Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  “I’ve got his card right here. And I’ve got some good news. Dr. Scanlon’s incredibly busy, not to mention expensive.” He chuckled. “But I just happen to have a 3:00 appointment with him today, and I’d like to give it to you.”

  “No, really that’s not necessary.”

  “Look, Jake, if you want some answers, this is the guy, and you’re not going to get to see him on your own for a long time. Frankly, I’d like to take my wife for a long drive this afternoon. I’ll call him and tell him you’ll be there at 3:00 to take my place. Okay?”

  Jake looked at the address on the business card. “Well, it’s only five blocks from the Tribune. I guess I could make it. If you’re serious, I’ll take you up on it.”

  “Great. I get a monthly bill from Dr. Scanlon, so this will just be my little contribution to the investigation. I owe a lot more than that to Finney. He was one of the most…” He cleared his throat and the words stopped coming.

  Finney had that effect on people, didn’t he?

  With Barnes gone, Jake, Sue, and Little Finn chatted a few minutes. The little guy’s mini-bus taking him to the special school pulled into the driveway at 8:20.

  “‘Bye, Unca Jake. What time you pickin’ me up for the game Friday?”

  “About a quarter till six?” Jake looked at Sue for approval and got it. “I’ll take you out for a hamburger first.”

  “And French fries?” Finn asked, as if it would be a dream come true. He was now close enough to the little bus that other wide-eyed children, most of them with Down’s Syndrome, could hear through their open windows.

  “Hey, French fries, onion rings, a chocolate malt, you name it, bud!”

  Jake laughed, Sue beamed, Finn was walking on a cloud as he skipped up the steps, gesturing and pointing at Jake, no doubt telling everyone on the bus that Jake wrote for the newspaper, and was one of his dad’s best friends, and was taking him to the game Friday, and was even going to buy him French fries.

  What is it about this kid? He takes the weight of the world off your shoulders.

  Finn’s sheer delight in life, his wonder in seeing the universe through a different set of eyes, was something Jake wondered if every person was meant to have, but very few experienced.

  Jake saw one car he hadn’t noticed when surrounded by the others. “Hey, is that Angela’s car?”

  “Yeah, Bruce is out of town on business this weekend, so she came back to spend the night. We’re so excited about her baby! Come on up and say hi to her. She sneaked down for a donut, so I know she’s up.”

  As they walked up the stairs, Jake said, “Finn said something about you going to New York next week?”

  “Yeah, Thursday at 8:00. I’m going to see my sister Adele. She felt so bad she didn’t make it out to the funeral, but she was flat on her back. I thought I’d go spend a long weekend with her.”

  “Great. You can use the break. Enjoy it.”

  “I plan to. Okay, Angela!” Sue looked first in Angela’s old bedroom, then in the office and sewing room, where she found her behind Finney’s computer.

  “I saw you sneak down for that donut! Somebody wants to say hi.”

  “Hi, Uncle Jake!” Angela got up and gave Jake the from-the-heart hug Sue had patented.

  “Hi, Angie. Congratulations on the pregnancy. I’m happy for you.”

  “Yeah, Mom and I are just a little excited!”

  “What you working on?”

  “Bad time to ask. I’m stuck on something.”

  “Hey, I thought you were your daddy’s girl with computers.”

  “Well, usually I am. I’ve been calling up and printing out all of Dad’s files. He kept a journal on here, and even some of his letters, the personal ones, are really special. I want to have every word he wrote that’s in this computer. I want my son or daughter to be able to read what their grandfather wrote.” Angela’s voice broke, and Sue was next to her like Velcro.

  Jake quietly contemplated the heritage Finney had passed on to his family. He thought of Carly, of how good it was to be with her the other day, tough as it was. If he had died along with Finney and Doc, as he should have, how would she remember her dad? What kind of legacy would he have left her? He shuddered at the thought.

  “You’ll have to excuse a couple of emotional females, Jake. Anyway, Angie, you were talking about the problem?”

  “Well, I’ve got hundreds of pages printed out,” she pointed to the neat three-inch-thick pile of computer paper, frayed sprocket holes on the sides, flowing out of the dot matrix computer. “But there’s one group of files, saved in a special directory named ‘COD.’ I guess that stands for code, because there’s only four files in it and they’re all locked.”

  “Locked?”

  “Yeah, look. When I try to call it up from any word processor or file manager, this is what I get.”

  Angela double clicked the mouse and a box appeared, labeled “Password,” with the message “Enter password for file.”

  “There’s fifteen spaces and you’d have to have the exact combination to unlock the file. I’ve tried all kinds of stuff Dad might use, and I get nothing.”

  “Interesting. These are the only password protected files?” Jake asked.

  “Yep. And it’s not like Dad. You know, we’ve spent a lot of time on the computer together. We’d hack around in all his programs, on the modem, in Compuserve, whatever, and I’ve never known him to protect a file. Why would he? He never kept anything from any of us. In fact,” Angela grinned, “if he would have wanted to keep something secret from Mom, just having it on the computer would have been enough. No password was needed.”

  Sue looked at Angela in mock offense. “It’s true, Jake. I’m not sure I know how to turn the darn thing on.”

  “But it’s really got me curious, because I can access the general file info, and the dates of all four files are recent. All in October. Two were the week before Dad died.”

  Sue looked admiringly at her daughter. “Anyway, you got out a pile of your dad’s stuff. I’m looking forward to going through it. I’ve already reread all Finney’s love letters and birthday cards. I need some new material!”

  Jake cleared his throat. “Well, I’ve really got to run. Great to see you, Angie. And thanks for inviting me this morning, Sue. I better get in some hours at the Trib before my afternoon appointment.” Jake still couldn’t believe he was going to see a shrink.

  As they walked down the stairs toward the front door, Sue asked, “So how do you feel about the investigation, Jake?”

  “Honestly? Like it’s taking on a life of its own.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Finney relished one of the greatest dynamics of heaven—being freed from the preoccupation with self. On earth he had to work hard to be unselfish. Here it came naturally, for he was immersed in something infinitely greater than himself, and it was the greater that gave meaning and purpose to himself, the lessor. He imagined how silly it would be to sit at a great feast with all the most interesting people who have ever lived, and to choose to spend the evening contemplating oneself instead. Nothing wrong with self, but in the face of such multifaceted wonder, who would want to pay it much attention? In one of Elyon’s endless ironies, in this unselfish state Finney found the greatest pleasure and happiness he’d ever known. From this vantage point he could see clearly that those who pursue holiness can find both holiness and happiness, while those who pursue happiness can find neither.

  The nearest experiences he’d had on earth were forgetting himself in a powerful storm or a great piece of music or in making love with his wife. In reading a great story, he’d sometimes lost all consciousness of both time and self. The joy was in ceasing to exist outside the story and finding himself no longer on the outside looking in but on the inside. This was the liberating glory of heaven. He was finally on the inside.

  The new perspective infatuated him still. It was as if he’d been standing on the sidelines at half-time of a football game, watching the
band form letters but not being able to see the words they spelled out. Now he’d gone up in the stands. By going to Elyon’s Word on earth, Finney had been able to gain enough perspective to see life differently. Now he saw it completely differently and, as if someone had at long last adjusted a television antenna just right, with stunning clarity.

  “I’m flooded with memories of earth, Zyor. People and things I thought I’d forgotten rush at me, sweep me up. They seem more real now than then.”

  The towering angel nodded. “Then you were looking through a dark glass. Now you see clearly. Not completely, but clearly. You cannot recall what you haven’t heard or read or experienced. Have you noticed you understand my explanations much more readily in those areas you meditated on and lived out while on earth? Every moment that you invested in thinking the thoughts that matter and living the life that mattered, you brought with you into this world. And now you are able to build on it.”

  “Then some have a fuller understanding here than others?”

  Zyor paused like a kindergarten teacher, considering best how to explain this to a sharp young mind that was like a blank slate longing to be chalked.

  “If you take five students who graduate from high school and go to college, they are all in the same place, are they not? They are all in college. But they do not begin evenly, do they? They bring what they have learned, and what they have learned is determined by the choices they have made, by how they have invested their time, how they have lived before coming to college. So it is here. Those who wait till they come here to begin exploring the depths of Elyon’s nature start behind and never catch up. Their joy is full, of course, but their capacity is less. A gallon jug that is full contains much more than a pint jug that is equally full. Elyon’s Book says of your people, ‘We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.’ One’s capacity is inevitably less here when he has chosen not to do what Elyon appointed him to do in the other world.”

  “I knew our lives there were critical. I told others they were. But they were more critical than I ever realized.”

  “Many of your people do not understand this. When they filled their mind with what was ungodly, it damaged their capacity to worship and drew them away from the things of God. This led to other choices that sucked their lives of meaning and contentment. They come here to Elyon’s realm fully covered by the blood of Christ, or they could not come at all. Yet they are woefully unprepared.” Zyor said it painfully.

  “It takes a great deal of time to orient them. They simply are not ready. As you have seen, it is not automatic. Elyon decreed wisdom and folly, blessing and curse, choice and consequence. If life on earth has any meaning at all, it must have effects that outlast it.”

  “I always believed what we thought and did there had eternal effects, but I could never understand how it worked. I thought we’d all be alike the moment we die, that forgiveness was the great equalizer.”

  “Earth was heaven’s womb, Elyon’s nursery,” Zyor said. “His children’s lives continue from the old realm to the new. What was done in that world has great bearing on this one. All your people must be resuited for this realm, and some are more prepared for it than others. It is not a question of forgiveness. It is a question of choices made after forgiveness, of how his children invested their lives, whether in the treasury of earth or the treasury of heaven. Forgiveness was the beginning of the story but not its end. Forgiveness does not nullify the law of the harvest, the reality of choice and consequence. It does not negate your life in the other world, nor does it make your choices there moot and irrelevant. Earth was heaven’s dress rehearsal. Rather, it was act one of the great play itself. And as such, what happened on earth’s stage will forever matter.

  “Of course, you will not be tarnished by the acts of selfishness and cruelty in the old world, his grace will see to that. But the scars on his hands and feet will testify to the price that had to be paid. And the fact that others will cast their crowns at his feet will remind all that they too could have brought him more glory had they lived more for him and less for themselves. No act of kindness and love will be overlooked, all will be enshrined for eternity.”

  “Everyone who gives even a drink of water to one of these little ones in my name,” Finney quoted, “shall not lose his reward.”

  “Exactly, Master Finney. You are becoming the teacher.” Zyor was obviously pleased.

  “And it is not just that such acts will be remembered, it is that they will always be. Elyon walks backward and forward in time as easily as we walk a garden path one way then the other. We too are allowed to step back in time to reflect on what has been as if it were now happening.”

  “What do you mean, Zyor?”

  “Your life on earth is like a phonograph record or a videotape, played and replayed. Like broadcasts of radio and television programs projected out into space, earthly lives do not dissipate. Stand now on Alpha Centauri’s ring world, and you can see live what happened on earth four years ago. Go to the third planet of Pollux, look toward earth, and you can watch the events of what you called World War II. Stand now on Rigel’s second orb of ice and you can watch the Middle Ages unfold. From Yargos, eighth planet of Wezen, you can watch the life of Christ as it is now unfolding.

  “Human events have permanence. None of them are lost in space and time. They are projected outward at the speed of light, for all eternity. But that done for the glory of Christ will be sifted out from all the others, as gold nuggets are separated out in pans from the sand and mud, and then displayed for all to see and to celebrate. In eternity we shall consider and cherish those acts done for him. And we will not merely be passive viewers but active participants. Some day I will take you back to relive moments in history, to experience and study and enjoy these things as they actually happened.”

  The thought of walking back through time to explore as one might explore the woods or a cave thrilled Finney. But he was perplexed.

  “I suppose I thought we wouldn’t look backward here, only forward.”

  “But we must look backward as a reference point for our worship of Elyon’s Son. That is why his Book speaks of the memorials in the heavenly city, eternal reminders of the twelve tribes and the Lamb’s apostles and the great exploits of men and women of old. Heaven is not a place to forget great acts of faith done on earth, but to remember them. Elyon’s book says, ‘A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.’ What did you believe this meant?”

  “I…don’t remember reading it.”

  “It is found in Malachi. You will want to read it.”

  “Yes, I will.”

  Zyor looked at Finney. “I sometimes heard you call your life there a ‘window of opportunity.’ It was an accurate term, an inspired one. You knew it to be true, but its truth was far deeper than you understood. Look back with me.”

  Suddenly a little cloud formed and a hole several feet across showed him a man (somehow he knew it was Moses) his stylus in his hand, carefully inscribing words on a clay tablet. The words were Psalm 90, most ancient of the psalms.

  As if the ages between had not been, Finney saw himself on his knees late one night, wearing faded jeans, his old Bible open in front of him. From his view in heaven, he now looked over his own shoulder, staring at the words of Moses’ psalm.

  Lord, you have been our dwelling place

  throughout all generations.

  Before the mountains were born

  or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.

  He heard his own voice from the past saying, “Lord, Moses says here to establish, to make permanent, the work of our hands. He says to ask you to ‘teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.’ I don’t know how long you’ll keep me here. How long I’ll have with Sue and Jenny and Angela and Little Finn. God, help me to live this life as I should, to use t
his brief window of opportunity to make a difference for eternity. I give you all that I am and all I have, my money, my possessions, my life, even my family. I confess my pride and selfishness and laziness. I need your strength and wisdom to live as I should. Help me Lord, to invest my life in what will matter forever. Teach me to number my days that I may live wisely, that I may live every day in light of eternity. I ask all this in the powerful name of Jesus. Amen.”

  As Finney watched himself pray, he noticed a great shadow kneeling beside him. He said aloud to Zyor, “There was no one there that night. Sue and the children were in bed.”

  Yet there, unmistakably, was someone else, a huge imposing figure at his side, praying as earnestly as he himself.

  “Zyor…it’s you.

  “Yes, it was just as you see now. But you lacked the vision then to see things as they really were.”

  Zyor and Finney both felt something the same moment. “It is time for us to pray again,” Zyor said. “Your friend is in the thick of a great battle, a battle with stakes far greater than he imagines.”

  It was Jake’s first appointment with a psychiatrist, and he was already certain it would be his last. He’d interviewed a few psychiatrists on various topics, but this was different. Now he was standing in for a former abortionist to meet with a shrink to get some insights on the kind of person who might kill a doctor. Jake shook his head. It was all too weird.

  Looking around the waiting room, Jake imagined someone here had attended some conference on the importance of bright cheerful colors when you’re dealing with people on the far edge of sanity. He noticed his hands wringing together. He’d never been a smoker, but for a moment he thought how useful it would be to have something to do with his hands.

  Jake looked at his watch. Ten minutes till 3:00. Compulsive reader that he was, he searched the table for material. He saw an issue of Esquire with a cover story called “Men and Abortion.” It was a couple years old, but there were two copies of the same issue lying right next to each other. Why? A powerful voice within told him not to read the article, but he opened to it anyway.