by Randy Alcorn
The cosmos had been reoriented. For a moment, the upside down became right side up.
No sooner had this happened than everything became just like before, horizontal again—two worlds joined by one bridge, the great tree, and the Woodsman once more the size of a man.
Throughout my education and upbringing, the retaining walls of my mind had been carefully constructed to deny the supernatural, to explain away the miraculous. Now they fell to the ground like flimsy shacks in a hurricane.
I knew, in the face of the Woodsman’s return from the abyss and his reentry into the world of the living, that the course of my journey had been charted by an unseen hand, which had led me not just to this world but to this moment.
I felt awe. But also terror.
I watched the Woodsman approach a young woman, gaunt and dirty and wounded. Wait, I knew her. It was Malaiki. I had seen her on the red road. She and the Woodsman were too far away for me to hear.
Eventually they moved toward the tree. They climbed up and walked upon it. Malaiki seemed to buckle and falter, as if in pain. I feared she would fall. But now it became hard to see them—perhaps it was the sweat in my eyes. I could see only one blended form now, and soon it moved out of sight.
Despite the distance, it wasn’t long before the Woodsman came back, without Malaiki. I felt envy and resentment. Why had he taken her and not me? Next he chose a man, handsome and young, who hung his head and bit his nails while they talked. What was going through his mind? Did he have the same doubts and fears as I? What was the Woodsman telling him? If only I could hear.
Eventually he, too, walked with the Woodsman to the tree. I thought I saw the young man shake, and I heard him cry out as he stepped onto it. Was the Woodsman pushing him? Forcing him? Or just holding him up?
The two of them walked the tree until they finally disappeared into the western sky.
Why had the Woodsman come for others before coming for me? Would he come for me at all? And what would I do if he didn’t?
I’d do what I’d always done. I’d take care of myself. Besides, once they were out of my sight, the others likely fell to their death. One false move on that long walk and they’d plunge into the abyss. Perhaps they’d been shoved off. Yes, the Woodsman might have taken them away only to punish them for torturing him with the nails. This very moment they might be falling headlong into that bottomless pit.
I won’t let that happen to me.
Now the Woodsman returned again—was he coming for me?
No, he went to another. But she didn’t walk with him to the tree. Instead, after just a few minutes of conversation with him, she turned around and ambled away from the chasm.
I noticed many others walking away as well. They had found the chasm unsettling and upsetting. They were returning to the dead-end roads, preferring their empty fantasies to this bloody reality. A few of them joined the woman, giving her company on the road going back.
She hadn’t gone more than thirty feet when she stopped to look back at the Woodsman, then turned and kept walking farther. A hundred feet away, she glanced back again, then once more at perhaps three times that distance. When one of her companions tugged on her arm, she departed for good, turning her back to the chasm and to the Woodsman.
I watched, almost hypnotized by her departure as she disappeared on the plain.
I could run and catch her within ten minutes.
I took several steps in her direction. But what would I tell her when I caught her? Would I try to bring her back here? Or would I go away with her, as far away from this place as I could? Part of me answered one way, part the other. I didn’t know which part I should listen to.
When at last I looked back toward the chasm, I saw someone else walking the tree with the Woodsman. An older man, he appeared to slip and fall. My heart stopped, until the crosser of the chasm pulled him up again. They disappeared, and I couldn’t see what was happening.
Would the Woodsman come back for me?
Did I want him to?
TWELVE
fter a long wait, I raised my eyes from the powdered bone and dust. The Woodsman was returning, taking long, deliberate strides atop the fallen tree. I felt my heart in my throat.
He was headed right for me.
Though he was unmistakably a man, even at a distance I could see his eyes, wild and uncontrollable, the eyes of a lion. Not a lion who would be tamed, but a fierce king with jaws that could devour me at any moment.
As he came near, I stared into those eyes, deep and dark. He looked at me through lenses far bigger than a man’s. Those eyes were doorways to another world. He saw every inch of me, outside and in. That made me squirm.
I looked down at his hands and feet and shuddered at the scars I saw there. I examined my bloodstained hands and stared at the ground, utterly ashamed.
He spoke my name.
I said nothing and didn’t look up.
“The deed is done,” he announced. “The price is paid. The red road continues now. I have made it so. The tree is there to cross. Now at last, as image-bearers have feared to dream, there is a way to Charis, the City of Light. Will you accept my invitation to cross the chasm?”
“But how can it be crossed? It’s so huge.”
“The chasm is huge, but the tree is bigger still. And I am far bigger even than the tree.”
I asked him about the others who’d gone before me. “Did they make it to the far side? Or did they … fall off and die?”
“They did not fall off. But in a sense they did die.”
What? My stomach tightened.
“You cannot cross the chasm without dying. But if you stay here, you will also die. If you walk the tree, you will die in a different way. But the tree is the only way to life. In one way, you’re already dead, though you’ve continued to exist. You may choose to die and stay dead, or you may die and embrace life—but in either case you must die. Nothing that has not died can be raised from the dead.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t have to understand. But in order to cross the chasm, you have to trust me.”
“I’ll do what I can, but … I’m not sure it will be enough.”
“I am sure what you can do will never be enough.” He said it with kindness in his eyes, yet it hit me like an insult. “You cannot earn your way, Nick. You must give up on that idea. You may receive the gift of passage I freely offer, the gift I purchased. Admit your responsibility for the abyss. Acknowledge that you pierced my skin with your nails. Affirm that I am the World Shaper who crossed the chasm for you. Ask me to deliver you from all that torments you. And invite me to walk you across the chasm.”
Objections descended on me like a swarm of flies. I felt a terrible sting within. I remembered Joshua telling me, “Be careful whom you trust.” Could I really trust the Woodsman? Maybe he wasn’t who he appeared to be. Maybe he only wanted to get me over the chasm so he could push me off the tree.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “I don’t think I’m ready.”
“I’ve done what was necessary. I’ve made my choice—now you must make yours.”
I balked at that, hungering to have more certainty before making any decision. I looked at him, shrugging my shoulders. “Just … who are you?” I asked.
“I am the Source of your life and of your dreams. I am what you dream of when your dreams are good. But be warned—to those who do not embrace the good dream, I become the nightmare.”
I shivered at the tone of his voice.
“You’ve only now begun to see me clearly—and there’s much about me you still don’t see. Do you have something to say to me?”
I stayed quiet for several minutes. Then I swallowed hard, both eager to talk and dreading it.
“I used to be so sure of myself,” I began, “certain I wasn’t to blame, that whatever went wrong was someone else’s fault. I blamed my wife, my children, my father, my co-workers, the church, the neighbors. And maybe … you, though I didn’t know it was
you.”
He stared at me, attentive but silent, refusing to let me off the hook by speaking.
I choked a bit. “I feel like all my life I’ve been wrapped up in nothing but myself, full of self-deception and self-pity and self-preoccupation.”
The Woodsman looked at me, nodding. He waited, as if I must say more.
I obliged, rehearsing to him every offense, every failing, everything I could think of—everything from pride and arrogance to lust and greed and the failure to be the man my wife and children needed. It took a long time, because the more I said, the more my eyes were opened to what I’d never seen before. Each confession led to the next, like a mile of dominoes falling on each other.
Finally I said, “That’s all I can think of for now. But there must be many other wrongs I’ve done.”
“Yes,” he said. “In time I’ll show them to you so at last you may be free of them.”
I shuddered, wondering what he was thinking of. But as I gazed into his eyes, his words gave me comfort. A wild river of peace I hadn’t known since childhood, if even then, flooded my barren insides and lapped at its dusty banks. My craggy heart, for a moment at least, stopped aching and became soft to the Woodsman’s touch.
Quietly he took my hand, and we walked to the tree. I looked down at the abyss and felt my face twitch. Sweat dripped from my forehead to my cheeks.
“What if I fall?” I asked him.
I expected to hear reassurance, but he said nothing. With his help I stepped onto the tree, which was red with blood. My feet were cut immediately, and I began to bleed. I walked only ten yards before my feet were bloody pulps, and I could go no farther.
I looked at him, not knowing what to do—knowing only that I wanted to cross the chasm but could not.
The Woodsman picked me up and held me in his arms. For a fleeting moment I remembered my father holding me like this when he carried me into the emergency room after my bike accident on my tenth birthday.
The Woodsman walked on, picking up the pace. If he made one false step, I’d fall into the abyss. For an instant I wished I’d stayed on the safe ground of the chasm’s edge.
Safe? I questioned myself. How much worse could anything be than lying abandoned on the rim of the abyss?
If the Woodsman couldn’t do what he claimed, I was lost. But, I told myself, if he can’t do what he claims, all is lost anyway.
As we crossed the chasm, he stopped near the middle. His great scarred hands wiped the dirt and blood off me and onto himself. The dirtier the Woodsman became, the cleaner I became, until he was completely dirty and I was completely clean.
I looked down into the abyss and shivered at the spiraling darkness below, a drain that seemed to suck ever downward. He drew me close to his chest, and I felt secure in his strong arms. What place could be safer? I gazed into those wide brown eyes and felt I was seeing him, and all the universe itself, for the first time.
As we approached the far edge of the chasm, I knew something deep inside me, something remarkable, paradoxical, even impossible: though it was still me, I knew without a doubt that I was not the same person who’d stepped out onto the tree.
As we came to the end of the tree I pointed toward Charis, more beautiful than ever, a Paradise of laughter and joy. For the first time I was close enough to see trees and flowers and waterfalls, a great river and animals bounding near its banks. It was so much closer than before, almost within reach. The Woodsman smiled as he saw my delight. Seemingly he found joy in my joy, or was it that I found joy in his?
On the chasm’s other side, the Woodsman leapt off the tree with me still in his arms, cushioning me from the impact. When he put my feet on the ground, I looked at the new terrain, lush with vegetation. I looked back at the abyss and gazed wide-eyed at how far we’d come.
I stared down into the chasm. Was I imagining this? How could we have crossed something so immense in what had seemed only a few minutes?
The Woodsman put his hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw up close the terrible gash in his flesh. Looking at his eyes, I didn’t know if I was seeing his tears or mine. Or both.
“I did it for you,” he told me.
I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I would have done it for you alone.”
I hung my head, feeling both unworthiness and awe.
“And if there was need, I would do it for you again.”
I looked at him and could only wonder why.
“But there is no need to ever do it again. It is finished. Paid in full.”
I reached down to my left pocket. I gasped as I felt the bulge. One by one I pulled out the shafts of pointed metal. On them I saw dried blood. How could this be?
“I still have nails in my pocket.”
“Yes. But only for now. There will be none in Charis.”
I looked at him with surprise. Weren’t we about to enter Charis?
“I don’t deserve what you’ve done for me,” I said.
“Of course you don’t.” He smiled. “If you deserved it, you wouldn’t need it. And I wouldn’t have had to die to give it to you.”
“But if you knew all I’ve done, all that’s inside me …”
“If? Do you still not understand? I know everything. I’m never taken by surprise. There are no skeletons in your closet. I took care of them all. You were wrong—I don’t expect the impossible of you. But I’ve done the impossible for you.”
He reached out his hands to me, hands I once would have thought monstrous. I held them, putting my fingers on his scars. I lowered my forehead to his marred hands.
When I looked up, I gazed at Charis, poised beautifully on a mountain, appearing more distant than just a minute before, though reachable now, the red road winding toward it. But why did it still seem far away?
“I’m confused,” I said to the Chasm Crosser. “We’re not there yet.”
“No. Your journey isn’t over. Your service for me is just beginning. There was no work you could do for me on the other side of the chasm. But I have much work for you to do on this side.”
“And when the work is done?”
“Then you’ll enter Charis, capital city of my unending country that stretches to the far reaches of this world and all worlds. And should you ever make it to the end, I’ll create new worlds for you that surpass anything you’ve ever imagined.”
I felt my ears move back, pushed by my grin. But I wondered whether my smile could be as big as his.
“I don’t want to wait. I long to go to Charis now.”
“Why?” he asked, surprising me.
“To escape from reality—maybe that’s part of it.”
He laughed. “Going to Charis is not escaping reality—it’s entering reality! You’ve always lived in the Shadowlands. Yet in your dreams I’ve given you glimpses of the City of Light. That’s why Charis has always called to you. That’s why you’ve always longed for it—even when you walked the roads that robbed you of joy and hope.”
“But why is it still far away?” I asked, pointing to the west.
“At moments Charis will seem close to you; sometimes it will seem impossibly far. But as you walk the red road, at every day’s end you’ll be one day closer to Charis. One day closer to me. One day closer to home.”
“Home?”
“Yes. The world you were made for. The world I am making for you.”
“Will I miss life on earth?”
He looked at me oddly. “You will live forever on the earth! A transformed earth, where I will put my throne, where I will forever dwell with my people. You will have a new body—your old body made new. You will have a new mind—your old mind made new. You will live on a new earth—the old earth made new. I don’t give up, you know. I didn’t give up on the earth, and I didn’t give up on you. I came not to destroy but to redeem my fallen creation.”
“I won’t have to give up the things I love about this world?”
“On the contrary, all that is good in this world will be part
of the world to come. What will be forever gone are death and evil and suffering and the dark lord and his beasts. The best is yet to come. My children never pass their peak in this earth. They will at last reach their peak on the new earth.” He smiled broadly. “You will, as the storytellers say, all live happily ever after.”
“Will you stay with me until then?”
“I’m going ahead. I’ll be there to welcome you when you arrive.”
My heart sang and sank in the same moment.
“You’re leaving me then?”
“Not really. I’ll be inside.” He put his hand on my chest. “And I’ll be around you, even when you can’t see me. Don’t imagine I’ve left. I will never leave you, never forsake you. Never.”
“How will I know the way?”
He handed me a big book with an old, worn cover. “This is my guidebook. Its stories, words of wisdom and truth, will show you the way. You must read it daily and ponder its words and ask my help to obey them.”
“But even with the book … how will I survive the dangers of the road? How will I keep from turning around or dying on the way?”
“You must no longer travel alone.”
“But … who will I travel with?”
“My followers. You have met some of them. You must walk with them and help each other believe and understand and follow my book. You must remind each other of my promises, speaking of me and talking to me.”
“But some of your followers are … well, difficult.”
“Yes,” he said. “Nearly as difficult as you are.” He smiled. “But it is nonetheless essential that you walk the road together and treat each other as I have treated you. How you relate to each other is of utmost importance to me.”
“But these people aren’t easy to get along with.”
“And you are? Don’t fall back into the arrogance you’ve just confessed. You need each other all the more because you’re so flawed. The enemy will do all he can to set you at each other’s throats.”