Great White Throne (31 page)

“Yes, I’ll introduce you to my beloved friend. He enjoys answering these questions. He has a word for it. In the written Word, the Spirit breathed out all the answers that humans could grasp. The answers are a story, of course.” He walks toward the cottage, and I fall into step with him. “Now the story continues, and you may understand more, as much as your spirit allows.”

My spirit? The Spirit?
I ponder this as I follow the Lord’s stride. I’ve never felt happier walking from one place to another. My legs are flawless, fast. Our movements are in unison.

We reach the wooden door and he knocks.

“I’m going now, but I’m always with you,” he says, and then his body vanishes before my eyes. He is gone, but he isn’t. I still feel him with me, like he is everywhere. I realize he’d let me walk beside him because I’d wanted that. Now I just want to know what’s behind this door.

The door opens.

“Elijah!” Brie rushes out and catches me up in a tight embrace. Chris follows right after her and sweeps both of us into his arms.

“Come, come!” Chris says. “We just got here, too. We’re about to have a reading.”

“A reading?”

But they’re already whisking me into the cottage. We walk through the orderly little home and out the back door. There’s a ring of thick stumps overlooking a vast range of mountains. Seven people are sitting around the circle.

I know Chris, Brie, and another man. “Patrick?”

His athletic frame rises, even stronger than I remembered. He looks me up and down with his bright blue eyes. They look a little older but a lot wiser, a lot happier. “You’ve aged well, my friend.” He’s laughing warmly, and I realize I don’t know what I look like.

Brie escorts me forward. There’s a basin of still water in the center of the circle. “Take a look,” she says.

I look down and see my face. The eyes are the same, except brighter. Everything else is a little different. I look stronger, fuller. My hair is curly and long, brushing my broad shoulders. I look older than I was on earth, but not old at all. What I remember of myself before is like a flat, two-dimensional mask, and this is four dimensions—timeless.

“Our bodies here reflect our souls at their best,” Chris says. “Some bodies are older or larger. Some are younger or smaller. We’re each where we are most comfortable, and we can change, we will change. Looks like you start around thirty.”

“I’m nine!” says a boy in the circle. I know him, too. He’s Chris and Brie’s son, Toph, now a few years older. “I can still beat Patrick in a race.”

Patrick gives him a friendly shove. “When I let you.”

“That’s what you think.” Toph is laughing. He stretches his arms high in the sky. “Last one to the tree’s a rotten egg.” He’s already running around the corner of the cottage, and Patrick leaps up and chases after him. A blond man and a blond boy, sprinting as if nothing else mattered but their motions, as if their race were worship of the highest order.

“Joy comes in many forms,” says a woman’s voice. I turn and see her. She’s standing in the door of the cottage, smiling at me.

I could never mistake her almond eyes. “Aisha.”

She rushes forward and hugs me. “I heard Jesus brought you here. I couldn’t wait to come.”

“But how are you
here
?” I say, and I realize that could be an awkward thing to say, but no one seems to mind.

She puts her hand to my cheek. “The Lord used you to save me. I was all pride. I thought the Mahdi and I could save the world. I thought we could defeat the enemy.”

“What happened?”

“When I was at my most broken, after the crash, after I lost my legs…” She looks down and bends her legs, as if to remind herself that they are whole and perfect. “You came with the angels and fought for me. I still don’t fully understand why, but it chipped away the darkness and let the first light shine through.”

“The first light?”

She nods. “When you climbed out of that tunnel with me in Jerusalem, you were fearless. Not like a soldier bravely going into battle, but like a man who believed without doubt that the battle would be won. I knew the fight was over when one of the machines grabbed me, but I remembered your faith and its source. I called out to Jesus then, and He was there, with me at the end.”

“That’s amazing.” I shake my head, struggling to accept that my pitiful example had helped her, especially when I was the one who had so needed help. I think of my question again:
why?
“Jesus brought me here. He told me he’d show me why.”

“And so he will,” says a man who is sitting on one of the stumps. He holds out his arms in welcome. He has a thick brown beard and neatly cut brown hair.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“A citizen of this kingdom, like all of you. I’ve lived in this cottage and many other places. Sometimes I clean clothes for my neighbors. Sometimes I wash their feet. I study the stars, too. In all this, I serve the Lord.”

“What’s your name?”

“John.”

THE MAN NAMED John urges our group to sit in a circle. He’s standing facing us and the cottage, with mountain ranges behind him. He looks like he knows everything there is to know, but he’s not the old John from Patmos, at least not the one I met.

“You were with the Lord on earth?” asks Chris.

“I was.” John’s voice is warm. “All of you were. He was always there.”

“But you could feel him, touch him!” Brie says.

John nods. “I wish everyone could have seen him as I did. No one could have doubted. But of course, that’s not how God planned it. Even many who saw his son during his life on earth had clouded eyes. The enemy used many tricks, but that is over now. Jesus had to die for us, so that we could know him, so that we could be here.”

“Why?” The question boils out of me again.

“We’re all new to this forever place, but I’ve been in his presence for ages. I understand more of it now, though we’ll always be getting closer. Each step forward will make our lives sweeter. It’s eternal progress. It’s eternal joy.”

He pauses, as Toph and Patrick race back around the cottage. They’re not even breathing heavily as they sit. I realize the crowd has grown. I didn’t notice the others come. There are dozens of faces around us. One of them I know: my uncle, Jacob, only he looks even younger than Toph. He doesn’t see me yet. He is grinning with boyish innocence, intent on John’s words.

“All of you, watch,” John says, “and you will understand.”
 

He lifts a white towel and steps forward to the basin of water. He dips the towel into the water, and as he does, a gorgeous light begins to emit from him. The light flows in waves like living threads. It swirls around John. His hands holding the towel are glowing.
 

He bends down in front of Toph, the little boy, and he begins to wash his feet. After the race with Patrick, Toph’s toes and heels are dusted in dirt. But as John rubs the towel over them, the light swirls around and into and through Toph. The boy holds out his arms, marveling as the warm and brilliant threads wrap around him.

“The Lord abides in me,” John says. “He abides in all of us. What was unseen is now seen.” He holds the towel out to Toph. It shows no sign of dirt. “Now you.”

The boy takes the towel and dips it into the water. He goes to Patrick and washes his feet. The light is dancing around the three of them.
 

John has another towel. He kneels in front of me and begins washing my feet.

I watch in awe as the light ebbs and flows around my legs, my waist, my chest. It goes through my chest, out my back, and I can feel it. The feeling is strong and pure, like one of those brief, fragile moments on the old earth when existence made sense—and it was good. Only now, that feeling isn’t going away. It’s deepening and wrapping around me.

John finishes and holds the towel to me. “Sin is gone. The law is fulfilled. We abide in his love. We see the Comforter, the Spirit of truth which proceeds from the Father.”

I feel weightless as I stand. I dip the towel into the water. I feel brighter than the sun, and I want to share this brilliance. I turn to Aisha and the threads of light spread from me to her. We understand each other now as we never have. She is my sister. We have the same love. We both abide in it.
 

I wash her feet, and so it goes.

In the end, it’s not our feet that matter. It’s the light we’ve shared, and the sharing gives glory to the light and to its source. It is glory to the Father. It is what we were made to do, to serve and love each other for the beauty that God made in each of us.

I look around at the smiling faces and, for the first time, I realize I want to see a face that is not there. I remember her name. It is from so long ago, but it is still bright in my mind: Naomi.

John comes to me. Maybe he senses my unmet desire, because it is so out of place. “Elijah, what do you want?” 

“Where is Naomi?”

John turns to Chris. “He is ready. Will you take him to Elijah?”

Elijah?
I don’t understand, but Chris nods and leads me away. We don’t say goodbyes. We don’t need to, because the infinite circles always lead back, away, and back again.

As I follow Chris, I’m fascinated by what John said, that I’ll live in a place here. And it must be where Naomi is. “Who is Elijah?” I ask. “Is he going to take me to Naomi?”
 

Chris pauses. We are under the great tree again. “I will show you, but you should remember, there is no marriage here.”

I remember Evelyn and Bart, and Brie. She was beside Chris, just like she was on the old earth. “What about Brie?”

Chris smiles. “My love, my soulmate. What we have here is better than marriage. We share God’s glory like the angels. My bond with Brie is deeper, richer. We are all one, but some souls still gravitate toward each other.”

“I want to see Naomi.”

“You will. The first Elijah meets us here. He will take you.”

“The first—?”

Before I finish my question, a man appears beside us. He’s wearing a robe whiter than white. His face glows like the sun. It’s not Jesus, but it looks like a man who has soaked in light for lifetimes.

“I am Elijah.” He holds out his hand to me.

“Me too.” I shake his hand and the glowing threads of Spirit wind around us. Chris waves to me and walks away.

“I know,” says this other Elijah. “We are of the same mold. I was one of the few to see into things as you did in the old earth.”

“You’re the prophet?”

“Yes, as you are.” He pauses. “Ready?”

“I think so. Where are we going?”

“Before I show you,” he says, “you should know this is not the forever place. The whole city, this whole creation, is the forever place. You, me, everyone—we will move as time passes. We have room to grow. There may be times when our souls crave the city’s beating center, nearest to the light. There may be times when we desire solitude, in the farthest reaches of the universe. Eternity ebbs and flows.”

I understand this, at least pieces of it. “So how do we know when to move, and how do we acquire a new place? Do we purchase homes, like on the old earth?”

“No. Think of it, how could anyone own what God alone created? And here, how could currency exist where all are completely satisfied?”

“I see.”

“God made you to see.” Elijah smiles. “The workings of eternity’s perpetual motion remain beyond our vision, but what we can understand is balance. God created us to live in balance. When you desire a cottage in a forest, someone living in that cottage will desire something else. The places open as you are led to them.”

“It seems too—” I struggle for the word, and an old, small idea arises from my memory. “Too utopian.”

“Utopia is an idol, a myth that could never exist outside God’s will. Perfection is possible only in God’s new earth, within his will.”

I don’t answer. I’m still puzzling over his words.

“We will have eternity to consider how this works,” Elijah adds. “You will know much more as soon as you come to the throne. First, you should see your home. Others will want to join you when you go before the throne.”

“Like Naomi?”

He nods. “She is there. Ready?”

“Yes.”

He clasps my shoulder and we shift. We’re standing on a street of gold. To the side is a river of glistening water. Around us are towering buildings. Everything is bright, reflecting the light that shines ahead of us. It’s more dazzling than the sun, but I don’t have to shield my eyes. I want to bask in its warmth.