Gate (9781441240569)

by Stouten, Dann A.

  I was in grad school then, but even though we really had to pinch our pennies, I remember those years as some of the best of our lives. Jesus once told the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and then come follow him. We had done just that—or at least we had chased the dream we thought God had planted in our hearts—and there was something exuberant about it. We knew deep down in our bones that the reward would one day outweigh the cost. I still believe that, but I’m not sure I’d be ready to do it again at this stage of my life. You get cautious when you get older. Maybe it’s because you know what it costs to try to start over again in life, or maybe it’s because you’ve got more to lose.

  When Jesus left this life to go to the next, he promised to prepare a place for us also.

  If this was heaven, then the good news was that they were expecting me. I couldn’t help but be reminded that when Jesus left this life to go to the next, he promised to prepare a place for us also. After changing clothes, I lay on the bed, looked up at the stars, and started to say my prayers. “My Father which art in heaven—am I in heaven too?” I fell asleep before I finished the prayer.

  In the morning, I awoke to the smell of coffee and bacon. The sun was shining, and I felt great. I can’t remember the last time I slept that well. I got up, grabbed the robe, and walked across the hall to the bathroom. I splashed some water in my face and squeezed some toothpaste onto the brush, rolling it from the bottom like I always do. I started brushing my teeth and then glanced up at the mirror.

  To my surprise, the man looking back at me was much younger than I am. It was me, but it wasn’t, or at least it wasn’t who I’d been for a long time. My hair was longer, thicker, and blonder. The crow’s-feet had disappeared from around my eyes, my cheeks were tan, and my chin was more pronounced. I looked like I did twenty-five years ago. I couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

  I remembered reading somewhere that Thomas Aquinas believed we’d all be thirty-three years old in heaven because that’s how old Jesus was at the resurrection—old enough to avoid the foolish mistakes of youth, and young enough to avoid the pain and suffering of old age. It looked like the old saint was right!

  I walked back to my room whistling and started to get dressed. I grabbed a Noah’s Ark T-shirt and a pair of shorts, but then I noticed the size. They were 34s, and I was a snug 36. “Well, they don’t get everything right here,” I said to myself. But when I tried them on, they fit with room to spare. My hair might have been thicker, but my waist was definitely thinner.

  Thomas Aquinas believed we’d all be thirty-three in heaven.

  I bounced down the stairs and walked into the dining room where the table was already set for breakfast. There was a large, round, light maple table with six ladder-back chairs. Six more chairs hung from hooks on the wall, suggesting that the table could be expanded as needed. Next to the table was a matching sideboard with leaded glass doors, and a large vase of fresh cut flowers sat on top of it. A watercolor painting of three children playing at the beach was hanging on the wall. “That looks like my sister, my brother, and me,” I said.

  “It is!” said a voice from the kitchen. I was expecting to see Ahbee making breakfast, but instead, a Middle Eastern man in his thirties walked out smiling. He was wearing cuffed blue jeans, Keen sandals, and a well-worn gray T-shirt that said “Lowe’s” on the pocket.

  “I’m Josh,” he said with a bit of an accent, and he extended his hand, swallowing mine in a crushing grip. I couldn’t help but notice that his calloused hands were scarred and twisted, like he’d been in some kind of industrial accident.

  “Sky,” he said, “it is so good to have you here.”

  Once again, I felt at a disadvantage. Whoever this was, he seemed to know me.

  “I am Ahbee’s son,” he said, as if he were reading my thoughts. “And he has asked me to spend some time with you today.”

  As I looked more carefully at the young man before me, I saw a definite family resemblance. He looked like a younger version of Ahbee, but taller. His skin was more olive in tone, his nose more pronounced, and his eyes were the color of baking chocolate. His words and his appearance were inviting. There was something magnetic about the man, and it made you want to get to know him better.

  “Where are my manners?” he continued. “Sit down, sit down! How do you want your eggs?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “I usually have fruit for breakfast, and maybe some whole grain cereal. I’ve got to watch my cholesterol, you know.”

  “Not here, you don’t! How about we make them sunny-side up along with an order of heavenly hash browns?”

  “Sounds good to me!”

  When he handed me the plate, it also had orange slices and four strips of bacon, crispy and crumbling, just the way I like it. The hash browns were shaped into a patty, and when I cut into them, there was in fact hash inside, along with a finely minced onion and a little yellow pepper. I bowed my head and prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for this day and for this food.”

  Like Ahbee, the young man said, “You’re welcome.”

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” I asked.

  “I already ate,” Josh replied. “But I’ll break bread with you.” As he reached across the table and grabbed a loaf of freshly baked whole grain bread, again I noticed the scars on his hands.

  I was still uncertain where I was and who I was with, but clearly this was a place of wonderment.

  “Should I call you Jesus?” I asked, testing my suspicions.

  “You may,” he answered. “But Joshua is the name my mother gave me, and so nowadays most everyone just calls me Josh.”

  “That would be Mary?” I asked.

  “Of course,” he responded. “Of course, you know her name as well as I.”

  “And the Keens?” I continued. “Aren’t they a little out of costume for you?”

  “I’ve always been a sandal man,” Josh answered. “And the Keens are very comfortable.”

  I remained skeptical, but if this Josh was who he said he was, I had lots of questions for him.

  “What do you want to do today?” Josh asked.

  “I didn’t know it was up to me,” I retorted. “I thought you guys set the agenda here.”

  “No, it’s like Michael said, ‘The choice is yours’—it’s always yours.”

  “Well then, if it’s up to me, I’d like to spend a little time with you.”

  “Sounds good,” Josh replied. “Sounds very good.”

  I had hoped we’d spend our time talking about the suffering of the world and the second coming. Sin and suffering were two things that I’d seen more than my share of in the last twenty-five years. When I started out as a staff psychologist at the state prison in Easton, I saw it played out in every session. Every inmate there had been both a victim and a predator at some point in their lives, and their stories haunted my dreams and almost strangled my faith in humanity. It got especially bad for me when I started seeing people I’d recommended for release come back as repeat offenders in only a matter of months.

  We talked a lot of Jesus there, especially in the lifer’s wing, but it had little effect on how most of them lived their lives. Clearly evil was more present in that place than anywhere I’d ever been, and eventually I knew I had to get out of there.

  I thought it would be better when I started working in the psych ward at Silver Ridge Hospital, but it wasn’t. Evil simply popped up in other ways. This time it was more the evil of the system than the people. Over and over again I found myself asking God to do something, or at least to give us enough time to do something that made a difference in these people’s lives, but sadly most of my prayers seemed to go unanswered. The insurance ran out before we could make any real progress, and most people went home with their demons in tow.

  Eventually cynicism won out and I went into private practice, mostly for the money. Still, partly to appease my guilty conscience, and partly because it was who I wanted to be, I called it the Christian Compass Counseling Center
and added the byline “Helping people find their way back on the right path.” That’s truly what I wanted to do, even what I felt called to do, and for a while at least I felt like that was what I was doing, but somewhere along the way I started to realize that the only permanent solution to the suffering of the world was the second coming of Jesus.

  And then, by some mysterious twist of fate, I found myself walking beside the very one who could do something about it all. Unfortunately, instead of doing it, Josh wanted to walk up the hill behind the cottage in silence. I had so many questions and so many suggestions for what he might do, but I knew if that kind of a conversation was going to take place, he would have to start it.

  To my great disappointment, he didn’t. The two of us spent the day silently cutting lumber at the old sawmill that overlooked the garden. After a couple hours of sawdust and silence I began to feel a sense of accomplishment in this simple task that I hadn’t felt in a long time. I marveled as I watched how efficiently Josh worked the wood through the saw. His movements were fluid and purposeful, with no wasted energy whatsoever. There was a gracefulness to his steps, almost like a ballet, and even though the work was exhausting, it was also satisfying. This is the way work is supposed to be, I thought.

  My work, on the other hand, felt unsatisfying and unfinished, at least lately. I measured most sessions by the clock, not by the progress we made. In fact, I almost always ended by saying, “We’ll pick it up here next time you come in.” Not that there weren’t breakthroughs—there were—but rarely did things ever come to a clear ending point. With so much brokenness in the world, I felt like the work was never finished.

  For a moment I looked at Josh working a long wooden beam through the saw, and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered his words from the cross: “It is finished.” For the first time I realized that in that moment he must have had a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that he did his work really well.

  That’s what’s been missing in my work lately, I thought. What I wanted, what I needed was to hear someone say, “You did a good job. Well done. I’m proud of you.” In that moment it was so clear. We were created with a purpose. Each of us has a job to do. Work is an integral part of life, and it always has been. Right at the beginning Adam was put in the Garden and told to work it, and we’ve been working it ever since.

  Nothing satisfies the soul like feeling we’ve accomplished something.

  Could it be? Was that it? Had Josh been trying to tell me all day that our work will never really be done, not even here?

  The idea that people worked in heaven took me by surprise. For some reason I’d thought that heaven was like retirement—nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it. But now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense. We’re all made in God’s image, after all. And like him, we’ve all been given the ability to create. Besides, nothing satisfies the soul like feeling we’ve accomplished something.

  “I am so very proud of you,” Josh said. “You’re finally beginning to put some of the pieces together on your own. It’s that kind of thinking that’s needed if we’re going to be delivered from evil and put an end to the conspiracy once and for all.”

  I was about to ask him what he meant by that when he raised his index finger to his lips, shook his head, and said, “Now’s not the time for more information. Now is the time for you to unpack and reprocess what you already know. Understanding comes slowly, in bits and pieces. One thing builds upon another. Too much too soon will only confuse you. Trust me, it will all be clear to you when you’re ready. Besides, right now we’ve got work to do.”

  The sawmill was an old building made of barn wood, and the sunlight streaked in between the slats. The floor was covered with dirt and sawdust. At one end was a pile of newly cut logs in ten-foot lengths. Josh had a pencil on his ear and a list in his pocket, and he knew exactly how many pieces of each length he wanted. We measured and cut the boards to the lengths written on Josh’s lumber list, and by mid-afternoon we had worked our way through several piles of lumber of various sizes. We had one-by-fours, two-by-fours, four-by-fours, two-by-sixes, and two-by-tens each separated and stacked in racks by size. The last stack of boards we had to cut were two-by-tens that were twelve feet long. They each needed to be trimmed to eleven feet seven inches. I measured and marked each board, and Josh cut them to size, but when we got down to the last board I discovered that it was three inches short.

  “Do you want me to go get another two-by-ten out of the stacks?” I asked.

  “No,” Josh said. “That’s all right, we’ll make do with this one.” Then he grabbed the board firmly with both hands and stretched it lengthwise like it was made of Play-Doh. When he handed it to me, I placed it on the pile with the others, and it was exactly eleven feet seven inches.

  “There,” he said. “I think that’s enough for today. I don’t know about you, but I could use something to drink.” The two of us were both hot and sweaty and covered in sawdust, and as we walked over to an old pump in the corner of the barn, Josh motioned to a row of cups on the wall. I found my name neatly lettered on one.

  “Grab mine too, will ya?” Josh asked. And I did. We took turns pumping and drinking, and the lumber list fell out of his pocket and onto the dirt floor. As he picked it up I couldn’t help but notice what it said at the top of the list.

  “Excuse me, Josh,” I said kind of sheepishly. “But I think that piece of paper in your pocket has my last name on it.”

  “You’re right,” Josh replied. “It does. Does that surprise you? But you’re not the only Hunt in the world, you know. Besides, I’ve always been very clear about this. When I left, I said that I was going to prepare a place for you. At the time, of course, the ‘you’ was plural, but for anyone who answers when I knock on the door of their heart, it becomes singular, a personal promise between us. And I always make good on my promises.”

  “You’re not planning on making good on that promise to me anytime soon, are you?”

  “It’s always sooner than anyone thinks,” he said. “But not now, not today, anyway. That day will come when you least expect it, like a thief in the night.”

  Thinking about one’s own demise is always sobering, and as I sat and contemplated the gravity of his words, I thought how my death might impact the people I loved the most. I wanted to ask for more time, because they’re not ready yet. To be honest, I’m not ready yet, and that’s when I saw it: half buried in the sawdust was a little blue baseball cap with the name “Ben” stitched above the bill.

  “That’s Ben’s hat!” I said excitedly.

  “You’re right,” Josh replied. “He lost it the summer he was seven when the two of you walked up here looking for pirate treasure.”

  Memories came flooding back. One cloudy day in July, we packed a couple of peanut butter sandwiches and went exploring. Ben loved adventure, and he and I would often take a hike just to see what we could see. That day he wanted to pretend we were pirates looking for lost gold. When we found that abandoned sawmill, it became our pirate ship for the afternoon.

  We climbed up into the loft, swung on a rope that hung from the rafters, and made swords out of some one-bys. I was chasing Ben around, and as he tried to scamper up the ladder, he slipped and fell into the pile of sawdust. It knocked the wind out of him, and for a minute I thought he was really hurt bad. I was relieved when he caught his breath and started crying, but when I walked him back home my mother wasn’t very happy with me.

  “Where have you boys been?” she asked. “And why is Ben crying?”

  Ben told her how he fell off a ladder in an old sawmill, and then she was all over me.

  “You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on him, Sky,” she said in a reprimanding tone. “What were you doing in a sawmill? Ben could have been killed or something. I swear, sometimes I wonder what you’re thinking. If you can’t keep out of trouble, then maybe you boys better stick around the cottage.”

  That afternoon we had to stay inside and play Monop
oly with my sister, which to two adventurous boys was just a waste of good daylight.

  That night I said to Ben, “If you want to hang with the big boys, there’s going to be no crying! Do you understand?”

  He nodded that he did, and as far as I knew, Ben never cried again.

  Then it hit me. Here I was spending the day with Jesus, and I was lost on a trip down memory lane. What was I thinking? I was about to apologize to him like I do sometimes when my mind starts wandering while I’m praying, but he spoke before I could.

  “We worked right through lunch. I don’t know what I was thinking! I’m supposed to be keeping an eye on you. I better get you back before your supper company gets here.”

  As we walked back down the hill, I said, “Josh, I have so many unanswered questions.”

  “I know,” he replied. “But you’ve just got to be patient. Answers take time. Wisdom takes endurance.”

  After that, he put his hand on my shoulder, and we walked in silence.

  5

  encouragement

  Bart, having never received any words of encouragement myself, I’m not sure how they’re supposed to sound. But here goes: I believe in you.

  Lisa Simpson

  I was getting dressed when I noticed it: A two-tone, blue metallic ’57 Chevy Bel Air was parking alongside the cottage. As I watched, I realized that Florence Kowalski was inside.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes. “Florence!” I shouted from the open window. “Is that really you?”

  She waved, and I ran down the stairs and out the door to greet her.

  Florence stood outside the passenger side door with her arms open, ready to greet me.

  “Just look at you,” she said, hugging me as though it were perfectly normal for dead friends to come calling in the late afternoon. “Aren’t you the handsome one? You look so much like your mother. Of course, you always did. I can’t believe it . . . little Schuyler Hunt all grown up, and a doctor too. She’s so proud of you.”