The Gate (5 page)

God reveals himself to us in many different ways, but we don't always recognize him.

“Lately, I've seen more than I've understood,” I replied.

“Sometimes that's the way it works,” Roz responded. “But wisdom comes to those who wait.”

After that we didn't say much, and on the way back we listened to the eight-track and replayed old memories in our minds. It was well after dark by the time we got back to the cottage.

“It was good to see you, Scout,” Roz said as we stood on the little porch outside the kitchen.

“Aren't you coming inside?” I asked.

“No, I've got to get going, but I'm really glad we had this time.” Then he put his arm around me, gave me a hug, and said, “Go on in, they're waiting for you.”

With that, he walked back to the Camaro and got in.

“Tell Myra I'll be waiting for her,” he yelled as he rambled down the drive. “And tell the kids what I told you. Oh, and one other thing . . . Cut Ben a little slack, will you? God's not finished with him yet either. Ben's just not quite as far along in his race as
you are. He's had a few tough breaks—some were his fault, and some weren't. He's starting to get his game together. Give him a little time. You'll see, you'll see.”

I watched until the bullet-shaped taillights faded out of sight, and then I turned and walked inside.

It is not every question that deserves an answer.

Publilius Syrus

A
s I walked in the screen door to the kitchen, Michael was sitting at the table.

“You must be tired,” he said. “I'll show you where your room is.”

We walked through the library past a smoldering fire and up the staircase to the second floor. The landing was a six-by-six-foot area. Three doors led to bedrooms and one went to a bathroom. Each door had a window above it that tilted in to allow the air to circulate. Like in the kitchen, the doors and wood trim were white. Again beadboard lined the walls, but here the wall above it was painted a dark khaki color.

Michael motioned toward the west bedroom and said, “This room is yours. You'll find clothes in the dresser, and the towels and toiletries in the bathroom are for you as well.”

As I opened the door to my room, a slight breeze blew in. I turned to say thank you, but Michael was already gone.

Inside there was an oak dresser, a blue tweed wingback chair, and two twin beds covered in blue-and-white checked quilts. It looked kind of like the room Ben and I shared as kids at the cottage. The book I'd started reading that morning sat open on the dresser to the page I'd read last, and next to it was an old
picture of Carol and me and the girls. Kate and Kelly wore matching green corduroy dresses that Carol had made, and Tara was a toddler.

I was in grad school then, but even though we really had to pinch our pennies, I remember those years as some of the best of our lives. Jesus once told the rich young ruler to sell everything he had and then come follow him. We had done just that—or at least we had chased the dream we thought God had planted in our hearts—and there was something exuberant about it. We knew deep down in our bones that the reward would one day outweigh the cost. I still believe that, but I'm not sure I'd be ready to do it again at this stage of my life. You get cautious when you get older. Maybe it's because you know what it costs to try to start over again in life, or maybe it's because you've got more to lose.

When Jesus left this life to go to the next, he promised to prepare a place for us also.

If this was heaven, then the good news was that they were expecting me. I couldn't help but be reminded that when Jesus left this life to go to the next, he promised to prepare a place for us also. After changing clothes, I lay on the bed, looked up at the stars, and started to say my prayers. “My Father which art in heaven—am I in heaven too?” I fell asleep before I finished the prayer.

In the morning, I awoke to the smell of coffee and bacon. The sun was shining, and I felt great. I can't remember the last time I slept that well. I got up, grabbed the robe, and walked across the hall to the bathroom. I splashed some water in my face and squeezed some toothpaste onto the brush, rolling it from the bottom like I always do. I started brushing my teeth and then glanced up at the mirror.

To my surprise, the man looking back at me was much younger than I am. It was me, but it wasn't, or at least it wasn't who I'd been for a long time. My hair was longer, thicker, and blonder.
The crow's-feet had disappeared from around my eyes, my cheeks were tan, and my chin was more pronounced. I looked like I did twenty-five years ago. I couldn't help but laugh out loud.

I remembered reading somewhere that Thomas Aquinas believed we'd all be thirty-three years old in heaven because that's how old Jesus was at the resurrection—old enough to avoid the foolish mistakes of youth, and young enough to avoid the pain and suffering of old age. It looked like the old saint was right!

I walked back to my room whistling and started to get dressed. I grabbed a Noah's Ark T-shirt and a pair of shorts, but then I noticed the size. They were 34s, and I was a snug 36. “Well, they don't get everything right here,” I said to myself. But when I tried them on, they fit with room to spare. My hair might have been thicker, but my waist was definitely thinner.

Thomas Aquinas believed we'd all be thirty-three in heaven.

I bounced down the stairs and walked into the dining room where the table was already set for breakfast. There was a large, round, light maple table with six ladder-back chairs. Six more chairs hung from hooks on the wall, suggesting that the table could be expanded as needed. Next to the table was a matching sideboard with leaded glass doors, and a large vase of fresh cut flowers sat on top of it. A watercolor painting of three children playing at the beach was hanging on the wall. “That looks like my sister, my brother, and me,” I said.

“It is!” said a voice from the kitchen. I was expecting to see Ahbee making breakfast, but instead, a Middle Eastern man in his thirties walked out smiling. He was wearing cuffed blue jeans, Keen sandals, and a well-worn gray T-shirt that said “Lowe's” on the pocket.

“I'm Josh,” he said with a bit of an accent, and he extended his hand, swallowing mine in a crushing grip. I couldn't help but notice that his calloused hands were scarred and twisted, like he'd been in some kind of industrial accident.

“Sky,” he said, “it is so good to have you here.”

Once again, I felt at a disadvantage. Whoever this was, he seemed to know me.

“I am Ahbee's son,” he said, as if he were reading my thoughts. “And he has asked me to spend some time with you today.”

As I looked more carefully at the young man before me, I saw a definite family resemblance. He looked like a younger version of Ahbee, but taller. His skin was more olive in tone, his nose more pronounced, and his eyes were the color of baking chocolate. His words and his appearance were inviting. There was something magnetic about the man, and it made you want to get to know him better.

“Where are my manners?” he continued. “Sit down, sit down! How do you want your eggs?”

“I'm not sure,” I said. “I usually have fruit for breakfast, and maybe some whole grain cereal. I've got to watch my cholesterol, you know.”

“Not here, you don't! How about we make them sunny-side up along with an order of heavenly hash browns?”

“Sounds good to me!”

When he handed me the plate, it also had orange slices and four strips of bacon, crispy and crumbling, just the way I like it. The hash browns were shaped into a patty, and when I cut into them, there was in fact hash inside, along with a finely minced onion and a little yellow pepper. I bowed my head and prayed, “Thank you, Lord, for this day and for this food.”

Like Ahbee, the young man said, “You're welcome.”

“Aren't you going to eat?” I asked.

“I already ate,” Josh replied. “But I'll break bread with you.” As he reached across the table and grabbed a loaf of freshly baked whole grain bread, again I noticed the scars on his hands.

I was still uncertain where I was and who I was with, but clearly this was a place of wonderment.

“Should I call you Jesus?” I asked, testing my suspicions.

“You may,” he answered. “But Joshua is the name my mother gave me, and so nowadays most everyone just calls me Josh.”

“That would be Mary?” I asked.

“Of course,” he responded. “Of course, you know her name as well as I.”

“And the Keens?” I continued. “Aren't they a little out of costume for you?”

“I've always been a sandal man,” Josh answered. “And the Keens are very comfortable.”

I remained skeptical, but if this Josh was who he said he was, I had lots of questions for him.

“What do you want to do today?” Josh asked.

“I didn't know it was up to me,” I retorted. “I thought you guys set the agenda here.”

“No, it's like Michael said, ‘The choice is yours'—it's always yours.”

“Well then, if it's up to me, I'd like to spend a little time with you.”

“Sounds good,” Josh replied. “Sounds very good.”

I had hoped we'd spend our time talking about the suffering of the world and the second coming. Sin and suffering were two things that I'd seen more than my share of in the last twenty-five years. When I started out as a staff psychologist at the state prison in Easton, I saw it played out in every session. Every inmate there had been both a victim and a predator at some point in their lives, and their stories haunted my dreams and almost strangled my faith in humanity. It got especially bad for me when I started seeing people I'd recommended for release come back as repeat offenders in only a matter of months.

We talked a lot of Jesus there, especially in the lifer's wing, but it had little effect on how most of them lived their lives. Clearly evil was more present in that place than anywhere I'd ever been, and eventually I knew I had to get out of there.

I thought it would be better when I started working in the
psych ward at Silver Ridge Hospital, but it wasn't. Evil simply popped up in other ways. This time it was more the evil of the system than the people. Over and over again I found myself asking God to do something, or at least to give us enough time to do something that made a difference in these people's lives, but sadly most of my prayers seemed to go unanswered. The insurance ran out before we could make any real progress, and most people went home with their demons in tow.

Eventually cynicism won out and I went into private practice, mostly for the money. Still, partly to appease my guilty conscience, and partly because it was who I wanted to be, I called it the Christian Compass Counseling Center and added the byline “Helping people find their way back on the right path.” That's truly what I wanted to do, even what I felt called to do, and for a while at least I felt like that was what I was doing, but somewhere along the way I started to realize that the only permanent solution to the suffering of the world was the second coming of Jesus.

And then, by some mysterious twist of fate, I found myself walking beside the very one who could do something about it all. Unfortunately, instead of doing it, Josh wanted to walk up the hill behind the cottage in silence. I had so many questions and so many suggestions for what he might do, but I knew if that kind of a conversation was going to take place, he would have to start it.

To my great disappointment, he didn't. The two of us spent the day silently cutting lumber at the old sawmill that overlooked the garden. After a couple hours of sawdust and silence I began to feel a sense of accomplishment in this simple task that I hadn't felt in a long time. I marveled as I watched how efficiently Josh worked the wood through the saw. His movements were fluid and purposeful, with no wasted energy whatsoever. There was a gracefulness to his steps, almost like a ballet, and even though the work was exhausting, it was also satisfying.
This is the way work is supposed to be
, I thought.

My work, on the other hand, felt unsatisfying and unfinished, at least lately. I measured most sessions by the clock, not by the progress we made. In fact, I almost always ended by saying, “We'll pick it up here next time you come in.” Not that there weren't breakthroughs—there were—but rarely did things ever come to a clear ending point. With so much brokenness in the world, I felt like the work was never finished.

For a moment I looked at Josh working a long wooden beam through the saw, and my eyes filled with tears as I remembered his words from the cross: “
It is finished.
” For the first time I realized that in that moment he must have had a deep sense of satisfaction knowing that he did his work really well.

That's what's been missing in my work lately
, I thought. What I wanted, what I needed was to hear someone say, “You did a good job. Well done. I'm proud of you.” In that moment it was so clear. We were created with a purpose. Each of us has a job to do. Work is an integral part of life, and it always has been. Right at the beginning Adam was put in the Garden and told to work it, and we've been working it ever since.

Nothing satisfies the soul like feeling we've accomplished something.

Could it be? Was that it? Had Josh been trying to tell me all day that our work will never really be done, not even here?

The idea that people worked in heaven took me by surprise. For some reason I'd thought that heaven was like retirement—nothing to do, and plenty of time to do it. But now that I thought about it, it made perfect sense. We're all made in God's image, after all. And like him, we've all been given the ability to create. Besides, nothing satisfies the soul like feeling we've accomplished something.

“I am so very proud of you,” Josh said. “You're finally beginning to put some of the pieces together on your own. It's that kind of thinking that's needed if we're going to be delivered from evil and put an end to the conspiracy once and for all.”

I was about to ask him what he meant by that when he raised his index finger to his lips, shook his head, and said, “Now's not the time for more information. Now is the time for you to unpack and reprocess what you already know. Understanding comes slowly, in bits and pieces. One thing builds upon another. Too much too soon will only confuse you. Trust me, it will all be clear to you when you're ready. Besides, right now we've got work to do.”