by Randy Alcorn
“Home? You mean…home, like in the Bible?”
“Just like in the Bible.”
“I didn’t hear a trumpet sound.”
“The trumpet comes later, at the return and the resurrection. This is not that day. It is the day of your exodus from mortality to life.”
She looked confused.
“Do not worry. You will understand more soon. Are you gaining strength now?”
“By the minute. It’s like I had the best night’s rest and I’m ready for the big day. I haven’t felt this good since…since I was a child and it was my first day of school.”
“Yes, I remember. I was there.”
“But I’ve never seen you before. Who are you?”
“I am Torel, servant of Elyon Most High.”
“But how—”
“No more talk of me. I am only the Bridegroom’s servant. He awaits you. I must not delay. Do you feel strong enough to walk?”
“Yes.”
He lowered her with a tenderness belying his great size. She tried out her legs like a newborn fawn. Immediately the voices grew louder, the calls and laughter intensified. Her heart surged toward the end of the passageway. Dani looked at Torel and grinned impishly.
“Catch me if you can.”
She took off running. She was a child again, scurrying across the Mississippi fields, eyes upon home. The guardian behind her reminded her of Clarence, who pretended he couldn’t catch her running across those fields, staying just a breath behind her. The enchanting laughter beyond made her want to run faster and faster, then leap carelessly into the wonder, losing herself in Joy.
“It’s a birth,” she cried, arms flailing in the air, gaining strength with each stride rather than losing it. It was a birth, she knew. Her own! She was about to thrust herself into heaven’s birthing room. She realized in an instant that her entire life on earth had been but a series of labor pains preparing her for this moment.
As she was once born into a world of cold confusion and blaring artificial lights, she was now being born out of that cramped domain into a wide open realm of warmth and natural light, the place for which she was suited, the world for which she had been made.
“At last,” she shouted. “The real world!”
At the doorway into life stood a shining being of natural radiance, but with the brightness of a million klieg lights. The radiance threatened to blind her, but somehow her new eyes could endure it. This was more than a man, yet clearly a man. She knew at once who it was. He who had been from eternity past, he who had left his home in heaven to make one here for her. He who spun the galaxies into being with a single snap of his fingers, who was the light that illumined darkness with a million colors, who turned midnight into sunrise.
It was he. Not his representative, but he himself. He put his hands upon her shoulders and she thrilled at his touch.
“Welcome, my little one!” He smiled broadly, the smile teeming with approval. “Well done, my good and faithful servant. Enter into the kingdom prepared for you. Enter into the joy of your Lord!”
He hugged her tight and she hugged him back, clutching on to his back, then grasping his shoulders. She didn’t know how long it lasted. These same arms had hugged her before, somehow—she recognized their character and strength—but she enjoyed the embrace now as she’d never dreamed she could enjoy any embrace. It was complete, utterly encompassing, a wall of protection no force in the universe could break through. His was the embrace she was made for. He was the Bridegroom, the object of all longing, the fulfillment of all dreams.
“My sweet Jesus,” she said.
She bowed to worship him and he delighted in her worship. Then he lifted her up effortlessly and gazed into her eyes. She studied his eyes through the blur. She saw in them things she had long known coupled with things she had never imagined and still others she sensed she would never fully grasp.
“You’re crying,” he said. He put out his hand and wiped away her tears. As the hand came close to her cheek a feeling of terror struck her, a feeling she’d assumed could have no place here in Joy itself. She cringed because she saw his outstretched hand was marred and disfigured.
“Your hand.” She looked at the other. “Both hands. And your feet.” He allowed her to contemplate what she saw.
These were the hands of a Carpenter who cut wood and made things, including universes and angels and every person who had ever lived. These same hands once hauled heavy lumber up a long lonely hill. These same hands and feet were once nailed to that lumber in the Shadowlands, in the most terrible moment from the dawn of time. The wound that healed all wounds could make them temporary only by making itself eternal. Hands and feet of the only innocent man became forever scarred so that no guilty one would have to bear his own scars.
She saw his pain. An ancient pain that was the doorway to eternal pleasures.
Understanding rushed upon her and penetrated her mind as the howling wind had penetrated every crack in her bedroom in that old ramshackle Mississippi home. She wept again, dropping to his mangled feet and caressing them with her hands. He put his fingers under her chin and turned her eyes up toward his.
“For you,” he said to her, “I would do it all again.”
She could not stop weeping. She was surprised she could cry here, one of the first surprises in an eternity that would bring endless ones. If some tears would never be cried again, she thought, then tears of love and joy and fulfillment were among heaven’s pleasures.
She searched the Carpenter’s face as one searches a face she has yearned for, which she has seen in her dreams as long as she can remember. On the right side of his throat, she saw another scar, a mark of discoloration, not prominent, only an inch long. The scar looked remarkably like… She reached suddenly to the side of her neck to feel the scar from the broken beer bottle. She couldn’t feel it. Gone.
He smiled at her, rubbing his finger on his scar, which used to be hers, just as she had so often done on earth. That quickly the scar on his neck disappeared. But the scars on his hands and feet remained. She knew they always would.
They talked long, just the two of them, without hurry and without distraction. A circle of people surrounded them, waiting for them to finish. But she did not want to finish. She was held captive by one face. She asked countless questions, and she was surprised that he asked her some too, since she knew he knew the answers. He said to her, “I have a secret for you.”
“A secret? I thought there were no secrets here.” She’d always imagined she’d miss telling secrets to her girlfriends, not the gossipy kind, but the good ones.
“You were wrong,” he said simply. “You’ll find you were wrong about many things, and you will take delight in discovering the way things really are.”
“But what is this secret you have to tell me?”
“It is a name, one which I chose for you long before I created you. It will be private, a name shared between us alone. Only I will call you by this name.” He leaned and whispered into her ear, “Your name is …”
Those in the surrounding circle saw her eyes grow big, her jaw hang open. They didn’t hear her new name, but they remembered the feeling of hearing for the first time their own true name, which perfectly captured everything they were, all their loves and longings and gifts and character and personality traits. As he gave her the name, each heard in his own mind the name the Carpenter had once first whispered to him.
Her new name was her true one, now finally discovered after a lifetime of groping for identity in the dark world. Her name perfectly captured her uniqueness as his special creation. It perfectly expressed her nature as his beloved. And it testified in some unique way to one particular facet of his character.
She repeated the name within her. It was so beautiful and so perfect. As if it were the name that had always been hers, but which she had never known. She felt at the same time free of self, free of the burden of self-preoccupation. Yet she felt ten thousand times more herself than s
he had ever felt, as if all the convoluted scars that had buried and distorted the person Elyon had meant her to be were now gone. At last she was free to be who she was, who Elyon had made her to be.
The Carpenter looked in her eyes, nodding, understanding the liberating realization of this moment. “Those who spend their lives trying to find themselves never do. But you have lost yourself in me. In doing so, you have found yourself.”
He squeezed her hand tightly and said, “Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever. You are among them. This is the place I have made for you to shine.”
She smiled, unaware of the radiance of her smile, knowing who she was and whose she was and having no desire to look in a mirror to approve or disapprove of what she saw.
“There are many who wish to welcome you.” The Carpenter pointed to the crowds still holding their distance.
“Here she is,” he said to them. “You can have her now!”
As he watched delightedly, friends and relatives swarmed to her. She put up her hands for protection before realizing she didn’t need to. In a sea of faces, one pressed near with greatest urgency, a face and a fragrance she had never forgotten.
“Mama. Oh, Mama!”
“Dani. My little girl.”
The hug was tight and long, and the two who had once been inseparable spoke to each other for the first time in fourteen years.
“Mama, I missed you so. Daddy misses you and Antsy and everybody. We talk about you all the time.”
“I know. I’ve been listening.” She grinned just the way she always had, but without the burdens that once pulled down on the corners of the grin. “You didn’t think death was going to stop your ol’ mama from keepin’ her nose in your business, did you child?”
“Oh, Mama. I can hardly believe it.”
“There’s so much to show you, baby. But there’s so many people who want to see you first.” She looked up over Dani’s shoulder and smiled broadly.
Before Dani could turn, two hands from behind gently covered her eyes. No one had done that for years. Not since her childhood when someone always used to come up and…Darrin!
She turned and stared up at the face of her brother who’d died in Vietnam.
“Darrin, it’s you. Oh, my sweet Jesus, it’s really you.” Dani wept as you weep when reunited with those you never got to say a proper goodbye to. “Oh, Darrin. I yelled at you before you went off to Vietnam. I was so stupid. Do you forgive me?”
“Quiet, Dani. Don’t talk about that. Of course I forgive you. We’re both forgiven or we wouldn’t be here. Let me just look at you. My little sister. I’ve watched you. I’ve prayed for you. I’m so proud of you.”
Dani never remembered him crying. He and Clarence and Harley and Ellis were all tough on the outside. They could be called every name, kids would throw rocks at them, but they’d never cry. Now here was Darrin, crying unashamedly, but happier than she ever remembered him.
Dani saw her giant companion Torel looking on with others of his kind, studying the scene in front of them as if it were somehow beyond their grasp. Then her eyes again caught those of the Carpenter. She relished the look of recognition in his eyes. In her mind she heard him say to her two words as clearly as if he had shouted them.
“Welcome home.”
“I seen somethin’.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded tense and determined. “I want that hundred bucks!”
“Who is this?”
“Mookie.”
“That your gang moniker? What’s your real name?”
“Just Mookie.”
“Okay, Mookie, you know where old Mrs. Burns lives? Across from the Rawls place where the shooting was?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you meet me there? Right after school?”
“Don’t go to school. But I can meet you there.”
“In an hour?”
“Yeah. A hundred bucks, right?”
“Right—but only if you’re straight up with me, you got it? If you’re foolin’ with me, tell me now, because I’ll find out and I’ll be real mad. You don’t want to see me mad. You telling me the truth you saw something?”
“Straight up, man.”
“Okay. Then the hundred’s yours. See you in an hour.”
Clarence pulled up to Hattie’s house. A slender, sullen fifteen-year-old boy sat nervously on the porch. The boy wore a velveteen sweatshirt with a full breadth of loud shiny colors, reminiscent of one of those roadside-bought canvases of Elvis. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. Clarence wasn’t sure whether this was a cutting edge urban style, an indication of Mookie’s tackiness, or a fashion experiment gone awry.
“Mookie? Clarence Abernathy.” He stuck out his hand, force of habit. Mookie brushed his fingers awkwardly. Clarence took him inside and sat him in the living room. Hattie Burns brought in milk and cookies, then disappeared as Clarence had asked her to when he called ahead.
“Okay, what did you see?”
“Was walkin’ home on Jackson Street, ’bout midnight. Crib’s on Dennis Lane, two streets past Jackson, but sometimes I walk Jackson and cut across the back way. I see this car drive up like a block away. Heard these big explosions, like an AK but louder. Then saw them screechin’ down Jackson.”
“You saw their car?”
“Yeah. I was duckin’ behind a tree, but I saw ’em.”
“What kind of car?”
“Big ol’ lowrider, a bomber, maybe Impala or Caprice, late seventies.”
Clarence jotted down some notes excitedly in the back pages of his pocket calendar.
“Color?”
“Gold. Weak paint job.”
“Did you see anyone in the car?”
“Two guys. The driver was a Spic for sure, wearin’ a white T-shirt. Had a light mustache. The other guy, I think he had a white T-shirt too. Another Spic, almost sure of that.”
“You positive they were Latino?”
“Spics? Yeah. Positive on the driver, almost positive on the other dude.”
“You’re sure about the white T-shirts? And that you saw two guys?”
“Know what I saw, okay? Where’s my hundred bucks?”
“Hold on. You see a license plate?”
“Oregon plates. The gold ones. Didn’t catch the numbers. Where’s the money?”
Clarence reached in his wallet, took out a hundred dollar bill, and put it on Mrs. Burns’s coffee table, placing an oil lamp on top of it.
“It’s yours as soon as I’m done asking questions. Not until.”
Clarence talked with Mookie another half hour, asking his questions different ways to get more details and make sure the story held up. It did.
After he was satisfied, Clarence walked Mookie to the door, hugged Mrs. Burns, and marched off with a triumphant smile. He couldn’t wait to tell Ollie Chandler he’d found a witness. Or to see the expression on Manny’s face.
“Hi, Daddy,” Keisha said, with adoring eyes. She craned her neck up at her father, her dozens of cornrow braids dangling on her back, the colorful barrettes slapping against each other.
Clarence picked up Keisha and spun her around. “How’s the cutest girl in third grade?”
“Fine. We made pictures today, like Aunt Dani. I painted leaves on a big tree.”
“Good for you, sweetheart.”
“Hi, baby.” Geneva kissed Clarence and took the grocery bag out of his hand.
“Hey, Jonah.” Clarence tackled him gently and they wrestled on the carpet. Keisha joined them.
“We’re having lima beans,” Keisha told her father, with a look of contempt. “I hate limas.” She folded her arms and looked as utterly disgusted as an eight year old could.
“Well, you may as well save yourself some problems and stop hating them,” her father said, “because you’re going to eat them, that’s for sure.”
“But they taste so gross.”
Clare
nce picked her up in his lap and sat down on the dark blue living-room glider.
“Not everything that’s good for you tastes good. Your father knows what’s good and what isn’t. You have to trust your daddy. Limas are good for you, even if you don’t like them.”
She grew quiet, knowing any further statements could mean dad and mom would call in a dump truck and bury her in lima beans.
“Where’s Grampy?” Clarence asked.
“In his room,” Jonah said. “Reading another baseball book he got at the library.”
“I think I see some stories coming down.” Clarence smiled. “He’s been thinking about the old days again.”
Some stories would be just fine. Being with his family was almost enough to make him forget about the world that filled the news, where folks hated each other for their skin color, where men grabbed children by the ear and hurt them, where innocent people got shot by two-bit gangbangers. This was his home, his castle, his family. And if the world went to hell in a handbasket, at least no one could take away his family. At least, that’s what he’d always told himself.
“Daddy,” Keisha said, “you promised you’d read from the Narnia book last night and you never did.”
Celeste pulled the double team, taking her stand next to her cousin.
“Sorry, honey,” Clarence said. “I got a call, somebody I had to talk to. I’ll read it tomorrow night. I promise.”
“What about tonight? Celeste and me wants you to read it tonight.”
“Celeste and I want you to read it tonight.”
“But I want you to read it, Daddy.”
“No, I meant…never mind. Your mama and I are going out to eat tonight. Carly’s coming over to watch you. We’re going out with her parents.”
“I like Carly,” Keisha said. “Carly’s a good baby-sitter. She’s got her own baby,” she explained to Celeste.
“She’s bringing her baby with her, so you’ll get to see him,” Clarence said. “His name is Finney.”
“That’s a funny name,” Celeste said.
“She named him after a good friend of her father’s.”
