The Final Word

        An arid wind sweeps across the land uprooting sand and scorched rock. The sun is just beginning to crest into view; another day, as the multitudes before, set about through a creator’s choice. Whether his motives were of blessing or curse, happiness or anger, the world only guesses and listens. But there is something distinct in this morning. The same reddened sun, but it watches intently and strains to hear the city’s slightest movements. There is a historic moment transpiring in the spiritual world, a dominion we mortals are not yet privy to. There is a faint hum in the air, a bend in the roads of the city, and the spotlight of the sun flashes down markedly. A sound grows, upsetting the normalcy of the dawn. Moments later, voices are ringing out on all sides. It is a mob. Their fury is dangerous because their souls are blind. Their cries shatter, the tremors unearthed; fear grips the heart.

            “Crucify him! Crucify him! Crucify him!”

          Their accusations grow stronger as the rage swells with each cringed syllable. As the purpose of their cause changes from reason to rage, their voices fuse into one undecipherable note. The immortal world watches in horror, joy, and sadness. Never had such a moment been imagined possible, the angels and demons think. What is happening?

The cries of the mob dance to the music of death and the decay of mercy. The mob is shouting and gesturing wildly. They seem to be huddled around an unseen mass in the center of the throng, surrounding it but not impeding its staggered movements. Like an amorphous liquid, the blob sways from side to side through the dusty streets as orange, unblinking light watches the parade and holds its breath.

A child of twelve, clothed all in white, follows the mob from the outskirts. He watches the scene unfold, but not a soul takes notice of him, and he speaks to no one.

            Time passes. 

A man is hoisted onto a cross and left to die. 

It is a moment that cannot be replayed or cast in any other light; 

for it happened in darkness and the story must be told in the same way.

The mob is gone; silence now shouts into the ear. Darkness is upon the earth, concentrating its focus toward the figure of a solitary man, bloodied and maimed, hanging on his cross. He is breathing heavily and languishing. He keeps trying to lift himself up on the splintered wood but keeps slipping back down, his hands and feet ripping wider with each failed attempt. 

The child in white is watching from afar, motionless and serene, as if he has seen this before, or at least knew it was coming. The man’s insides seem seconds from bursting through his skin, all muscles fatigued and spent. Blood does not drip, but flows from his body, a communal wound, and fatal. The languishing continues through the silence of the nightish day.

The mob of mortals are now asleep to the spectacular and historic moment and only the spirits watch and marvel. A prolonged period of grueling elapses, and an invisible line is crossed which only the man seems to know. Then, quietly and with eyes unsearchable and dimmed, he looks upward, the last drops of blood falling, and whispers,

           

“It is finished.”

            He lowers his head with grace, as if an angel caught it and gently guided it down, and his breathing stops.

In this day of eternal moments, all the world’s history flows into this one, astonishing point.

It is a point of nothingness, the point of the now, where eyes flee back and forth watching and listening with fear and in expectation.

What is about to happen? What just happened?

A bang! Hearts jump and spirits cower. And a singular, inexpressible sound of wailing is heard, a lament of unspeakable anguish, a piercing cry heard never before. And an eternal sorrow fills any body possessing a soul, mortal and immortal alike.

            

“Ohhh! My Son! O, my son! My son! Oh…oh, my son…my son.”

           The voice fades into sobs and then silence once more.

Nothing is felt but the indifferent breeze, the arid wind still careening, the world still listening. And there again is the boy in white holding a piece of thin fabric. He looks at it with a strange glow of optimism on his face, sparkles in his eyes. He tears the fabric in half and drops both pieces to the ground, letting them blow away forever and forever. He bears an almost secret happiness in his face. He has an unnatural absence of lines. He gazes out toward the city, a compassion for the corrupted innocence of the earth, and all that was good, and a reverence for that perpendicular wooden structure, a pool of blood running from its base, growing deeper and fresher as it branches outward flowing down the hill. He speaks.

            “That was the only day where I do not remember there being any laughter. The entire kingdom mourned. We wept as He wept. We wept because He wept. It grieved us; like a finger jabbing a freshly opened wound, the wound of His heart, to see our good Father in such pain. His son, our King, was dead. And with his death, life began…again. The Father had always known this was to be the cost. But knowing does not prepare you for experiencing. And He experienced His son’s death. He shared His son’s cup, to the last exacting drop. He was holding His Son’s hand to the final second, even when our King felt like he had been forsaken.

"One of the first questions people ask when they get here is, ‘Why did they do it? If he knew this was going to be the cost, why did they even create the world?’ We laugh at that question; not malicious laughter, but the way a mother would chuckle as her baby attempts to walk and falls on its pudgy bottom. And every time we hear this innocent question, we answer the same way: because they wanted you.

"They wanted a family to love. The Father wanted children, and the Son wanted brothers and sisters. And while all was still nothingness, they deemed the future price of this day, which only they would be able to afford…well worth it. They wished for the meals and the conversation, the fellowship and the laughter more than they wished to avoid this indescribable pain. And so they created. They deemed you worth it. They say you have always been worth it and always will be.

"And a few days later, we started to laugh again with a joy you will understand one day, now…and we have not stopped since.”

This is the Gospel. 

This is the Great Story. 

We are loved. 

This is the chapter which proves it. 

It is the chapter no one could have ever guessed, 

no one, 

but One.

Now go and do the same. 

Forever and ever, 

Love has won.

But what is this?

On the blessed third morn,

As the sun rises in spellbound majesty

And laughs—for what else can it do!

…He is alive!

His King is alive…

And turning its head, the sun watches

As chains fall from humanity’s waist and wrists and neck

They shield their eyes—what is this?

They are shielding their eyes!

They can see my light!

They can see me, cries the sun!

They can feel my warmth!

This must mean…it has to mean…

God and man are friends again!

He has returned…

Lift your eyes my brothers!

Look at me my sisters,

Drink me in full for the first time in a very long time,

He is alive!

It is a new day, a brand new day.

And I shall never set, never again,

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

He is not there!

Lift your eyes oh children,

Light has returned

And will never be taken away