Piercing the Darkness

by Frank E. Peretti

  All four reached out for her, but at the moment there was nothing to grab.

  SALLY CLOSED THE duffel bag, leaving the rosters hidden and confined. Not now, rosters; I’ll deal with you later. I don’t want to feel sick, I don’t want to struggle. Just give me a break. Let me rest awhile.

  THE DEMONS SLINKED away to wait.

  SHE GRABBED UP her notebook and pen, and hopped into the bed again.

  Good feelings, don’t go away. Let me meet with you awhile, study you, figure you out; let me think things through.

  She began another letter to Tom Harris.

  I’m working my way through Psalm 119, and if I understand the message correctly, there are at least two absolutes being presented, two things I can know for sure:

  1) There is a right: to obey God’s laws and follow His ways.

  2) There is a wrong: to disobey God’s laws and not follow His ways.

  How am I doing so far? I hope you’re keeping up, because now it’s going to get tougher.

  Psalm 119 also talks about two human conditions that are the direct result of the two absolutes:

  1) Do what is right, and you’ll be happy and blessed.

  2) Do what is wrong, and you’ll be put to shame.

  Now is that simple or what? Too simple, I suppose; too basic to be believed and accepted by people like me who insist there is no reality higher than themselves.

  But, Tom, I do believe I have been put to shame. Even the vicious, cutting remarks of an enemy, Professor Lynch, make that clear to me. He was trying to destroy me, I know, but there was nothing he said that wasn’t true. I couldn’t argue with him. The truth is, my life is in ruins.

  But can I accept the Bible’s explanation for it? Dare I trust this Book? If the Bible is trustworthy, and if I did choose to believe it, then I could, once and for all, determine who and where I am: in the wrong, outside of God’s favor, put to shame.

  Not a comfortable thought, but at least I would have an immovable rock under my feet.

  DESPAIR FLOPPED TO the floor beside the bed, holding his stomach and moaning. Death and Insanity weren’t feeling very well either, but took it out on Despair.

  “You’re losing her, leech! You’re the one in charge of this mission! Do something!”

  Fear volunteered, “Perhaps I could think of something to frighten her.”

  Despair hissed at him, “You’ve done that, and driven her closer to the truth!”

  SALLY FELT SLEEPY at last. For now, her questions were resolved, her thoughts were recorded, and she could rest. She set the notebook on the bedside table, put all the pillows aside except one, and clicked off the lamp.

  As she lay there in the dark, she noticed how peaceful she felt. This was the first night in a long time that she did not feel afraid. Instead, she felt . . . what was this? Hope? Yes! This had to be hope. It felt so foreign, so different.

  Out of her distant past, she could recall once again those old feelings and thoughts from Sunday school: I want to be good. I want to do good things and love God. I want Jesus to come into my heart.

  She fluffed her pillow and let her head sink into it. Hm. Jesus. Now what does He have to do with all this?

  VERY EARLY ON Sunday morning, Ben Cole stood in the gate to Sally Roe’s goat pen, incredulous, sickened, wary of proceeding inside. This couldn’t be real. Things like this just didn’t happen, not around here.

  He looked back toward the field between the Potter home and the rental. Mrs. Potter stood in the middle of the field, nervously wringing her hands and watching, but refusing to come any closer.

  He looked back toward the goat pen. Buff and Bart, the two kids, were still alive, but disturbed and jittery. As for Betty, the doe . . .

  Ben finally entered the pen, closing the gate behind him, stepping carefully through the dirt and straw, searching the ground for any clues. He approached Betty’s dead and butchered carcass. She hadn’t been killed too long ago. It had to have been the previous night.

  He turned and shouted to Mrs. Potter, “Did you hear anything?”

  “No,” she replied.

  Ben looked around the carcass. No clues. No footprints. The dirt did seem to be disturbed, however, probably brushed and raked to erase any clues.

  Mrs. Potter came closer, but still wouldn’t look.

  “Have you called the police?” Ben asked.

  “Well, I called you.”

  He smiled. “I’m no longer with the Police Department.”

  “I know. But I wanted you to come. I don’t trust Sergeant Mulligan. I don’t think he’d do anything about it.”

  Ben backed away from Betty’s carcass and joined Mrs. Potter near the fence. He was wishing he had a camera to record this.

  “Well,” he said, drawing his first full breath. “I’m going to do something about it.”

  Betty lay in the straw, her throat cut, her body totally drained of blood, and all four legs cleanly and skillfully removed, missing without a trace.

  The morning air was chilly, but Ben could feel a chill that had nothing to do with the weather. In his spirit, he could feel some real trouble approaching.

  WELL, MAYBE I should, Sally thought. It’s one thing I haven’t tried yet. It could provide more information that would round out my perspective. It might clarify some of the old memories I haven’t been able to fully recall. It would be an interesting glimpse into middle-class American religious culture. Perhaps it might—

  “Get your coat, then,” said Sara Barker. “Floyd’s warming up the car right now.”

  Sally answered a little late, “Well, sure, I’ll go. Why not?”

  And that’s how she found herself standing in front of the little white Ashton Community Church, a half-mile up Morgan Hill on Poplar Street, on a warm and beautiful Sunday morning. People were already filing inside, talking, laughing, hugging like old friends, guiding their small children by the hand and calling to the older ones to come on and hurry up, church was starting.

  Sara spared no pains to make sure Sally met everyone. “Hi, Andy, this is Betty Smith. Edith, how are you? I’d like you to meet Betty Smith, our new boarder. Cecil, it’s great to see you’re feeling better. Have you met Betty Smith?”

  Sally smiled and shook the hands extended to her, but with only half her attention. The sight of a little girl in a Sunday dress, holding her mother’s hand and carrying a Bible, triggered a memory.

  Thirty years ago, that was me.

  Sally could remember wearing a pretty dress and a matching ribbon in her hair. She could remember carrying a Bible too, a gift from the lady who held her hand back then, her guardian, Aunt Barbara. Sally’s mother, lost to alcohol, had never been much of a positive influence. Aunt Barbara, on the other hand, always took her to Sunday school. Aunt Barbara took religion seriously, and in those days Sally respected that. It was good for Aunt Barbara, and yes, it felt right for Sally too.

  “Well, we’d better get in there,” said Sara, her words jolting Sally from her reverie.

  They went up the front steps, through the double doors, and into a small foyer where a few clusters of people—Floyd was part of one cluster—were still getting caught up on each other’s week.

  Oh, there was the Sunday school attendance posted on the wall. She remembered that. She remembered always bringing an offering, too; that was important in those days.

  The people around her were of all kinds. Some were well-dressed, some were in blue jeans; there were older folks and many younger; there were plenty of young children about, suggesting a middle-class, Protestant baby boom.

  Sally quickly had to admit to herself that, Christianity itself notwithstanding, there was little reason to be uncomfortable in this place. Her lack of acceptable attire could have been a reason—she had only her slacks and blouse and could not wear the jacket because of the knife holes in it, not to mention the missing sleeve—but now she saw that attire had little to do with acceptance, and neither did ethnic background or social status.

&n
bsp; Well . . . I guess I won’t be uncomfortable.

  She followed Floyd and Sara to a place in a wooden pew near the back and sat down. Her feet could touch the floor. The last time she sat in a pew, her feet dangled. That was when . . . Tommy Krebs! Yes, now she remembered him, that little snotty kid with the crewcut and the marker pen without a cap. She finally tattled on him and that brought some peace for a while, but not before he’d blackened her knee. Yes, that all happened in a pew just like this one, during the Sunday school’s opening exercises. Oh! What was that song she and all those other little moppets used to sing? “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so . . .” Oh, yes. That song had to be one of the oldie-goldie hits of American Protestantism; obviously she never forgot it.

  She tried to relax, and looked around the small sanctuary at the backs of all those heads. Oh, there was the pastor, Hank What’s-his-name, closing off a conversation and taking a chair on the platform. Now he looked a little more like a pastor, with a suit and tie, but she knew she’d never forget that guy wrestling with a toilet back at the boarding house.

  This was becoming quite an experience. There was so much to see and remember, so many feelings to sort through, she hadn’t become bored yet. Rather, she was captivated.

  But . . . what am I doing here, really? she wondered. Is it just because Sara invited me?

  No, not really. The invitation was as good an incentive as any, but not the real reason. Sally did want to be here, even though it was only now that she realized it.

  Is it a matter of curiosity?

  No, more than that. Curiosity was one thing, hunger was another.

  Hunger? For what—fond memories? Nostalgia?

  No, more than that. It was more a haunting sensation that she had come full circle after thirty years and found, just as strong as ever, a truth, a treasure, a special matter of the heart she once held but lost. She couldn’t recall her life being as shaky during her Sunday school childhood as it had been ever since. There was just something about the convictions of this culture, the solid certainty of everything.

  Maybe that was part of it. Maybe those experiences of long ago were the last solid ground Sally had ever walked on.

  Yes, things were so different then.

  Sally, Sara, and Floyd all scooted over a little to make room for a young lady to sit next to Sally.

  “Hi,” she said, offering her hand. “I’m Bernice Krueger.”

  “Um . . . Betty Smith.” She had to be sure she remembered the right name.

  “She’s our new boarder,” said Sara.

  “Oh, great,” said Bernice. “You new in town?”

  “Yes.”

  “What brings you here?”

  “Oh . . . just traveling.”

  “So how long have you been here?”

  “Uh . . . I just got here yesterday.” Sally was hoping this wasn’t going to be a long interview. She decided to get the subject off herself. “So what do you do?”

  “I work for the local newspaper. I’m a reporter and assistant editor, and I also wash the coffee cups and empty the wastebaskets.”

  “Oh, that’s interesting.”

  Bernice laughed. “Sometimes it is. Well, it’s great to have you here.”

  “Thank you.”

  There was a slight pause. Bernice looked forward and Sally thought the conversation was over, but then Bernice turned to Sally again with an additional thought.

  “Say, if there’s anything I can do for you, please let me know.”

  The offer was a little abrupt and unexpected. It made Sally wonder what this Bernice Krueger was thinking. Do I seem that pitiful? Sally did appreciate the compassion, but knew she could never accept it. “Thanks. I’ll remember that.”

  The service began, and it was a real study in middle-class fundamentalism. Sally decided she would be an objective observer and take mental notes.

  The content of the songs was worth noting: in every case, the lyrics spoke of love, worship, adoration, and reverence for God and for Jesus Christ, and it was readily apparent, as expected, that the people believed and practiced with great conviction the sentiments expressed in the songs.

  As the service progressed through the songs and then a time of sharing inspirational personal anecdotes, Sally found it easy to get caught up in the very phenomenon she was observing. She was enjoying it. These people were happy, and even though the form and process of worship seemed a little odd and foreign to an outsider, Sally knew and reminded herself that next to her own yoga techniques and trance channeling, this stuff was tame, normal, even downright bland.

  The time came for prayer, and Pastor Busche opened the floor for prayer requests. An elderly man was having trouble with a pulled muscle and asked for prayer, as did a young lady concerned for her husband who “didn’t know the Lord,” a young father who needed a job, and a lady whose sister had had a child born prematurely.

  Then the young lady who worked at the newspaper, Bernice Krueger, spoke up. “Let’s remember to pray for Marshall and Kate while they’re away. I guess things are getting pretty difficult, and they’re encountering a lot of spiritual resistance.”

  “Right,” said Pastor Hank, “we’ve all been following that. We’ll be sure to pray about it.”

  And then the pastor led the congregation in prayer, glorifying and praising God, and then asking God to supply all the requests that the people had made.

  “And we remember Marshall and Kate as well, involved in spiritual warfare . . .”

  That topic caught Sally’s interest. Spiritual warfare. Wow! If these people only knew what she was going through.

  CHAPTER 31

  “‘BUT HE WAS pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.’”

  Bernice Krueger read the words in a soft voice from her Bible as Sally followed along in the Bible she’d brought from Sara Barker’s. They were sharing a booth at Danny’s Diner on Main Street, not far from the Clarion. They’d ordered their lunch, it was on the way, and now, over coffee, they were taking a second look at Hank’s sermon text for the morning, some verses from Isaiah 53.

  Bernice read the next verse. “‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’”

  “Sin and redemption,” said Sally.

  Bernice was impressed. “Right. So you know something about this.”

  “No, nothing really. It’s a phrase I’ve heard in some circles, apparently a quick way to define the typical Christian view of things. We always hated the idea.”

  Bernice sipped from her coffee. “Who’s ‘we’?”

  Sally brushed off the question. “Just some old friends.”

  “And what did you hate about it?”

  Sally sipped from her coffee. It was an effective way to buy time to formulate an answer. “The notion of sin, I guess. It’s hard enough for anyone to feel good about himself, and it seemed so negative and oppressive to teach that we’re all miserable, no-good sinners. Christianity was the curse of mankind, enslaving us and holding us back from our true potential.” She felt a need to qualify that. “Anyway, that’s what we thought.”

  “Okay, so that’s what you thought about the sin part of it.” Bernice smiled, and tapped the passage from Isaiah 53 that still lay open under Sally’s nose. “But did you catch the redemption part? God loves you, and He sent His Son to pay for that sin with His own death on the cross.”

  Now Sally remembered Aunt Barbara and Mrs. Gunderson telling her that. “So I’ve heard.”

  “But getting back to what the Bible says about sin, since when is that such a shock? Mankind has been proving for thousands of years the kind of stuff he’s made of. Listen, man’s problems aren’t due to politics or economics or ecology or levels of consciousness; man’s problems are due to his ethics—they’re lousy.”

  Sally heard that. It sank in. Th
at was putting it simply enough, and hadn’t she demonstrated the truth of those words in her own life? “I guess I’ll agree with you there. But let me just confirm something: I take it the Bible is the ethical standard by which we determine what’s ‘lousy’?”

  Bernice gave an assertive nod. “And what’s good, what’s righteous.”

  Sally pondered that. “That being the case, I imagine this standard puts us all on the wrong side of the fence.”

  “I think you’ll find that idea acceptable if you’re honest with yourself. You’ve lived long enough to know what we as human beings are capable of.”

  Sally even chuckled. “Oh, yes indeed.”

  “And here’s God’s answer for it.” Bernice pointed out the phrases and reviewed them. “‘He carried our infirmities and our sorrows . . . he was pierced for our sins and crushed for our iniquities . . . the Lord has laid on Him all our sins.’”

  “Why?”

  Bernice thought for a moment. “Well, let’s talk about justice. You do something wrong, you end up in prison, right?”

  Sally definitely agreed. “Right.”

  “Now, in the ideal sense, all legal loopholes aside, there are only two ways out of there: change the rules so that what you did isn’t wrong so you aren’t guilty, or pay the penalty.”

  “I’ve tried changing the rules,” Sally admitted.

  “Well, in God’s scheme of things, rules are rules, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be worth much, and right and wrong would be meaningless. So what’s left? The penalty. That’s where God’s love comes in. He knew we could never pay the penalty ourselves, so He did it for us. He took the form of man, took all our sins upon Himself, and died on a Roman cross two thousand years ago.”

  Sally examined the passage again. “So tell me: did it work?”