I sit beside her and take one of her hands. I brush her knuckles against my cheek. I do not trust my voice enough to speak first.
“I love you,” she says when she finds the energy.
“As I do you.”
A part of my mind notices that Vashti has left the room to give us privacy.
**
When, long ago in the temple, I begged Yeshua to heal Vashti, I had not understood His reply. I had yet to realize that forgiveness earned or bought is not forgiveness, but a transaction. Forgiveness must be given by the one who has been wronged, accepted as a gift by the one who has done wrong.
When a wrong cannot be righted, men have the power to punish.
But who has the power to forgive?
**
The sun is lower now, and shadows creep longer on the walls as I sit with Jaala, stroking her hair while she lays still with her eyes closed. I cannot imagine my life without her presence, yet the unimaginable is approaching as surely as the sun must disappear with the shadows that darken.
Jaala opens her eyes.
She sees that I am weeping.
Tears form in her eyes too.
With so many memories and so much I still want to say, I find I can only fall back on what means the most to me on earth.
“I love you,” I say.
“And I you,” she says. But her smile is small and her voice a whisper. We both know it will not be long.
Her eyes flutter and close.
As she fades from me, I can hardly bear my grief. To console myself, I remind myself I have something to grieve, when I once thought she was gone from me forever.
**
We are human, separated from God by our sins, our failings, our selfishness, a vileness abhorrent to God’s pureness and righteousness. Much as He loves and wants to claim us, there must be atonement. With Yeshua’s death as atonement to replace the sacrificial system that was later destroyed by the Romans, we can be cleansed of our sins.
If we believe in Yeshua and His message.
Indeed, I received forgiveness through Yeshua. It brought me home. But His forgiveness is worthless if He is only man, not Messiah. He cannot be accepted halfway. If the miracles did not truly happen as miracles, He died justly—insane, a fraud, a blasphemer.
How does one decide? Other men in the temple saw cripples walk at His touch, yet in their disbelief they looked for other explanations. Thus, it makes no difference whether a man witnesses miracles with his own eyes or hears of them later—even centuries later—from those who were there.
It is, of course, a matter of faith. But faith has two edges; some use determined disbelief to transform miracles into something natural, while others too eagerly transform natural wonders into miracles.
And truth becomes lost in the confusion.
**
Jaala wakes and squeezes my hand, this beautiful woman who pledged her life to me. There is sweat on her forehead. With a damp cloth, I soothe her heated skin.
Her eyes close again. I cannot help myself. I lean down and lightly touch my lips to hers, knowing all the tender kisses we shared will too soon be only memories.
Her eyes remain closed as she whispers her last request. “Sing to me, my love.”
I am not sure I understand her words, such is her weakness.
“Sing to me, my love,” she whispers again.
So I sing to her. It is the first time. Always, in our many years together, she has sung to me.
**
We each have a soul that continues beyond the body. This I know. As I also know ultimately, those who follow God will receive their own glorified physical resurrection. During our lives on earth, we hide ourselves from the One who created our souls—our self-absorption and our vain pursuits of the flesh become a chasm that prevents us from full awareness of Him. None of us can cross that chasm without acknowledging He is there and waiting, without asking for a bridge to reach Him.
That bridge is Yeshua—but only if we believe He is who He claimed to be.
And the ultimate question is this. Did He rise from the dead?
I have had all these years to decide for myself, armed with what witnesses have told me about the events. I now realize His resurrection appearances validated His predictions, His claims, and His message.
Because of those appearances, His disciples were transformed in purpose. Before the crucifixion, Yeshua’s teachings were simply radical and almost revolutionary. After the empty tomb, His teachings had eternal significance.
His disciples were transformed in character. Before the crucifixion, they had fled into the night at the first sign of danger. After the empty tomb, they were lions of courage, uncaring of threats or arrest or death. Their joy, and the hope they carried, took this gospel far beyond the borders of their tiny country. Without the astonishing appearance of Yeshua alive from the dead, it is difficult to explain the incredible transformation that pushed the disciples to endure whippings, beatings, jailings, and martyrdom on His behalf.
To suggest that Yeshua didn’t die on the cross but went into a brief coma and revived in the coolness of the tomb is hardly plausible. Not after His side was pierced by a spear. And if it did happen, and He woke trapped inside, who rolled the massive stone away for Him?
Certainly not Yeshua. If He were simply a man, revived from a coma, where would He get the strength after the floggings, the hours of torture, the loss of so much blood? And would a man like this—in that pitiful state—convince anyone He had conquered death?
Certainly not the Roman soldiers, who faced possible execution for failing in their duty. Certainly not His enemies, who wanted the tomb guarded. If they stole the corpse to prevent the rise of a Yeshua cult, why would they not produce the body later when His resurrection was proclaimed?
And certainly not His disciples, so afraid of the Romans that they did not even take part in the burial of their master. If they had arrived to move away the stone, how? These were peasants, unskilled at fighting the soldiers who guarded it. Nor would they have been able to sneak in and move something that massive away—even sleeping soldiers would surely have been alerted by their efforts.
Was Yeshua’s body somehow stolen by the disciples? That argument faces the same difficulties as finding an explanation for how the disciples fought the soldiers or moved the stone and took away the body unnoticed. And if somehow they had succeeded in this, why would they have done so? For it would ensure them the same fate as Yeshua—trouble with the Jewish and Roman authorities, with little gained except their deaths.
Some will rationally deny the resurrection of Yeshua because it seems impossible; yet with God, all things are possible. It is neither irrational nor foolish to believe on the basis of the evidence.
With belief, come hope and purpose. And peace.
**
I am still quietly singing when life leaves Jaala. I only know she is gone because her hand relaxes in mine.
I continue to sing because I am determined not to let myself know she has died. As long as I sing, I tell myself, she is still listening to me.
But I am old. My voice begins to fail me.
When I can sing no longer, I place my head on her chest and let my tears soak into the blanket that covers her.
**
I was not there after the crucifixion when Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate for permission to bury Yeshua in a private tomb. Nor when the Pharisees requested and received from Pilate continuous armed guards at the entrance of the tomb, worrying that Yeshua’s followers might steal the body—who had been proven dead with the spear thrust in His side—and proclaim that the Messiah rose from the dead as He had promised. Nor was I there when another earthquake struck Jerusalem early on Sunday morning, scattering the guards and opening the sealed tomb.
I was, however, in the tomb later that Sunday, to look myself after the reports reached me that Yeshua was alive.
I had to stoop to enter the tomb. When I straightened, I stood in the weeping chamber, the
very place where tears had anointed His still, pierced body as faithful followers had wrapped Him in linens and spices three days earlier.
I looked at His burial place and saw all that remained were the empty burial linens. A smile crossed my face as I noticed the wrap that had been used to cover Yeshua’s face. The cloth had been folded in half, then folded in half again and left neatly on the stone floor beside the burial linens.
Standing in that weeping chamber, years after Yeshua had set aside His carpenter tools, I understood. And I began to feel an unfamiliar emotion. Joy.
The folded cloth was a simple method of communication, traditional among carpenters, for most could not write. At the completion of a project, a carpenter took water from a bowl to wash the sawdust off his arms and face, dried himself, and folded the towel in the same way, leaving it behind so anyone arriving later would understand the same message Yeshua had left for us in the empty tomb on that Sunday:
It is finished.
**
No one disturbs my grief.
My wife’s hand is now cold. Since the fall of night, I have not moved from her bedside, nor have I let go of her hand.
Dawn has begun the new day. A day without Jaala.
But I am not without hope.
I will see her again.
I know this.
Because I believe.
Here’s the beginning to The Leper. Set in nineteenth-century England, this is a touching story of how one small child exposed to leprosy changes the hearts and lives of a community.
prologue
Three days before Christmas, Nathaniel would abandon the woman who now waited for him onshore across the narrowing gap of water between the ship and the dock.
Suzanne did not know this, of course, and as Nathaniel’s ship slowly docked at one of the wharves in the East End, her heart was filled with hope and anticipation. For three years, she had waited for Nathaniel to return.
She watched as crew members threw ropes as thick as a man’s arm to dockworkers and continued to watch as, along the length of the ship, they tied the ropes in place to monstrous iron bars on the wharf. The plank was lowered, and within minutes a stream of men began to leave the ship. Each paused to look around in wonder and gratitude. This was home. Fair England. No matter that the buildings around them were grimed with centuries of soot, no matter that the sky was lead gray and the winter air forced them to shiver within their coats. This was home, a totally different world than India, with its wide blue skies over a parched hot land, filled with dark-skinned people who often refused to listen to their British overlords. The men stepping off the ship had endured three years of military service in the colony, then months of hazardous travel across the oceans. They were home!
Despite the winter chill, a sizable crowd of women and children waited to greet the men who stepped off the ship. The unmarried men—even with their minds on local pubs and entertainment, moral or not—watched with envy as first one woman, then another, peeled away from the group to hurry forward to a husband with cries of joy. Some of the women had young children who hung to their coats, shy children who were unsure what to think of the strange man embracing their mother.
The waiting crowd thinned as the ship continued to empty.
She, who was to be abandoned, held Faith, her daughter, in her arms. Her small son, Ethan, bravely stamped his feet and, for his mother’s sake, valiantly pretended that the cold did not bother him.
She had blonde hair, pinned in place beneath a bonnet. The unlined skin of her face showed a complexion of uncommon fairness. Such was her beauty that many of the men—even the married ones with their arms around the waists of their wives—covertly and occasionally impudently tried to hold her glance. Her children reflected this attractiveness. The boy, who resembled much of his father, could be a dark-haired young prince. The four-year-old girl, curled asleep in her mother’s arms, was exquisite.
The woman did not notice any of the admiring glances cast her way. She was focused on the return of her husband, whom she loved as fiercely as she loved her children.
Long after all the men had departed, she stared anxiously at the ship, unaware that Nathaniel, hidden from a vantage point between containers on the bow of the ship, watched her.
Finally, she gave up her vigil and sought a carriage that would return the three of them to their cottage in the West End.
Five minutes after she departed, Nathaniel made his way down the gangway to an empty plaza.
As Nathaniel walked through the gloomy late morning, passersby could not see his face. Except for his eyes, it was covered with a scarf. He studied the street with each step, refusing to make eye contact, even with the painted women beckoning him from street corners, as if they expected him, like other newly arrived sailors in the area, to hurry into their arms.
It was not one of the painted women he wished to see, but a solicitor.
*
“As long as the information you have given is correct, it will not be difficult to arrange for your monthly military stipend to reach this office,” the solicitor said an hour later. “Nor will it be difficult to disburse it according to your directions.”
William Morgan, the solicitor, was on the verge of retirement. He was slightly balding, with the remainder of his gray hair clinging to his massive skull like a Roman warrior’s helmet. His jowls reflected a life of success in the legal system as he sat behind his desk wearing a navy blue suit tailored to flow comfortably over his large belly. He held a quill and was prepared to jot down the most important points of this short-notice meeting with this client, who had secured this appointment by mentioning the family name of another respected client.
“The information is correct,” said this client. “My directions are simple then. Divide it into two cashier’s cheques. The bulk of it—nine-tenths—each month shall be sent in one cheque to my wife. The remainder each month to an address that will reach your office shortly.”
“Until further notice?” William Morgan asked. He was curious about this client, who wore a long coat, a scarf covering most of his face, and gloves. He had not inquired but made a private, silent guess. The client spoke of a three-year stint in India. Most certainly, then, malaria with its horrible spells of shivering. The poor man, he guessed, cannot stay warm.
“There will be no further notice,” William Morgan’s client answered. “I doubt this great country of ours will ever forfeit on its payments to men of military service. That money will always reach you.”
“Just so I understand.” William Morgan scanned the notes on his desk and the information supplied. He repeated his client’s instructions to redirect money to the woman. Repeated the address of the woman who would receive the bulk of the man’s military pay. William Morgan did not ask the obvious question: why? Not after all these years of discretion as a solicitor.
“Yes, you are correct,” the client said when William Morgan was finished speaking. “Furthermore, I will not return to this office. Ever. As long as my retirement pension is sent as directed.”
“There will be a monthly fee,” William Morgan said. There is always a fee.
“Certainly,” the client answered. “I did not expect otherwise. Take it from my portion. Nothing must diminish her portion.”
“Our business today is finished then?”
“Finished.”
As a courtesy, William Morgan rose from behind his desk to escort his client to the doorway of his office. At the doorway, he extended a hand to this client.
Their eyes met briefly, and William Morgan, who, after all these years of representing clients caught in all sorts of legal matters, prided himself on the ability to judge a man’s soul by the window of his eyes, was unable to determine exactly what state of mind this client had brought into his office and was taking back out again. Sorrow? Resignation? Resolution? Anger?
William Morgan’s hand remained extended. After a moment of hesitation, the client accepted the handshake, but without removing the glov
e on his right hand.
William Morgan could not know it, of course, but this handshake would be the last physical contact his client would have with any human until the night, roughly four years later, that this client would stand on a wharf at the Thames and stare down on the water in preparation to end his own life.
*
As the sun set on that gloomy day shortly before Christmas, in a fashionable small cottage in London’s West End, Suzanne stood on her doorstep and stared expectantly at a point where the road rose and disappeared over a slight hill. Other cottages, similar to the one in which she was raising her boy and girl, lined the road on both sides.
The boy was now five. Ethan. He was only a toddler when, three years earlier, his father stepped onto a ship bound for India. The girl, Faith, was nearly four. Month by month, this young mother had chronicled the growth of their two children in letters sent to the man she missed so badly. Month by month, she received letters of love and affection in return.
And now.
His ship had returned safely to London. She knew it, because she was there waiting when it arrived this morning. She had watched all the men leave. Surely she could not have missed seeing her husband among all of the passengers. Surely he could not have missed seeing her and the two children in the crowd as he passed by.
But that was her hope. Her only hope. She told herself that he could not have missed the ship’s departure. Otherwise, it would be months more before his return on another ship. And, even though her mind tried to dwell on it during this long, long afternoon, she refused to think of any other explanation for this prolonged absence since the ship docked.
Bitter wind hit the doorway of her cottage. This young mother wrapped herself in a blanket to stay warm. She strained to see into the darkening gloom, for the sun, unseen behind the gray blanket of clouds, was within minutes of setting. She wanted to believe that at any moment her husband would appear at the top of the rise of the hill. With the children safely sleeping inside, she could not bear to pace as she waited for his return. She wanted to be able to rush forward and greet him.
The Weeping Chamber Page 22