When Nathan felt that he was able to continue along the path, he placed one dirty shoe in front of the other and continued on his way, leaving the rose covered bush and its mangle of vines and thorns behind. He focused on taking each step one by one and being wary of what the path held in store for him next. He was so focused on the journey that he never noticed when Nuncio appeared and began to walk along side of him. The two walked onward, side by side, stepping in time so as to make the sound of only one pair of feet on the gravel imbedded path. Even though Nuncio’s feet made no sound anyway.
Nathan walked with his head hung low from the burden he assessed upon himself as a failure. His no longer neatly groomed hair dangled limply permeated with sweat and dirt. His arms hung loosely by his sides and his feet stepping without spring or bounce.
“Why so glum?” Nuncio asked in a nonsensical tone, startling Nathan and making him jump back to life and three feet into the verity.
“You have got to stop doing that!” He yelled swinging his arms and legs like he was having a seizer.
Nuncio stood there entertained for a moment his silvery hair blowing across his unspecific face. Then he offered his thin pale hand to Nathan, helping him out of the verity and back on the path.
“I’m going to tie a bell around your neck so I can hear you coming.” Nathan scolded him.
“You might have heard me if you were being more observant. But you were looking down at the steps you were taking rather than being aware of your surroundings.”
“So it’s my fault that I didn’t hear you.” He huffed and turned, “Why not, everything else is my fault.”
“That depends.” Nuncio replied as a mater-of-fact.
“Depends on what?”
Nuncio began to walk and Nathan copied, desperate to hear anything that he might use to understand more, even if it meant being insulted again. He watched Nuncio brush the tops of the verity looking not so much at it but rather through it.
“Depends on what?” he asked again.
“You.” He pulled his hand away from the verity and looked into Nathan's eyes. “Everything you do is up to you. It is your choice to do or not to do. It is your choice to go or not to go. It is your choice to know or to ignore and it is your choice to make a choice or not.
You are not a child anymore but you are young and although you have knowledge you only share some. You are to blame and you are to be awarded. It wouldn’t make sense to only take responsibility for your accomplishments if you are not willing to take responsibility for your failures also.
There is an opposite for everything. They are used to help you understand the level of all things.”
“The level?” Nathan interrupted.
Nuncio knelt down. “Most everything is connected to its opposite.” He said picking up a wooden switch. He held the stick in his right hand and placed it in his robe. Then with his left hand he grasped it wrapped in his garment and began to pull it out. The dried and brittle stick slid out of the robe but rather than being the tan and brown it was, it had become black as charcoal. The more he pulled it out the lighter it became until when it was completely removed, the other end was bright white.
He handed the switch to Nathan, “one end is black and it represents evil or death, hate or pain you can pick. The other end is white and it represents good or life, love or comfort.”
As Nathan studied the stick he began to fill in his own experiences, sickness and health, loss and gain. He raised his saddened face to Nuncio.
Nuncio continued, “There must be a counter to all things in order for you to make decisions on what is right and wrong. If you never made aware of errors in judgement than how could you ever know when your judgement was good and true and right.
If all you knew was pain and hurt, then what would you strive for? You need to feel joy to know that you don’t want anguish.”
Nuncio began to walk again but Nathan stood fast holding the stick and watching as the silver haired being walked on. He had nothing to say. Although his mind was teaming with new information, there was a severe disconnect between his overflowing mind and his now useless mouth. He rolled the black and white stick between his fingers and began to follow Nuncio.
They walked for a while with Nathan eight or ten steps behind Nuncio. His head began to organize some of the information that had been so abruptly dumped into it. A sense of overwhelming remorse washed over him. He adored his lovely Kathleen but he knew he could have loved her more, better. Moments in their life that he could have been more than a husband swarmed around him like bees at a hive. He could have been her best friend; he could have gone to church with her. He didn’t have to believe what she believed he just had to be supportive of her. For so long he had felt as if he was her greatest advocate, and she had never let him know that he was lacking. She just loved him unconditionally and that love allowed him to be ignorant of her needs and his responsibilities.
“Hey!” he called to Nuncio, running to catch up.
“What is it my ever inquisitive friend.” He replied.
“Is this all there is?”
Nuncio looked around. “I don’t understand; is this not enough?” he asked.
“No, not this. Life, my life.” Nathan slowed and walked with Nuncio who has started walking again.
“What more do you want if this is not enough?”
“I want to know that there is a reason for everything.”
“Why must there be a reason?”
“Because…” Nathan stopped his progress along the narrow path, “Because, learning and teaching would be inconsequential at best if all we do is fade away into nothingness.”
“Hand me the stick.”
Nathan reached out his hand and offered the wooden stick to Nuncio who took it and laid it against his robe. The white end of the stick that seemed so bright white earlier now appeared to be more the shade of dirty rice. “Yes, there is more.” He handed the stick back to Nathan. “This stick is merely all you were given in your life time. The love of your wife is the white and the loss of that love is the black. I know that it seems to be the most pain and joy you can ever feel but I assure you, it is only a modest portion of what is really yet to come. There is suffering that you can’t even begin to comprehend and also there is more joyfulness than even I can express. The father guards you from both.”
“So is this heaven?”
“No.” Nuncio replied looking cross at him. “Didn’t your wife have a bible?”
“Of course.”
“And you never read it?”
“Sure, a few times, but it didn’t make a lot of sense to me.”
“That’s because you people try to interpret what it says or you read a passage out of context rather than read it and stop moving long enough for the word to speak to you. It means something different to each person who takes time to read the words and then let those words come to life in their life.”
“Well I still don’t understand most of what it says.” Nathan said a little more irritated. “Why write something for a world that can’t understand it?”
“To teach them to prioritize. You must read, accept and wait on the father. but if you can’t do that consistently then how can you expect the father to consistently work in your life.”
“Now you just wait a minute. Are you saying that if I had read the bible and gone to church with my wife, then the father would have healed her?” Nathan’s head began to pound. “Then he really is a bully.”
“He didn’t make her sick Nathan, and you can’t bargain with the father.”
“Then why did he let her die.” He cried out in exasperation.
“Every person on earth will die. This life is temporary, a vapor, here one moment and gone the next. She is with him for eternity, forever, and they are waiting for you to join them. This life is a preview of a much larger and everlasting life.”
“But I want my wife back!” He screamed.
“Haven’t you had to call your children in for dinner when they are playing with their friends?”
Nathan stared blankly like he had no idea what was being said.
Well that’s what the father did. He called her home for dinner. You can see her again, just not right now. She is safe and warm, health and happy, she is living in a way that you can’t possibly understand yet. She is with the father, do not mourn her any longer, but instead rejoice for her.”
“How can I rejoice, my wife is dead.”
“Your wife is alive and well.”
“How can you be so certain?”
In the beginning, it was the father’s intent that all would live forever. He gave them reign over the entire world and all that was in it. He knew that he had done well but wanted loyalty by choice so he gave people free will to accept or deny: to love or hate: to obey or disobey. It all began with a man named Adam and a woman named Eve
But once the world was infected by sin the father was saddened to see his children rebel. And as any father he became angry and destroyed all by a select few that were obedient. Then as the world began to repopulate he saw that just destroying the rebellious wasn’t teaching his children right from wrong so he sent the Christ to show them a better way to live.
This was also to show a separation between those that would attempt to obey and those that would not. Also it allowed for the opportunity to see the penalty and the reward. The reward is life everlasting, without pain or death or even cancer.
This is a promise of the father. Like the rainbow is a symbol of his promise that he will never destroy the earth by water again.”
Nathan struggled to dispute him and resist the idea that his wife was better off without him. “Rainbows are just sun shining through the water drops like a prism. That’s not anything special. Is it?”
Rainbows are explained because the father gave us a mind, he has allowed people to figure things out and how they work. The father never intended to be a magician and hold the secrets to the universe. However because the father allowed scientists to have the ability to figure out rainbows and gravity and medicine and how to see deeper into the skies than ever before, he also allows the balance of great discovery and great failure.
They didn’t create gravity but they act like they did. They figured out some medicine and now feel as they are the giver of life, even though sometimes doing everything right still ends in death. And because they can see into space and have not seen the father there they assume he doesn’t exist. So instead of faith in the father they create theories of their own and place their faith in them. They are trying to take the place of the father.
This is how the enemy came to be banished from the kingdom, his pride. He wanted to take the place of the father. The father does not tolerate that and the penalty for it is an eternity of death without dying.”
“So have I failed my wife and children without a chance to fix it?”
Nuncio did not answer the question directly, except to say, “All things are possible with the father.”
Chapter 6
A Glimpse Of Tomorrow Page 6