by Joe Derkacht
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Except for being separated by the stream that tumbled over the bluff, Zell’s gardens adjoined my own and were more extensive and fittingly more beautiful; all I knew about gardening, in fact, I had learned from her in the old life. Once, coming out of my workshop on earth, I had found her weeding my yard on hands and knees.
Contorting her neck to focus her intensely bright eyes on me, she asked me if I felt it.
“I-It wh-what?” I stuttered.
“Heaven,” she said. “I’ve been out here for hours, and every time I look up, I think I’m going to see angels. You don’t feel it, as if heaven has come down to earth? Like Jesus might walk into the yard at any second?”
I shook my head anxiously. I wasn’t one to think anything of the sort, much less feel it, especially since I had it on the authority of an ordained minister that God was no longer in the business of speaking to people. I was sure this was the same crazy kind of talk that could get me a room with pillows for walls.
“I-ah, I h-hope you d-don’t g-go talkin’ like that to nobody else,” I told her. “They’ll th-think you’re n-nuts.”
“Oh, John, you worry too much,” she said.
Of course I do, but who doesn’t? I thought, returning to my workshop. Still, with my neighbor’s words lodged in my mind, they were hard to get out, and as I thought about them day after day, eventually they began to grow on me. Was it possible to pray while I worked? Possible to have some sort of give-and-take between me and God even while I was ripping lumber or gluing a mortise and tenon? Maybe. But, like a lot of other things, it took a long time to accustom myself to the idea.
Staring now at her house, I wondered where she could be. In spite of the nudge to find Zell, I knew she wasn’t home; its exterior walls gleaming goldly like most buildings in the Heavenly City, its roof a curvilinear form reminiscent of a seashell (appropriate for someone whose owner had lived most of her earthly life near the ocean), I knew it gleamed more brightly at her presence. Even as the thought occurred to me, I sensed someone standing behind me.
“Life is great until you weaken.”
“Feeling that poorly, huh?” I asked, turning to find Zell grinning from ear to ear. It had been one of her favorite sayings in the old life on earth, and she still occasionally pulled it out of the old memory bag.
“Friends feel poorly when their friends move to other galaxies,” she retorted.
Having observed our usual ritual at being reunited, we both laughed. As for me, I’ve always been glad irony survived into the new life.
“Well, as I always say, no place is too far for those who live forever.”
“Is that what you say?”
“Among other scintillating things.”
She looked askance at me, her smile broadening, communicating something she long ago ceased to say aloud, that for someone who hadn’t much to say in the former life, I did a pretty fair job of compensating.
“You knew of my coming?” I asked.
“Shen Li told me.”
“Shen Li?” I asked, surprised. I thought she would say the Good Shepherd had told her.
Taking hands, we walked companionably beside the crystalline brook I’d already waded, our steps leading to the brow of the cliff upon which our houses sat. Over that brow and down its vertical face we descended as if on level ground, walking upon grass growing alongside the falling water like it was an emerald sward bordering any gently flowing stream.
The brook’s fifteen-foot wide stream, precipitously tumbling a thousand feet, would have been a noisy cataract on old earth. Here, it sang like the River of Life flowing down the center of Heaven’s main thoroughfare, only muted compared to that fabulous stream. On old earth, it also would have boiled up into a cauldron as it struck the basin below. Here, it entered a welcoming pool without a splash, peaceful and serene, as if the basin were too profoundly deep to register any disturbance upon its surface.
To stand upon the surface of the waters, letting the falls crash over my body, was what I hoped to do, something I’d done numerous times in my life in the Heavenly City. It was something I meant to do now, one hand linked with Zell’s. But she had other ideas. As we stepped from the cliffside to the pool, she continued walking, skimming the surface, my hand firmly in hers. The portal lay straight ahead.
“Shen Li, first?” I asked.
She smiled in agreement. We stepped into the portal’s shimmering light and emerged upon a terraced hillside planted with golden oak trees more majestic than any on Fair Ranar. Through those trees, down green-stepped aisles, both angels and Redeemed walked toward us, many of them carrying books, appropriate since we were on our way to one of Heaven’s great caches or repositories, this one devoted to the Pergamum Branch of Overcomers. Shen Li, though of the Smyrna Branch, was one of its historian-librarians. As we climbed, at length passing through the sheltering oaks, another broad terrace opened before us. A backward look would have revealed innumerable terraces descending into a golden mist: upward, the terraces appeared just as innumerable, shrouded in the same golden mist, and in the curious geometry of Heaven, to extend forever, without end, except that the place we were headed to would eventuate in a sort of side spur upon the mountain of God.
The oaks gave way to trees never seen on earth, trees whose bark was more silvery than any birch, with flaming leaves and softly-trilling flowers that resembled oversized snowballs. Lining both sides of our path, the trees reached out to each other, branches intertwining to form a tunnel-like, close knit sylvan canopy, telling us we were nearing our destination. Beyond them we would find a bulbous prominence topped with monoliths, each a precious gemstone matching those found in the heavenly city’s foundations. Though sandwiched between filigreed rings of transparent gold, they always reminded me of one of old earth’s henges. Unlike the preternatural dawn silence of those places, and unlike the studied quietude of a properly run library on old earth, this place was a hive of activity.
A golden mist shot with light from the gemstones suffused the place with glory. A squarely-built figure, with eyes illuminated by stern intelligence, stepped through the entry we’d chosen and walked purposefully in our direction. My mind automatically categorized him as one of the Watchers, those who’d most closely kept track of our Race’s doings throughout the millennia after Adam’s fall. Everything about him was block-like, suggestive of granite, including the massive head that should have struck one as alien but was nonetheless distinctly human.
“Shen Li?” Zell said, not really asking.
Our Watcher, also wingless like us, glanced at Zell in polite acknowledgement before turning piercingly gold eyes on me, tacitly indicating I alone was to meet with Shen Li. Letting go of Zell’s hand, I told her I would return shortly, and followed in his footsteps. Within the henge-like circle was an arena that could easily swallow Rome’s ancient Coliseum and leave room for ten more like it. Down gently graduated slopes we walked, the Watcher in the lead. Hundreds of yards below us, Shen Li turned from another of the Redeemed to await our arrival.
Throughout the arena were multitudes of others like Shen Li—keepers of the Heavenly repositories—of which this hallowed place was but one of seven. Though I didn’t know him as well as I knew many of the Redeemed, I did know he’d been a historian in ancient China, one whose God-given skills translated seamlessly from earth’s uses to Heaven’s. The elegant woman I’d seen speaking with Shen Li exchanged smiles with me in passing, and then he favored me with a courteous bow before handing a book to the Watcher and receiving one in return.
“Walk with me, Steward John,” Shen Li said, secreting the book in his robes and taking me by the elbow. The repository within the circle was immense, easily accommodating our numbers without crowding, and especially appealing for its many water features and scattering of fruit trees. Central to its most pleasant aspects were the bright voices of speech and song and the scenes that sprang from books lying open in the hands of
its visitors—each story a witness to Yahweh’s infinitely faceted grace toward the Redeemed. But these were the repository’s surface features; beneath were hidden warrens for the books themselves, frequented by the historian-librarians and certain classes of angels on behalf of the Redeemed.
“Do you remember the old life?” Shen Li asked without preamble.
“As much as anyone,” I said. “Or as little.” Some of the Redeemed remembered scarcely more of the old life than they did of the nine months spent in their mother’s womb, which I didn’t need to point out to him! If earth’s unpleasant memories had persisted for them, how could it have been Heaven?
“You’re not interested in your old life?”
“Why should I be, when all around us is the eternal present and its joys?”
“So these are wrong to investigate…?” He indicated the numerous visitors to the place, all of them seemingly mesmerized by the books in their hands.
I didn’t have to think about my answer; neither wrongdoers nor wrongdoing could enter or dwell here, in the New Jerusalem. If some were interested in the past, momentarily preoccupying themselves with certain of its details, doing so couldn’t be wrong.
“I don’t suppose anyone here is actually reviewing his or her own past. What would be the point in that? For myself, whenever I’ve read any of the histories, it’s been about other people. Every story of how God pulled His children out of the dark planet merits some degree of fascination.”
“An astute answer,” Shen Li said. “I believe he would agree.” By he, he meant the Watcher, who continued following us at a discreet distance.
“I doubt any of his kind were interested in my story.”
“You think the Watchers were interested only in the mighty—the rich—the famous?”
“Wasn’t everyone else?” I asked, returning his sidelong gaze.
“We could have him tell us.”
Noticing our backward glance, the Watcher advanced upon us. Shen Li bowed from the waist and was answered in like fashion.
“Melachiel?” Shen Li queried him.
“Some of my kind certainly would have followed your story, Steward John.” Seeing my genuine surprise, he asked, “How many of the rich and famous have you met in your Father’s house? You do remember He said it was terribly difficult for the rich to enter the kingdom of Heaven, don’t you? That He took pleasure in confounding the wise by exalting the humble?”
“Thank you,” Shen Li said, smiling brilliantly, taking my arm again to continue our walk. “Far more interesting to see if you could guess the Father’s intent, don’t you think? To discover which of the first would be last, and which of the last might be first?”
His remarks gave me pause to think. What, to a Watcher, I wondered, would constitute going from last to first? Reaching Heaven itself was infinitely greater than any dream of success I ever entertained on old earth.
“You’ve been summoned to the throne,” Melachiel called out, interrupting my thoughts. More people and angels evidently knew of my summons than I’d expected! What, I wondered, could possibly be exciting their interest?
Shen Li appeared amused. “Watchers never change,” he said in explanation. “You do know many of them serve the twenty-four elders, don’t you?”
If I’d ever known that fact, it’d never been more than peripherally; it wasn’t like I was a member of the Holy Names Branch, who could be said to rub elbows with the twenty-four elders.
“That’s why I was to meet with you?” I asked, still incredulous that the Watchers, and therefore those whom they served, had ever been interested in me.
Now walking with a slight forward bow, Shen Li folded his arms over his chest. “The life of the planetary steward—especially that rare Pergamum member—is fascinating to many of the branches, even instructive.”
Everyone knew learning more about God’s children and the seven branches of Overcomers was a means of understanding Him better: didn’t we individually and corporately display various aspects of the Creator and His works? These were rudimentary facts. Was he about to reveal why I’d been summoned to the throne?
Reading my thoughts, he said, “I will tell you this: When any of the Watchers who serve the twenty-four elders become interested in a particular individual, it tells me I too should pay closer attention.”
“One begins to recognize these things?”
“There are patterns, and this is my work—which I’m very good at—” He held up one hand to forestall further questioning and instead aimed us toward the center of the arena proper, onto a gleaming alabaster stage. Atop this stage were columns laid out in a perfect square, forming a courtyard whose circumference ran at least a mile. Like those gemstones crowning the great bowl rising above us, these too were made without human hands, made just as the city had been: but these seemed to have been carved out of sky itself, or skies of different, shifting hues, with varicolored clouds, each borrowed from a different world. The light shining from within the courtyard was like the light shining from Elyon’s throne and the throne room, and each column glowed as if swaddled in a baize of emerald. I looked questioningly at Shen Li, who urged me onto the stage with a gesture of his head.
“I wish to see us remedy our lack of chronicling your life on Fair Ranar as it should be,” he continued.
“How?” I asked.
Reaching into his robes, he withdrew the book I’d seen Melachiel bring him, and handed it over.
“You yourself will chronicle it for us.”
“Me?”
“These things are always best written in the first person.” As I reluctantly took the book from him, he reassured me that I would know what to write. “He does express Himself through each of us in a unique way, does He not?”
Beyond the courtyard’s threshold, which he clearly intended to cross, lay a reflecting pool, its heart occupied by a golden altar. Was I really to enter here? From within this place, a sort of nexus, had once shone images of the earthly conflict and Heaven’s victories over dark forces, while Heaven’s citizens watched from upon the bowl’s undulating slopes. Often, I myself had joined the thronging millions dressed in white, that veritable cloud of witnesses…
“Are you ready?” Shen Li asked.
Upon the altar was another book. Contrasting with the plain, gold-bound one I’d slipped inside my robes, this one glowed crimson and might be ruby. Even at this distance, its glory and holiness were palpable.
“The Whitestone Holder is welcome here,” I said, reflexively touching the pendant hanging from my neck. Shen Li nodded in agreement, and without further hesitation we entered that sacred place, walking on mirrored water that looked, because of the courtyard’s exotic columns, as if it were a moving kaleidoscope of skies beneath our feet.
The place crackled with power. Above the altar and its book, the same green effulgence that spilled between the columns splashed like a cataract poured from a great height.
“This is the second reason—the real reason—you were called here.”
Unsure of how to reply, and feeling nearly overwhelmed, I said nothing. What could I add?
“Have you seen it before?” He asked, surely knowing as well as I that all of the Redeemed had seen this book and their names recorded in it—The Lamb’s Book of Life. But at this proximity? No—
Reverently extending one hand, he opened the book without picking it up. White light shot from its pages, cleaving the book’s halo of red. Upon those pages were names written in something infinitely more precious than purest gold or the rarest of jewels—the blood of the Lamb. Seeing it, seeing my own name rise from amid the vast hosts of other names and knowing without Christ’s sacrifice none of us would ever have been redeemed, my heart welled up in gratitude.
“Never forget,” Shen Li said.
Forget? How could I? How could anyone, when it was the basis of all that we enjoyed in Heaven? Compared to this, the most precious memories of the old life w
ere nothing!
Raising a cautionary finger, he said, “This too.”
“This?”
Nodding, he gestured for me to look closer.
I saw it then for the first time, a sort of addendum, a branching off of names. Above mine, written in fancifully ornate gold script, was my father’s, ultimately beginning with Christ’s, and after mine were Lulu Clause’s and Tryg Olssen’s.
“Begats,” I said. He bowed in agreement. Underneath their names were other begats. Those under Lulu were mostly African and ran into the thousands, from a place long ago called Burkina Faso.
“Do you understand the importance of the begats?” He asked. The question triggered a memory of my first struggles with dry Biblical genealogies—short-lived struggles, since I’d always thereafter skipped over them in my Bible reading. Being named in such lists made all the difference in the world: through them, the Jewish exiles, returning to Israel after their sojourn in Babylon, were able to establish their authenticity as inheritors of the land and its covenants. This addendum to the Lamb’s Book of Life served as similar evidence, proof of a spiritual legacy transmitted from generation to generation of believers, speaking of inheritance and its rights and advantages. Would I be standing here, now, if not for the begats that came before me? Would those names after mine be there if not for me?
“Remember,” Shen Li said, bowing solemnly in my direction. “Remember also your own book, Steward John Raventhorst. Every believer’s story is different: every believer’s story is the same.”
Turning away he walked from the courtyard, arms crossed, hunched over in his characteristic semi-bow, evidently intent upon his next appointment. At the same time, the book closed as if by unseen hands. The light emanating from its pages retreated and the crimson halo again circled both altar and book. Together, they rose into the air, drawn skyward by the cataract of emerald light.
As I watched, two magnificent angels materialized above the courtyard, their brightness equal to the molten sun at its zenith. Catching hold of the altar poles at either end, they leaned toward each other, with wings curling up and over their heads. Knowing what was to come, I held my breath in anticipation, awaiting the collision of their wingtips. A thunderous concatenation followed, shaking the courtyard, rivaled only by the resulting conflagration of glory, like one might witness at the collision of twin stars.
Then they disappeared—angels, book, and altar—instantly transported back to a greater, even holier courtyard, except that the book’s crimson halo persisted for a long, ineffable moment. Seeing it finally vanish alike wrenched at my heart. How, I wondered, could Shen Li or anyone else possibly touch that book and then turn and walk away from it?
Only gradually did I become aware of the Watcher’s heavy, nearly claustrophobic presence. Melachiel stood at the courtyard’s threshold, regarding me intently, his gaze, from eyes too deep and massive to be human, somehow oddly familiar, doubly stamping meaning and significance upon all that I had witnessed here. Then he, too, vanished.