yearning... of hope. Oh, the fluttering rhythm is always there: it never leaves, but it is so often lost beneath the mutterings of the Temporary Reality. Only when these mutterings are stilled may it again be noticed, standing out suddenly as a smattering of paint on a blank canvas or the plucking of a single harpstring. The moment of remembrance is pierced with an aching like nothing I have ever known, yet which is more familiar to me than anything, because I have always known it.

 Yet nothing, not even the aching, can quell the bursting joy that slashes through the numb shadows of our temporal existence when we seize the knowledge of Reality. For the reason we long, the reason we ache, is because we are straining for something Real—a beauty beyond our tactile mirrors and smoke. It is the ardent longing for the truth of Eternity that is not only our sorrow, but our solace. What we long for will not be held away forever: it will come, in a bounding, leaping dawn of Jubilee.

A single moment of silence—may every moment be so full of eternity.

In memory of Christina, who sees the face of Jesus while we still wait. And in hope, knowing that someday we'll join her in the most glorious place of all.

At first the feeling was so strange to her, it was frightening. But as it washed over her, all fear disappeared. The feeling itself was calm, was stillness, was peace. And as all awareness of fear and anxiety vanished, she felt her gaze drawn irresistibly back to the window.

She didn’t expect what she would see, and didn’t wonder. But in a heartbeat, suddenly, amazingly, it took her breath away.

As she looked, a sudden gust of wind released itself and hurled through the air. She felt the house shudder, heard the wind rush past the window – and saw it. Watching, she saw the falling rain shimmer and ripple in the burst of wind, like a curtain of cascading diamonds swayed by a breath. But as the raindrops shivered mid-fall, they changed. The crystal droplets suddenly erupted into a rainbow of gleaming colors, as though they were prisms, and the wind, a burst of light. Color after color glittered into sudden radiance, jewel tones glistening in each raindrop as it fell and spattered, and again in the next, as the rainfall was transformed into a shining curtain of beauty.

It took her breath away. Yet despite the oddness of their sudden appearance, there was something still odder about the colors. And as she stared, she suddenly knew why: There were new colors. Shining out amid the gleaming rainbow of colors, there were shades and hues that no one had ever seen or known the name of. Colors that no one could imagine. Colors that never existed.

Or did they? she wondered. Just not…here… The thought trailed off and a shiver ran through her; not of cold or fear, but of awe. What was she seeing? She felt almost as if she knew, yet couldn’t quite grasp it. All the while a feeling of excitement was rising within her, drawing the knowledge nearer, nearer…

And then she heard the music.

It was the sweetest, loveliest, most beautiful sound imaginable; yet no one could imagine it, and none of those words were wonderful enough to describe it. The music was joyful, and while there was no wanting in it, her heart began to race with longing: yearning for assurance that the music would never end. She could not tell if the sound of the music reached her ears or only her heart, but it touched her far more deeply than any music she’d ever heard in…on..

On earth. The music was unearthly. Unimaginable. Indescribable. Yet though it was beyond description, it was more real to her than anything she had ever heard or touched or seen or smelled or tasted. As she listened, she felt as though she herself was becoming more real; finally beginning to understand what trueness really was.

And suddenly, she knew.

She watched as the colors gleamed brighter, listened as the music grew stronger and even more real. And suddenly the sun burst through the clouds. As the rain kept falling, the already-gleaming colors sparkled, and she gasped. There was light behind the light; shining through and over and beyond everything, so bright and wonderful that one could tell just by looking that it filled all the heavens and more. It was so bright that she knew her eyes couldn’t stand it; but somehow, they did.

The light flowed over everything, embracing it, filling it, dissolving it. Her heart rose as she saw the light flood into her room; saw the walls glow, brighter, brighter, and then slowly disappear; watched everything fade away, until there was nothing but light and colors and music, and then –

Jesus.