Yeshua answered, “I have told you that I AM. Therefore, if you seek Me, let these go their way!”
These are the last words I heard in my right ear before Brother Peter attempted to cut off my head.
Somehow, although I did not see the sword strike coming in all the confusion, I bowed my head just enough to save my neck, but alas! my ear was sliced cleanly from my face.
They say that time slows when mortality approaches. They are right.
I did not feel the pain at that instant, and fortunately, the blade was sufficiently sharp, and Peter's stroke sufficiently powerful, so that there was no collateral bruising or crushing. For I fear our burly Fisherman would have collapsed my skull with a duller weapon.
As it was, I saw, as if in a dream, my own blood erupt in the air past my eyes, and my fully intact ear fall slowly to the ground. I had not realized how intensely fond of it I was until faced with its loss forevermore.
The sounds of energized and fearful men, of blood-curdling yells, and the growls of soldiers about to do battle were drowned out by the rising tide of bees buzzing deafeningly inside my own skull. I saw a rush of white blurriness, like the blizzards of Mount Hebron, encompass me from both sides, as my knees began to buckle, and the rest of me began to follow my orphaned ear to the trammeled dirt.
Strong arms reached out and caught me as I fell, lowering me gently to the ground.
Through the cacophony of noise both inside and outside my head, I heard the owner of these arms speak in a gently powerful rebuke, as Yeshua said to Peter, “Put your sword into the sheath. Shall I not drink the cup which My Father has given Me? Permit even this.”
And He touched where my ear had been and healed me.
So few and meager words on a wrinkled parchment can not begin to convey this thing that happened to me.
To say that my head cleared and the suddenly erupting agony on the side of my face ceased, is to say nothing at all.
To say that the restored sense of hearing on my right side was as if I was hearing the very first sounds of Creation, is as empty of the real meaning as anything else my paltry mind can think to write.
But this I do know - when my Savior touched me to heal me, without my asking or even being aware that He could, I felt the unapproachable light of His life, and the vastness of His love and my soul was overwhelmed with the enrapturing glory of His Presence.
In that timeless moment, I wanted nothing more, or else, than to remain with Him, and to know His life. I was changed instantly and forever.
Again words fail me. You must forgive this mere servant's lack of training and education, since I am both unworthy of such a show of His love, and incapable of conveying the depths of its meaning to me.
How can I describe what it was to be close to the Source of all things, and to feel the power of His divine love focused solely upon me, as if I were the only other being in existence?
Me, who was an eager member of the very mob that sought to kill Him, thinking to advance my career in the Temple by my demonstration of loyalty and my eagerness to obey.
At the moment of this encounter my eyes, as well as my severed ear, were healed and I saw myself for the evil sinner I have been since birth, despite my outward show of piety and religious zeal. And often because of those very things.
He said nothing to me, but only looked at me for a moment more with an understanding so profound and a knowledge so deep that that I have no doubt that He saw all I was, and had been, and ever would be.
I wanted to crawl into a cave and die, to hide my face in the most abject shame and despair.
Until He inclined His head ever so slightly, as if to say, I know all this and love you anyway. Old things have passed. I make all things new.
Then He allowed Himself to be wrenched roughly away from me, and the detachment of troops and the captain and the officers of the Jews arrested Yeshua and bound Him. And they led Him away to Annas first, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas who was high priest that year.
