(Reprise) Dead Man: Dead Man No More

Before I knew it, my entire household was around me.

"Dad! You're bleeding! Do you need me to call an ambulance?" my eldest daughter asked, business-like, focused, anticipating and prioritizing several thousand possible contingencies, and mentally formulating the necessary procedural steps to move the most sensible alternative forward into reality.

She was like that. Good to have around in an emergency. Or anytime.

"Daddy!" her younger sister cried, crouching beside me on the ground next to the youngest and putting her hand to the wound.

"Ow!" I said. She jerked her hand away like she'd been burned.

"Sorry!"

"Is there anything leaking out besides blood?" I asked.

"You mean like brain-matter?"

"Yeah, basically."

She looked again, critically, objectively, able to put her initial emotional tsunami aside.

"No."

"OK then, no ambulance."

I met my wife's eyes at that moment. Years and years of knowing each other - living day-to-day in each other's company, raising our daughters, bearing each other's burdens, pains, triumphs, defeats, joys, and sorrows - meant that everything was communicated wordlessly in that split-second glance.

It is an intimacy and understanding that only a long investment of time together can yield, augmented to an inconceivable depth by our shared faith in Christ.

"You should get checked out," she said with a calm that I knew she did not feel.

Our daughters made room for her next to me, something she always, consciously, sacrificially, did for them, knowing how important, and short, time was between fathers and daughters.

I am sure we made quite a tableau crouched there together in our front yard; four beautiful females of various ages and one aging, crumpled and bleeding gnome.

"I have a hard head," I reminded her.

"What happened?" the youngest asked, calmer now, the embodiment of sympathy.

"Just a rock thrown out by a dump truck," I answered, feeling less, well, crumpled with each passing second.

I went through a list of possible bad symptoms in my head: no dizziness, no nausea, no headaches beyond the gash in my temple, no shock, the bleeding was subsiding as my wife compressed a cloth against it - I don't know when or where she obtained it.

In short, I had just been knocked unconscious for what seemed like years but was probably less than a couple of seconds. I'd been through worse in my younger years.

"Are you OK, Daddy? Did you break the driveway?"

I smiled. It was what I always asked when one of them fell, or got hurt, in the course of life. It was my lame attempt to distract them momentarily from their pain, and enabled me to assess the seriousness of their injury. If they laughed or got annoyed, then I knew it was probably not life threatening.

"No," I said. "But that rock will never be the same. It's over there by the hedge." I pointed where I knew it had landed, having seen it come to rest while disembodied.

I thought that thought like such things crossed my mind daily.

"Can you stand?" my wife asked.

In answer, I lumbered upward, involuntarily groaning at the effort.

On two feet again, I adjusted my glasses, grimacing at how they now felt, misshapen on my rapidly swelling and tender face.

I remembered my experience in full. Was it a dream? A vision? An actual, objective event?

I didn't know. I didn't care, because whatever it was, it increased my longing for Heaven and my love for my Lord, and my thankfulness for all His glorious gifts.

"You're just standing there," my eldest pointed out.

I looked at her, so utterly grateful for her presence, for the privilege of having her, and all her sisters, in my life.

I turned toward my wife and my tears began to flow, and she, of all the other billions of human beings in the world, knew precisely what I was feeling without me having to say a word; another of His amazing gifts.

And I was ushered inside, surrounded by the people who cared for me the most, and I knew, beyond any shadow of doubt, now and forever, that I was loved.

And whenever my work on-planet was done, however long it took to complete, there was awaiting for me a Place and a Person, where, and in whom, nothing of value or goodness was ever lost.

Ever.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Dead Man on the Ground

There was no sense of transition.

One instant one place, the next hovering telephone-pole high over the lilac bushes in the yard.

Disembodiment is hard to get used to, mostly because while I knew I wasn't attached to my physical form, it felt little different from when I was, except for the lack of aches and pains, and floating in the air and all.

Below me was me.

I looked kind of crumpled up and damaged lying on the ground practically underneath the kayak trailer in the driveway. There was blood oozing out of my one temple, and my ubiquitous eyeglasses were hanging askew from my ashen face, unbroken, but badly bent.

My glasses, that is. Not my face.

It was still daylight, and the last thing I recall doing as a captive of gravity was bending down to pick up a bagged newspaper near the street. It was a newspaper, incidentally, delivered weekly, un-asked for, and unread.

How it had become my undoing, I did not know.

Then, in answer to my confusion, time unwound as I floated.

There was a loud roaring of a large, overloaded dump truck from some landscape company rumbling toward my reanimated body from the highway, arcing around the bend at the top of the hill near our house and barreling thunderously forward.

Flesh-me hardly seemed to notice.

At precisely the moment I bent down to pick up the offending newspaper, a fist-sized, decorative, polished river stone used in expensive landscaping bounced out of the careening truck's cargo bed and headed unerringly toward my head.

It looked like a primitive projectile shot from a mechanical dinosaur.

I watched the rock, which at this point was traveling at the same velocity as the speeding truck, strike my temple as if aimed.

I went down like a felled gnome.

My body hit the gravel driveway in a bleeding, crumpled lump. This made me very sad, floating there, like my best friend had just been badly hurt.

That is apparently the moment I transitioned from life to death. Or was it the other way round?

I realized that the impending reentry into my physical shell was not going to be fun.

It was going to hurt, and I looked forward to it not at all.

Then I heard footsteps on the gravel driveway running toward me from the house, and a panicked cry from my youngest child.

"Daddy!" she screamed.

...and I opened my eyes from the ground, reawakening with a start that sent shockwaves through my brain.

"Ow!" I croaked weakly, as she knelt down next to me on the stones, trembling in fear.

"I'll be fine," I said, trying to smile as I turned my battered face towards hers, rolling slowly over onto my back.

I managed to hold her as she burst into sobs of relief.

"I thought you were dead, Daddy!"

"It's OK, Sweetheart. It's OK."

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Dead Man at the Center of Existence

I had seen and walked through the outskirts of Heaven, and looked over the edge of its Balcony into time and space, and into the past and present of the Planet below, but nothing I had seen, or could imagine, prepared me for what I experienced next.

How do you describe the indescribable?

John, in Revelation, gives us a glimpse of the utter magnificence of the City of God as it comes down out of Heaven and appears in materiality, and his description provides a sense of its reality impinging for the first time upon our own.

The terrible beauty of his words paint an almost incomprehensible image of grandeur and immensity; a single city half as big as the Moon, composed of precious stones and materials of such extravagant proportions as to leave us breathless.

Yet, I did not see the City as John saw it. I did not come that close.

But my experience was nonetheless transforming, for what my eyes did not see, my heart understood, and I was overwhelmed with the conviction that here, in this place, in the very Center of Existence, everything was of such solidity, and of such substance, and of such eternality that everything else - everywhere else - was mere shadow.

This was the essential glory from which everything else derived.

From this moment on I will know what it means to be alive.

From this moment on I will know what it truly means to exist, for I have been shown the swirling, immeasurable depths of pure creative power, and have caught a glimpse of the consuming fires of the glory of our God.

And the most amazing realization of all, was that this raw, and wild, and raucously powerful strength, so untamed and infinitely uncontainable in any dimensional space, is that same power which is expressly embodied in the Person of my Lord Christ - for in Him is all this fullness of the Godhead.

He is the image of this Glory.

That this One became a creature like us in order to share with us all that He is, to show us His intent and love for us, to be one with us, is the greatest, most incomprehensible gift of all.

To be loved by such a One is unthinkably grand and magnificent and glorious.

And then, the vision of my heart was gone, and I stood for what I knew to be the last time on the Balcony of Heaven.

"He gave you all that you could withstand," my companion said. "Even the smallest bit more and you would have been undone."

I nodded, not willing to speak.

I was not grieved, exactly, for I knew that my destiny was to live forever in this realm.

And I was not exactly impatient, for what is a few more passing years on-planet when all eternity was my ultimate reward?

But I was… wistful.

I did not want to leave, but I understood how little what I wanted at any particular moment had any real significance in comparison to His gracious, eternal purposes for me.

Who was I to do more than just place absolutely everything in His hands?

Who was I to do anything other than absolutely, unquestioningly obey His loving will for me?

After all, I was, and had only ever been from birth, a Dead Man.

A Dead Man whom He had made alive.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Dead Man in the Sky

The physical Universe in all its vastness was before me. I saw it as if outside it looking in, and it was incomprehensibly big.

There are no words for the scale of size and distance involved, and yet at the same time, it looked like a little thing from my perspective. Weird and glorious all at once.

"What would you like to see?" he asked me.

"Everything," I said.

"That would take forever," he answered, and smiled, "even in its current imperfect state."

That was the point of the Universe, I knew - a playground of materiality for God's children; a place of infinite variety, complexity and beauty - all for us. Was this hubris on my part?

No, it is immeasurable grace on God's part.

It was easy to lose sight of that fact on-planet. From the surface looking out, our beautiful, but broken, Big Blue Marble seemed small and insignificant in comparison to the immense celestial sea in which it floated. But what does comparative size have to do with importance.

Our world is like the egg of the Universe. It is the place from which redeemed life will reach out and populate the sky. That was His plan from the beginning.

"Our Father is extravagant in His preparations for Eternity," my companion told me. "You have no idea how much He values us or what He has in store for His children. He made all of this with us in mind, so that He could delight in our delight."

"He is... astonishing" I said, marveling at the magnificence before me.

"Precisely," he agreed.

"It's easy to imagine we don't mean much of anything, but we really mean everything, don't we?" I asked.

He nodded.

I understood then that we had lost the assurance of our importance and value at the Fall of Man, and have been trying to get it back ever since - looking everywhere and believing just about anything except the truth.

Not because He hid it from us, but because we rejected Him and therefore we would not see.

It all made a kind of tragic sense, like a rebellious child refusing to believe in a parent's love because doing so would obliterate the child's illusion of being the center of his own existence. Returning that love would entail an acknowledgement that the child was not what he thought he wanted to be - his own sovereign.

Rebellion against God is the ultimate selfishness; the pinnacle of willful blindness. Given the facts, it is insane.

"The Father wants each of us to have all this, but we can't without being in Him - the very source of Life itself. Unless we abide in Him, we can have no life. It's simple, actually," he said. "Even a child can understand it."

"Especially a child," I agreed.

A moment more of taking in what was before me brought something else to my understanding: if this gift of Everything was made just for us, what must it say about the Maker and Giver?

"Exactly," he replied, reading my thoughts. "If it would take forever to explore and come to know Creation, how immeasurably more satisfying will it be to come to know the Creator as He truly is in Himself?"

In essence, by being presented with the entire Universe, I was perceiving merely His fingerprints on the fabric of His handiwork - the forensic evidence pointing to the One True Cause: Him.

And in my mind, or perhaps echoing across all Creation itself, I heard that Voice say yet again what it all meant.

“AND THIS IS ETERNAL LIFE, THAT THEY MAY KNOW YOU, THE ONLY TRUE GOD, AND JESUS CHRIST WHOM YOU HAVE SENT."

"There is more," my companion said.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Ah! Lord God

It was all becoming unbearable for me, this viewpoint of the world seen from the outskirts of Heaven.

There was so much sin and pain and evil so clearly visible from this vantage point that was otherwise easily overlooked on earth. But not seeing was impossible from here.

I could only imagine how continually despicable we humans appear before our holy God, with all our bloody history splayed out before him like some gigantic butchered beast.

That He refrained from boiling the planet in rage was beyond me. That He continued to love our species was inexplicable. We are so hopelessly mired in willful ignorance and purposeless rebellion. How can He stand us for even a nanosecond more?

"Ah! Lord God," I said feeling older and more tired than I could ever remember feeling. And within that groan was wrapped crushing discouragement and shame.

Aside from the tsunami of innocent infant deaths, and a few occasional flashes of light from this or that believer dying and making the blessed transition to this place, all seemed utter darkness below.

I felt the weariness of ages descend upon me and I wanted, above all else at that moment of despair, to retreat forever into the protective and idyllic heart of this sacred realm.

"Not yet, my son," He said gently. "It is not time for your Homecoming. There is need for you below still, and when your life is done you will surely enter My rest. But fear not, nor be discouraged, nor grow weary in doing good. I AM your Lord and King. I AM all that you will ever require. I AM He who holds all time and space in My hands, and there is nothing that can stand against Me or My desire."

As He declared these things, the weight of weariness lifted. My focus (and with it, my hope) began to shift away from the world below and back onto Him.

And that was His point, of course.

That has always been His point.

"What I have shown you is only a small portion of all the evil that takes place when I and My Father are denied. The perverse twisting and torture of life without Us is a tale of horror, the fullness of which, you could not bear now. I have given you only the barest glimpse. But I would have you learn this: that when all you see is darkness, your eyes, My son, are in the wrong place. You must be wise in what is good and simple concerning evil.

"And know this also: I AM coming for those I have purchased with My blood. And I AM coming to repay the evil done by all those who willfully refuse to know My Father and Jesus Christ Whom He has sent. Be assured, I AM coming soon, and then every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that I AM Lord, to the glory of God, My Father."

Though He said this calmly and quietly, I felt all existence tremble at His words.

I knelt before Him in worship and awe. One refrain echoing marvelously in my mind: I AM all that you will ever require!

When I looked up again, I was alone on the Balcony.

Instantly, an overwhelming longing drowned my heart. To not be in His presence caused an ache that I would not have imagined possible.

"Ah! Lord God!" I cried out once more. "Do not leave me!"

I felt someone approaching from behind. It wasn't Him - I knew without looking.

I felt a strong hand on my shoulder, gripping me firmly, somehow transmitting complete understanding and compassion without a single word. I understood who it was, then.

"It's you," I said to my companion.

"He has not left you alone," he reminded me. "He will never leave you alone. He is with you always."

And I felt the comfort intended by those words, and while it alleviated my grief, it made the longing for His Presence that much sharper.

"Everything is so empty without Him," I said very softly, almost to myself.

"You are never without Him,” he reminded me gently, as if speaking to a forlorn child.

“He died for you and always lives to make intercession for you before the Throne of God. And now you will spend the remainder of your days below as He intends, eagerly awaiting His return... Or yours."

"I am to go back," I said. It was a statement, not a question.

"In a little while," he agreed with that smile of his. "But first, He has provided you a parting gift, for He loves you with an everlasting love…"

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: The Fires of Molech

I was once more beside my King, overlooking the planet below from a vantage point outside time and space.

I watched His ageless face as He stared downward, and whereas before I had felt His eyes like fire burning through me, now they took on the appearance of fire. There was a smoldering divine anger that seemed to intensify with each passing second.

"Soon," He said aloud, I am sure for my benefit. 

I knew without doubt what He was referring to; that Day of Judgment that was coming.

I then followed His gaze to try to see at least in part what He was seeing. And I noticed again the trails of intense light streak upward through the atmosphere, and I knew that these were souls departing from physical bodies and entering into the afterlife.

As I watched, their numbers increased exponentially, quickly becoming a broad, expansive wave of radiance lifting off from the beautiful but defiled planet below.

These were deaths, I knew, but why so many, so suddenly? And there were none of those wells of darkness intermingled indicating the departure of unbelievers into the place of torment. All these were heaven bound.

"Come My children," He again said aloud. "Come to the place I have prepared for you."

Then He turned to me with those eyes of fire and spoke in a voice unlike any I had heard Him utter before. I began to sense a dreadful storm approaching; an overwhelming conflagration of divine judgment.

"Who are those coming in such numbers to Heaven?" He asked me.

"Lord, you know," I replied, unable to answer any other way.

"They are My children being slaughtered each day within their mothers' wombs. The little ones who are sacrificed by the millions to the false gods of pleasure and convenience and commerce. These are My children being ripped apart without mercy before birth, or burned with salt and acid. Those who are guilty of such abominations are as the defilers of old who built the high places of Baal which were in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, who caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I did not command them, nor did it come into My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause their nation to sin."

As He said this, in a voice suffused with suppressed wrath, I also sensed something else; a grief that if fully expressed would shatter the Universe.

And I watched the wave of light ascend to Heaven, ashamed and undone that I was of this people.

This was my world and my nation that condoned such horror and evil and called it good; that reduced the magnificent miracle of divinely created life to something banal and worthless, disposable in the name of individual freedom and personal rights, like so much unwanted garbage.

This was my world and my nation that vilified those who would dare declare this as sin and unborn human life as precious.

This was my world and my nation that was increasing its condemnation with every passing moment; with every helpless murdered infant.

I was horrified, and knew with unshakable certainty that the just and devastating judgment that was soon to come would be undeniably righteous, and irrevocably final.

I was amazed once more that my Lord would have forgiven this world and this nation even now, after such slaughter of innocents, if its people would just humble themselves, repent, and ask forgiveness.

But I knew also that most would not, and thus this world and this nation was doomed.

And my gratitude to my Lord intensified that much more, for His mercy in dying for the sin of this planet, and making escape from His coming holy wrath possible through faith. For I knew with unshakable certainty that I was as inherently evil as all the rest, but was washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb.

And while I understood the wrath to come was terrible, I longed for the evil below to be judged, and stopped.

Forever.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Perfect Love

As quickly as I resurfaced on the Balcony, as if to draw a deep breath, I was plunged again back into the underworld of earthly life.

I recognized the moment instantly. It was early in the morning of the last day I remember on planet.

I held my youngest daughter on my lap as she wept broken-hearted, and not for the first time, over the loss of someone she had loved dearly for nearly half her short life, and who was taken away from her without reason or warning or cause.

"Why, Daddy?" she asked me plaintively. "Why did that happen?"

What could I say to her? How could I explain when the whole thing made no sense to me as an adult? What possible reason could I give her that would satisfy her young broken heart?

"What did I do wrong?" she whispered desperately, barely able to voice her question through the flood of tears that cascaded freely down her sweet innocent face.

"Oh, honey!" I said, as I pulled her closer. "You did nothing wrong! This is as far from your fault as it is possible to get!"

She shook with sobs then that fractured my soul as I comforted her as best I knew how.

"Why did Jesus let this happen, Daddy? Doesn't He love me?"

And at that instant, a deep vitriolic fury nearly engulfed me.

The deadly and horrible desire to exact mindless vengeance against anything and everything that could so hurt this child's heart ignited like a holocaust within me. It was all I could do to remain quiet and let her grief work itself out as I continued to hold her and stroke her hair.

But I knew I was powerless to remedy anything, and that my anger would avail nothing, and would only intensify her heart's pain, no matter what my intentions.

God help me! I cried out silently, as I watched the scene replay from the recent past. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs at the unfairness of it all, even from Heaven.

I could look below no longer. The inflamed nerves of emotion were too exposed, too raw.

I looked up at Him who died to save me.

"Do you know why I have commanded that you love your enemies?" He asked me gently. "Do you know why I have decreed that you bless those who persecute you, and do good to those who hate you?"

I could not sufficiently marshal my thoughts to answer. The image of my heart-broken daughter obscured all rationality, and instead of responding as asked, I wanted to cry out to Him like she did, Why did you let this happen, Lord? Don't You love me?

He smiled sadly, this benevolent God Who Weeps, and I knew beyond all doubt that He did indeed love me and my daughter, and all His children, more than I could even begin to comprehend.

"Because," He continued, answering, "hatred is a burden too costly to bear. It eats at you from inside out and destroys the most precious part of you and scars your soul as no other sin can. It binds you in chains that strangles your life, and enslaves you to bitterness. It is a crushing weight that prohibits your from soaring in the joy that I long to give you. It forces you to exchange My liberty for a prison entirely of your own making, and blinds you to the truth that will make you free. It is as murder, and defiles all it touches." 

"If you allow hatred and anger to darken your heart, it will harden you to My goodness and grace, and you will know neither peace, nor joy. I would not have my children suffer so. Forgiveness and love are the most powerful weapons at your disposal; freely given you through Me.”

“Do you think, Dead Man, that I care for you less than you care for your own child?" He asked.

His voice was gentle and filled with compassion, but His question took the breath from my lungs and made me tremble.

"Forgive me, Lord," I pleaded yet again, unable to say more as I repented in dust and ashes.

"The trials that come your way in life - yours, your daughter's and all who name me as Lord - are in My hands. They come from Me. They are meant to refine you, in the crucible of suffering if necessary, because I am more concerned for your character than your comfort. Your holiness is of far more value to Me than your mere happiness. I intend for you far more good and joy than you can ask or think. Do you believe this?" He asked.

His eyes now pierced through me like fire, burning away all pretense and delusional pride, instantly vaporizing whatever paltry, self-serving conception I had of fairness or justice or of what I or my daughter deserved.

I could do nothing but fall on my face in abject realization of who I was and in Whose Presence I had thought to remain upright. How could I dare to stand before such a One as He? Holy. Righteous. A Consuming Fire.

Then, after yet another timeless interval where I had neither the strength nor the courage to move, He lifted me to my feet once again.

"Do not fear little one," He said, His countenance less terrible and awesome, His voice filled with love. "It is your Father's good pleasure to give you a Kingdom that will never fail, and for you to live in His Presence in fullness of joy forevermore."

And I knew, with more certainty than ever before, that He works all things together for good to those who love Him.

That, so unlike mine for Him, His love for me was perfect.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Imperfect Love

"Forgive me, Lord!" I pleaded, barely able to speak. So many of my failings, weaknesses, and sins boiled over into my awareness in His loving Presence that I felt scalded by my own stubborn and banal iniquity.

It is amazing how filthy something looks when held up close to something, or in this case, Someone, so pure. The contrast between His sublime and beautiful righteousness and my feeble and self-justifying sinfulness was almost unbearable to me.

But He looked upon me with unreserved acceptance and unconditional love.

He was not condemning me; that was clear. Nor did I feel the compulsion to dwell morbidly on my colossal and voluminous failures. Yet at the same time, it was impossible, in the holy radiance of His glory, to deny the simple fact of my sins, and I could not help but mourn over how they obscured His image in me.

It grieved me deeply to know how far short of His glory I fell; to be so undeserving of His perfect love.

But none of that was why, at that moment, I wanted His forgiveness.

No, it was my fearfulness.

Not of Him, of course, but of life and loss on the planet below. Because I knew beyond any shadow of doubt that my fear was due to my imperfect love of Him. If I loved Him as He had proven He loved me, I would have no fear.

I felt the truth of that statement down to the very core of my being.

"Yes, My son!" He pronounced emphatically with a smile. "I have. And I do. And I will."

"I do not want to be afraid, my King, but I am... always. There seem to be so many threats and dangers below. So much potential for grief and pain that… I live my life in fear."

I bowed my head in shame at my admission. I had never felt less worthy or of so little value.

Amazingly, I felt His hand on my shoulder as He came alongside me, bearing me up, giving me strength.

Then suddenly, I was reliving another vision back on the world. I was in a large bookstore with my second daughter, born to my wife and I as Christians, another gift beyond price. We were together, my little one and I, in this crowded venue, and then, in the next moment, she was no longer in view.

Gone. Out of sight.

The wash of abject terror that swept over me made my knees weak. I was barely able to stand. The blood was pounding through my arteries. Adrenalin coursed through my system as if I were about to be hit by an oncoming train.

I began to run through the aisles, retracing our steps at breakneck speed - God help any poor soul who did not leap out of my way. Countless, unbearable images flooded my brain.

My little one! How could I be so irresponsible! How much more could I fail her as father, provider and protector. I was desperately, quietly frantic. Hours seemed to pass in slow motion. In reality, it was mere seconds.

I called her name in a loud voice. It must have been very loud because people turned my way. I did not care. They were not her. They were obstacles, obscuring my sight, increasing my desperation.

In my mind I cried out to my Lord Jesus not to allow me to lose her. To save her from this horrid and miserable world that could shred a child's heart and body and mind and soul in an instant.

Then I saw her! Crouched down on her knees in a characteristically impossible pose, calmly perusing one of the many books just within reach, blissfully unaware of her father's faithless panic, and of the people around her.

I almost sobbed openly in relief. I wanted to scoop her off the floor and hold her fiercely in my arms forever, never letting her go, or risking her loss again.

I stifled the involuntary cry that threatened to escape my pitiful soul and embarrass my daughter and bring more unwanted attention to myself.

As calmly as I could, I knelt down beside her through tear-filled eyes.

She was safe. For now. This time.

She looked up at me and smiled like the loving child she was. Then her expression changed as she sensed the upheaval in my heart.

"Are you OK, Daddy?" she asked, so sweetly, so innocently, so trustingly.

"Of course," I said with false bravado, hugging her to me tightly.

"I just couldn't find you for a second," I said, "and I got a little worried."

It was the understatement of the century. I was still shaking inside.

"Daddy," she said, "I saw you the whole time. I couldn't figure out why you were running like that. I'm sorry I scared you."

"It was my fault, sweetheart. Not yours."

"I wasn't lost. I knew I was safe. I knew you wouldn't leave me alone for more than a second. It's OK. You didn't lose me. I wasn't worried a bit. Well, except for the people you almost knocked down. I was a little worried for them," she said with that smile of hers; that smile that could melt a glacier.

I just continued to wordlessly hug her to me in the middle of the aisle, grateful to My God for being merciful to such a one as me.

"It was my delight!" He said from right next to me now. "I was with you. I was with your beloved daughter. And I rejoiced at your thankfulness."

"And yes, My son. I forgive you all of it. Always."

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: The Infinite Heartbreak

"Lord? May I ask you something?"

"Because," He said, before I spoke further, "some will not be saved."

That was, of course, my question, after reliving the moments of my life that had led me to Him. I was still amazed that He condescended to speak with me, but not surprised at all that He knew my thoughts.

"My son, I love everyone I have created; all whom I have knit together in their mother's wombs, but unless their love in return is voluntary it is meaningless. You know that."

"But how can they not love You once You reveal Yourself to them? How can they resist Your kindness and goodness. I do not understand."

"How many years did you resist, Dead Man? How many kindnesses were you shown before you came to recognize Me and to know that I love you?"

Then like a high-speed three-dimensional HD video, all my life before salvation unwound before my eyes, but this time from the immense perspective of Heaven itself.

I was instantly overwhelmed with the seemingly infinite details involved in each redemptively significant incident; the intricate, complex interwoven threads of literally thousands of lives and billions of moments orchestrated by the hand of God Himself in order to bring about a particular outcome.

No happenstance wasted or purposeless. Nothing unforeseen or unexpected from the Master Conductor's perspective, but each complex moment managed with perfect adeptness and impact, moving one of the most intractable, and stubbornly powerful forces in the Universe, the human heart, one step closer to restoration and renewal.

It bespoke phenomenal, extravagant and persistent effort on the part of my Savior.

He was lovingly unrelenting in His pursuit of me, yet never for even a blink of an eye did He violate one iota of the free will He had gifted me with as His creation. I understood then too, just a glimpse, of what it meant to know the end from the beginning, while at the same time having the freedom and divine power to bring that foreseen ending about, yet simultaneously, and miraculously, preserving that aspect of His creatures most akin to His image: the ability to choose.

Of all the acts of Deity, that seemed to me to be the most unimaginable.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it stopped and left my poor finite mind spinning in a whirl of intricate possibilities played out over a divine cosmic symphony larger than existence.

And that was only the minute orchestral movement concerned with my own particular life, without regard to the numberless other lives under His omniscient care.

He was Intelligence and Power and Grace and Mercy and Love beyond all comprehension standing before me as a Man, being with me as if I were the only creature in all of time and space.

I had done nothing to deserve such attention. I was nothing in comparison to Him, and yet here He was with me; Savior, Lord, Brother, Friend, Creator, Redeemer, Author of Life Itself!

I was not sufficient for these things. I never would be. No finite being could be.

"Some will not see. Some will not believe," He said sadly, but without any diminution of the boundless joy that radiated from Him; the joy that I knew, that I was certain, came simply because He was with me!

I did not understand. I did not need to understand. All I needed was to remain in His Presence forever. All I wanted was for Him to never leave me nor forsake me. This fellowship, this intimacy, this was why I existed. This was why everything was created.

And I was just on the Balcony of real existence, a mere visitor, receiving as a gift beyond price this taste of eternity with My Lord.

What other purpose could have any meaning?

What other reason for anything would there be?

I wanted to scream this to the world from the Balcony of Heaven with all my heart.

O Earth Earth Earth, hear the word of the Lord!

But I knew with a measureless grief, that most would not listen, most would not hear, and I think perhaps for yet another of the briefest instants possible, I felt the infinite heartbreak of my God.

It was unbearable.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013

(Reprise) Dead Man: Gifts from the King

"What is it you would like from Me?" He asked.

"You have already given and done all," I answered through my tears.

He smiled at that in what seemed like genuine approval, but how does a mere creature accurately read the face of his transcendent Creator?

"You know," He said, "I became a Man, not just to die for you, but so that you could also know Me, and by knowing Me, know My Father."

"But there is nothing left for You to give," I said, overwhelmed that He was speaking to me!

"I delight to give My children the desires of their heart," He said simply. "Do not think that there is an end to My grace. I made you for Me. I know you and have gone to great lengths to enable you to believe that I love you."

Then suddenly I was back in the birthing room with my wife just before our eldest daughter was born all those years ago. She was our first, and I did not know Him at that time, or believe that He existed or cared for me.

Incredibly, I had not really wanted this beautiful and precious child in our lives, so blatant was my selfishness. And I considered my wife to be in great debt to me by my agreeing to allow this to occur.

Knowing He was with Me now in reliving this experience filled me with unfathomable shame.

How could He have been so kind, even then, to such a one as me?

Then I saw this child emerge into the world from her mother's womb and all cynical speech and thought fled from me and I stared in awe at this miracle of new human life. I did not know it, but tears were flowing down my face, perhaps for the first time in my adult life, while sober, and I literally could not speak.

Everything I thought I knew and believed became as nothing, and I have since come to know that the overflowing and surprising love that I felt for my infant daughter at the very moment of her birth was His gift to me, as much as she herself was.

It was Him all along, and I did not know it.

That same evening, right there in that same room, this new gift of life stopped breathing for the briefest of instants, and when that occurred my whole existence dropped out from under me like a bottomless pit had opened up in the earth below me, to swallow me forever.

This too was His gift.

Within seconds, frenzied but purposeful action by the attending midwife brought my baby back to life without any permanent harm, but the lesson of unbearable loss was seared into my heart and mind. From that moment onward, my self-confidence and my ability to cope with the vulnerabilities of this life began to crumble.

Days, weeks and months passed in my memory once more, but this time I knew He was with Me, right next to Me, as, of course, He had always been. I saw my younger self wallow increasingly in self-pity, striving diligently to deny that anything had changed, when everything had, in fact, changed irrevocably. I was rapidly deteriorating from the inside out. Soon there would be no facade, and the roiling chaos of fear and panic would be laid bare for all to see.

Together, the King and I saw me turn in desperation and utter selfishness back to the depths of the well of alcohol, in rigid and brittle moderation at first, but with the sure and certain secret knowledge that it was a path that this time would inevitably lead me to final destruction; and to the loss of the very things I could not even admit were important to me. I would lose everything. I would lose her.

He stood with me, as my delusion of competence and my ability to cope with life collapsed like the fragile and ephemeral hallucination it was, and I became the epitome of quiet desperation, casting frantically about for some life preserver, becoming harder on the outside, as the man I was inside dissolved in the fierce acid of overwhelming fear.

Yet another of His gifts.

Stubbornly, inexcusably, I resisted the growing conviction that I could not continue in this way for long without having all semblance of the ability to live ripped away in an avalanche of self-pity and defeat.

Then He showed me my wife, grieved beyond words that this child she loved so much would have to be given into the hands of others to be cared for during the day so that she could return to work, as I so intractably insisted she do as soon as possible. And by His grace, she sought comfort and strength from the only place where they could be found, His love letter to His Creation - His marvelous Word.

He comforted her and brought her to Him, so gently, so effectively, so extravagantly lovingly, that she changed fundamentally right before my eyes, and through Him, loved me more despite my utter self-centeredness and self-absorption.

His gifts kept coming inexorably, like wave after wave upon the shore, unstoppable, undeniable, completely undeserved.

Until, at the appointed time, He bestowed His greatest gift: He brought me to the end of myself, and into His all-encompassing arms.

© Bill Lilley 2011, 2013