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Authors: Bodie Thoene,Brock Thoene

Tags: #Fiction, #Christian, #General, #Historical

Second Touch

BOOK: Second Touch
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SECOND TOUCH
Book Two A.D. Chronicles SECOND TOUCH Bodie & Brock Thoene
www.FamilyAudioLibrary.com ThoenEBooks
Visit the Thoenes’ exciting Web site at www.thoenebooks.com
Coyright © 2004 by Bodie and Brock Thoene. All rights reserved.
Cover designed by Rule29, www.rule29.com
Cover illustration © 2003 by Cliff Nielsen. All rights reserved.
Interior designed by Dean H. Renninger
Edited by Ramona Cramer Tucker
Published in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.
Scripture quotations for Parts I, II, and III Joel 2:32, are taken from the Holy Bible, New Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All
section pages, as well as International Version®. NIV® Bible Society. Used by rights reserved.
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Thoene, Bodie, date.   Second touch / Bodie and Brock Thoene.    p. cm. – (A.D. chronicles ; bk. 2) Includes bibliographical references.
  ISBN 0-8423-7509-0 (hc) – ISBN 0-8423-7510-4 (sc)   1. Jesus Christ–Fiction.   2. Bible. N.T.–History of Biblical events– Fiction.   I. Thoene, Brock, date.   II. Title. PS3570.H46S43 2004 813 ′ .54–dc22                                2003021683 Printed in the United States of America 10   09   08   07   06   05   04 7   6   5   4   3   2   1
For Chance, Jessie, Ian, Titan, and Connor —Psalm 91— Love, Bubbe and Potsy
Prologue Adonai spoke to her softly as He formed her. I AM sending you. Adonai loved her, created her as a reflection of His great love. He swam beside her as she emerged from the warmth of the womb into the cold, far country called Life. She hesitated. Tried to turn back. He compelled her to go on. Breathe! Don’t be afraid! You are sent by Me beyond what you imagine are the boundaries of your world. At His urging she gasped, taking in her first breath of this new and foreign place. She wailed and longed for the steady beat of her mother’s heart against her back. But He stood by her cradle and touched her face in the night and comforted her. Don’t be afraid of anything! You are a tree. Let beauty and light and terror rage around you like a storm! It will not harm you! She longed for the safety of His presence. Her spirit begged to turn back. He commanded her to go forward on the journey. I AM your ship, your sail, your captain. I AM the wind, the water, the lighthouse guiding you to your destination! Together we will sail a great distance, face many sorrows, overcome great trials. Do not fear the journey. Trust Me! We travel together, you and I. Together! Together we carry priceless treasure to those who wait on the desolate shore. Go on then! Live! Fearless! Yes! That’s my girl! You will find the lost ones, like driftwood twisted and forsaken, strewn along the path of your own suffering. Find them. Embrace them. Feed them. Carry them. I AM at your side ¬every step of the journey! And when we return home again together? Together those who were lost before you came will travel back with us! And so her father named her Shoshana, which means “Lily.” She was a
beautiful child, almost perfect. Everyone said so. Flaxen hair, oval face, large blue eyes that gathered in the sky. Small nose. Mouth like a rosebud. Teeth straight and white. Ears petite and perfectly formed. She was a cheerful baby. Met the eyes of ¬every stranger who chanced by. Even the most irascible among the congregation would grin and coo and happily make fools of themselves when Lily was passed around the synagogue. Papa used to say Lily was the most beautiful flower in his garden. Lily was the eldest child. Three brothers followed in close succession. Lily was such a comfort, Mama would say, because a daughter stays a daughter all her life while sons grow up and get themselves wives. That was always the way of it, eh? Every mother needed at least one daughter. Mama had so many wonderful hopes and dreams tied up in Lily. Lily would grow up, get married, bring the grandbabies home to visit. Yes, it would be fine. Life ripening into something delicious and plentiful to be savored and enjoyed. But it was not to be as Mama hoped. Life ripened to become bitter, not sweet. So unfair. So full of suffering! Things never, ¬ever turning out the way they ought! Lily was twelve that terrible spring when the first sign of sickness touched her face with a strange beauty. Pale cheeks took on a rosy hue; blue eyes were brighter than usual. Papa mistook these changes as the indication of approaching womanhood. His bud was about to bloom, he declared. But Mama had seen the progression of tsara’at before. Almost from the first she suspected all was not well with little Lily. She guarded her fears, kept silent, watched Lily when she was not looking. Prayed. Prayed a lot. To no avail. Mama noticed when Lily’s hands grew clumsy as she threaded a needle. She noted how awkward Lily seemed when she passed the jug of milk to her brothers or attempted to tie a string around a bunch of flowers. Still Mama could not bring herself to believe it could be true. Not Lily! Oh, Lord! Not Lily! The possibility was too horrifying to contemplate! “Just growing.” Papa waved away Mama’s worry with his hand. “Children are always clumsy when they grow.” Then one morning Lily spilled scalding water on her left hand and did not seem to notice. She did not cry out, felt no pain. Mama saw it happen, knew what it meant. All she had feared had come upon them! Mama dropped to her knees and began to wail, as if Lily had died right there before her very eyes. Papa came running, picked up Lily’s burned hand, stared at it in horror, searched Lily’s serene face, then pushed her away. With quaking voice Papa ordered Lily out of the house, into the empty lambing pen to wait. Wait until the elder would come and judge her case for himself. She was to be isolated, separated. They would see. Yes. They would wait and see.
But no one ¬really doubted the verdict. No one. Lily slumped beneath the shelter in the corral and wept as they burned all her clothes, her things, even her bed. Everything went up in smoke. Nothing of her life remained. Nothing left but life. Her brothers were commanded to stay away from her. They peeked their sorrowful little faces out the door and cried for Lily. Lily reached out to them through the slats of the pen, mourned for her brothers as if they were condemned instead of her. At night the house grew silent with anguish too deep for tears. Lily sobbed quietly alone. She was afraid. She wanted to go back inside, into her little room where she had always slept. In the daylight Lily and her family peered at one another across the garden, which now seemed as wide as the gulf separating life and death. Mama, weeping, brought food and water in a leather sack, hung it on the post, and hurried away. She cupped her hands and called to Lily over the berry vines, asking if there was anything else she needed. Lily might have said she needed ¬everything to be the way it used to be. Might have said she wanted to come inside and be home just like always. But she did not. What was the point? “¬I’m sorry, Mama!” Lily cried. “¬I’m so sorry!” But Mama, terrified of losing all her children, was too busy herding the boys to hear Lily. Her commands came sharply. “Stay back! Boys!” “Get back!” “No! Aaron!” “No! David! David! You ¬can’t!” “Don’t! Don’t go near her!” So they were certain even before the priest rendered final judgment. Even before the sentence was passed. “Tsara’at!” With that one word all the angels of heaven turned their backs on Lily. According to the laws of Moses, her family must drive her out as well. No, Lily could not stay, no matter how she implored Mama. She could not live in the shed in the pasture with the sheep. She could not embrace her dear brothers or wrap her arms around Papa in one final farewell. “Chadel! Baza! Tsara!” the elder declared. And so Lily was pronounced dead to her kin and to society, though she remained alive. She sat in the dust before the house and pleaded for mercy. Begged not to be driven away! Mama and Papa bolted the door and covered their ears against her cries. Where was the One who formed her? Why had this happened? Where was His voice of comfort in all this? After two days the people of the village came to the farm at the priest’s demand. They remained at a safe distance. Before the whole congregation the elder adjured Lily to leave her home and the village . . . never to return!
The people who had loved her now picked up stones to stone her. They shrieked at her, flung dust into the air! They drove her away. Some weeks after, she stumbled into the Valley of Sorrows, which is called in Hebrew Mak’ob. In that place the tsara’im, the Stricken Ones, lived out their half-lives until death eventually swallowed them up. That had been six years and an eternity ago.
PART I He was despised and rejected by men, A man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. Surely He took up our infirmities And carried our sorrows. ISAIAH 53:3-4
1 Midnight. The sixth day of the month of Sivan. Eighteenth year in the life of Lily. Outcast. Tsara. Rejected. Chadel. Lily, leper of the Valley of Mak’ob. It was Shavuot. Pentecost. The feast was held each year on the anniversary of the giving of Torah on Mount Sinai. This was the night in which ¬every generation of Jews since that day stayed awake to pray and await the descending to earth of Messiah, Israel’s heavenly Bridegroom. The moon had set behind the canyon wall hours ago, leaving the mist of the Milky Way as a bright streak across the sky. Lily and Cantor sat shoulder to shoulder on the big boulder overlooking the Valley. Far below them, in the center of the colony, a light burned in the hut of Rabbi Ahava. “Look,” Lily said. “It glows like a lantern, that house. Light beaming from ¬every crack. Rabbi’s awake.” “All scholars in Israel stay awake on Shavuot,” Cantor replied. “Reading Torah. Studying. Praying for Messiah to come.” Lily hugged her knees and threw her head back to search the stars. “Wouldn’t it be . . . something? Wouldn’t it, Cantor?” ¬I’m praying again, heavenly Bridegroom. Are you on your angel horse? Galloping through the sky to gather your people? Scoop us up and fly away? Will you come tonight? Tonight? You know, of all your people . . . all . . . we here in Mak’ob have no hope but you. We’re hoping you’ll come! To save us. We’re watching for you to come! Her gaze shifted from constellation to constellation as she scanned the cold heavens for a sign of Messiah’s approaching glory.
But stars were stars. Cantor rattled off their names as if they were old friends. “Arcturus directly above us. Vega. Deneb. There’s The Lion. There, The Bear. See them, Lily?” “I wish I knew as much as you, Cantor.” “Learned the names when I was a boy. The old man who tended the goats taught us young ones. ¬I’m the ¬only one left alive of those boys. I was thinking, you know, maybe I should teach the little ones now. The star names. Like he taught me. Children in Mak’ob might forget stars have names when I die.” Lily frowned. “Don’t talk like that, Cantor. Don’t tempt the evil eye by speaking aloud such a thing. You’re hardly sick.” Cantor laughed. “Impossible to avoid the subject in this Valley, ¬I’m afraid.” “Yes. But no . . . but . . . ¬don’t. Not tonight, eh? You’ll spoil it if you do. Keep watching.” There was a poignant pause. Cantor spoke first. “What do you suppose it’ll look like when Messiah ¬comes?” “Lightning. Maybe.” “Clear sky. No clouds. Crickets in the brush and then—” “Lightning! Thunder! Maybe tonight.” Lily dreamed. “Maybe tonight it’ll ¬really happen. He’s supposed to come on Shavuot! Descend with mighty power. Like when the Lord descended to the mountain and gave Mosheh the laws! Wouldn’t it be something if . . . if we were the first to see the flash!” A shiver of expectation passed through her. Cantor hummed with pleasure. “Yes. It would be. Really something.” “Not impossible, eh? That the Son of David would stop in Mak’ob and gather us lost sheep up on his way to Yerushalayim? No place in all Eretz-Israel needs a visit from Messiah as bad as Mak’ob.” For a while the two sat imagining what it would be like. If He came. Lily wondered what Scriptures the rabbi was reading. She thought about her friend Deborah and the baby in Deborah’s womb. Would the baby be instantly born if Messiah came tonight? Lily considered that this was a question worthy of discussing with Rabbi Ahava. At last Cantor spoke. “There’s Dubhe. Alkaid.” “You know so much. Everything. I just thought they were stars, that’s all.” “The old man who taught us? He said King David learned the names of the stars when he was a shepherd boy. David found this Valley when he was searching for a lost lamb. Years after that he took refuge in one of our caves when Saul was trying to kill him.” “Imagine. One of our caves! Maybe where I live.” “When he became king, David returned to Mak’ob. His refuge. He set the Valley aside as a city of refuge for the lepers of his kingdom. His lost sheep, he called us.” “Imagine! Him . . . here.”
BOOK: Second Touch
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