Trial by Fire (28 page)

L
ast night as I was trying to relax and fall asleep, I began reflecting on the 23rd Psalm and all the riches layered in that passage. And I came to the phrase I've repeated and read many times before.

He restores my soul.

Always before, I dwelled on the verse before it, about his leading me beside the quiet waters. That is, after all, a wonderful thought in such a stressful, noisy world. And I've pondered the verse after it, about the Lord guiding me in paths of righteousness. That's particularly important to someone like me, who has no sense of direction.

But this is the first time I've lingered on his restoring my soul.

And I realized that he does, in such a merciful way. He has restored my soul when I've beaten it and bruised it through my careless actions and terrible choices. He has restored my soul when I've allowed it to run empty, and he's restored it when I've filled it up with things it wasn't made to hold. He has restored my soul when others have crushed it. He has restored it when there was no hope for restoration.

And I wondered what my life would look like now, if I had never allowed that restoration. What if I had pushed God away when he reached down for me like a daddy reaching for his toddler? What if I had not reached up to him, allowing him to lift me? What if I had not laid my head on his shoulder?

Where would I be if I'd had to take the punishment I deserved for the sins I committed, and if I'd had to walk through life without that perfect, unconditional love? What if I'd had to face a future eternity with only hopelessness and fear?

Thank God for Jesus Christ, who loved me so much that he took that punishment for me, cleaned my slate, restored my soul…

I can't wait to see him face-to-face.

God bless all of you!
Terri Blackstock

Read an excerpt from

 

LAST LIGHT

 

BOOK ONE OF THE RESTORATION SERIES

 

TERRI BLACKSTOCK

D
eni Branning took the last steps down from the commuter plane and pulled out the handle of her rolling carry-on. She glanced back up at her dad coming down behind her. He had struck up a conversation with the man who'd sat next to him. Doug Branning had never met a stranger, which accounted for his success as a stockbroker. He'd snagged some of his best clients on flights like this.

The oppressive Birmingham humidity settled over her like a heavy coat. Its
te mporary,
she told herself. She wouldn't have to spend the summer here. Just one week, and then it was back to DC, her new job, and the fiancé she'd dreamed of for all of her twenty-two years. Yes, it was hot in the nation's capital too, and probably just as humid. But its fast-paced importance made it easier to bear.

As her father reached the bottom step, his small bag clutched in his hand, the loud hum of the plane's engine went silent. A sudden, eerie quiet settled over the place, as if someone had turned down the volume on all the machinery around them. The conveyor belt purging the cargo bin of its luggage stopped. The carts dragging the luggage carriers stalled.

She smelled something burning.

Her father clutched his bag and looked back at the plane. “What happened?”

Deni didn't answer. Her eyes were on the airport employees yelling to each other about a power outage.

And then, from the corner of her eye, she saw a plane descending too steeply from the sky, torpedoing toward the runway. “Dad—”

The word was barely out of her mouth when the plane shattered into the runway and went tumbling wildly across the pavement.

Deni screamed, and the employees took off running toward the plane as it spun into a building.

The plane exploded, and ripples of heat knocked the passengers back from several hundred feet away. Doug grabbed her and pulled her to her knees. “Stay down, honey!”

But she wanted to look. She struggled to see through the shield of his arms. The fire devoured the broken fuselage. She imagined the people inside that plane, crawling over each other in a desperate effort to escape, slowly perishing in the murderous heat.

Her father got up and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, we're going inside!”

She looked back, feeling the heat on her face.

“Now,
Deni!”

“Dad, the people! They're burning. Somebody has to get them out!”

“They're trying.” He grabbed up her suitcase, and she followed him up the steps that took them into the terminal.

They were greeted by darkness.

They ran into the arriving gate where a window provided some light. A crowd of people were clustered around it, watching the plane burn.

Doug headed for two Delta employees who stood talking with intense urgency. “Where are the fire trucks?” he asked them. “Has anybody called them?”

“The phones aren't working. Everything's out.”

He grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket, and Deni watched him try to dial 911. But the phone was dead. “My battery must have lost its charge. Try yours, Deni.”

She dug her phone out of her purse and hit the
on
button. There was no readout, nothing indicating it had any power. Had both their batteries died on the plane?

She looked back out the window. The plane continued to burn…engulfed in a conflagration that wouldn't be quenched. Helpless airport employees stood back from the fire, looking around for help. Someone had pulled out a fire extinguisher and was shooting white foam, but it was like squirting a water pistol at a towering inferno.

Deni thought of herself and her dad, sitting among all those passengers just moments ago. It could have been
them
out there, trapped in a burning metal coffin.

She gritted her teeth and pounded her fists on the window. “Where are the stupid fire trucks?”

Doug's whisper was helpless, horrified. “I don't know.”

She watched the chaos on the tarmac as employees ran in different directions, looking confused and defeated, shouting and gesturing wildly for help.

She heard the sound of another plane coming in, loud and urgent, and the people standing near her began to scream and hit the floor as that plane shot in, descending too fast, too steep…

She couldn't watch as it hit the ground, but she heard the deafening sound of another crash, felt the impact shake the building. Screams crescendoed…

Shivering in terror, she looked up. The plane was spinning and tumbling across the grass separating the runways.

“Daddy!” She looked up at him, saw the tears on his face, the horror in his eyes. She followed his gaze to the sky. Was something shooting the planes down? Were there more to come? Deni slipped her hand into his and felt his trembling. For the first time in her life, she was aware of her father's fear. And though his strong, confident grip held her tight, she knew that everything had changed.

D
oug Branning's mind raced to solve the problems—planes falling out of the sky, crashing, burning, people dying…There was a power outage, but that wouldn't have caused planes to crash. Maybe there was some kind of battle going on in the air that they couldn't see. If someone was shooting the planes down, maybe they'd also knocked out the power on the ground. Was it some kind of terrorist attack? An ambush by a hostile nation?

In all his uncertainty, he knew one thing. He had to get his daughter to safety. The airport felt like a target for whatever evil hovered above them. He put his arm around Deni and pulled her from the window. He hoped she couldn't feel his trembling. “Come on, Deni, we're getting out of here.”

For once in her life, she was compliant as he pulled her up the long dark hall, past the empty gates. Several Delta ground clerks came running past them.

“Excuse me,” he called out. “Can anyone tell me what's going on?”

“Power's out,” one of them called back. “Nothing's working.”

“Did the planes crash because the tower's electricity is down?”

“May have. We can't say for sure.”

But that didn't make sense. Didn't pilots have emergency procedures for situations like this? Couldn't they land the planes without an air traffic controller talking them through it?

He walked Deni past another window and saw the balls of fire, still burning. The other plane hadn't caught fire, and men rushed toward it, fighting to get the door open. Still no fire trucks had come.

“Dad, this is insane. How could a power outage cause planes to crash?”

“Maybe it's the other way around.” As he thought out loud, he realized that didn't bear up. The power had shut down before the crashes. That's why things went quiet. He'd heard their own plane's engine power off at the same time that everything else stopped. The luggage belt, the maintenance cars…

Clearly, there was nothing they could do for the poor souls on the planes. Dozens of people were at the second plane now, but they couldn't seem to get inside. Grimly, he realized they had all probably died in the impact. How could anyone have survived?

“Let's go to the car.” Still carrying Deni's suitcase, he headed to the exit. “Maybe we can get a signal on our phones after we leave the airport, and call your mother. She's probably heard about it on the news and can tell us what's happening.”

She followed him at a trot. He reached the front door, but it didn't open.

“Power's out, Dad, remember?”

He turned and found a manual door. As they pushed through it, he was struck with the silence in the street. There were no cars moving through, and the security guards were probably helping the rescue effort. They hurried across the street into the big parking garage. They'd parked on the fourth level, but the elevators weren't working, so they found the stairs and trudged up.

They were soaked with sweat by the time they reached their level and made their way to his new Mercedes. Doug used the remote on his key chain to pop the lock on the trunk, but when he got to the car, the trunk was still closed. Jabbing the key into the lock, he opened it. Quickly, he loaded their two bags, slammed the trunk, then manually unlocked his car door and got in. Deni knocked on the passenger window.

He frowned at the door lock. The power locks weren't working—how could
that
be? The power outage couldn't extend to his car, could it? He leaned across the leather seat, and opened the passenger door.

As Deni got in, he put the key into the ignition and turned it…but nothing happened.

Deni just looked at him. “The car's dead too? Dad, this is like the
Twilight Zone.
What could cause this?”

Doug looked around. Usually cars circled everywhere, looking for a parking spot. But not today. He got out and walked to the edge of the parking structure, looked over to the roads that took them out of the place. There were a few cars lined up at the toll booth, but they weren't moving. No cars ran on the streets leading to the interstate, though several looked stalled in the middle of the road. People stood outside their vehicles, opening the hoods…

He ran back to his car and tried turning the key again, to no avail. He tested the radio. Still nothing.

Deni slapped the dashboard. “This is just great! Are we going to have to stay in this creepy place with planes crashing all around us? I want to go home.”

“I don't believe this.” Doug turned to the back seat and saw a Walkman one of the kids had left there. He grabbed it, shoved the headphones on, and tried to get a radio station.

All he got was silence.

Slowly, he took the head phones off as the stark realization took hold of him. Everything was dead. Electricity, phones, cars, radio waves…even planes in mid-flight.

As he sat in his useless car with the keys in his hand, Doug Branning felt the world spinning out of control.

And he was powerless to stop it.

Terri Blackstock, #1 Bestselling Suspense Author

Today, the world as you know it will end. No need to turn off the lights.

Your car suddenly stalls and won't restart. You can't call for help because your cell phone is dead.

Everyone around you is having the same problem…and it's just the tip of the iceberg. Your city is in a blackout. Communication is cut off. Hospital equipment won't operate. And airplanes are falling from the sky.

Is it a terrorist attack…or something far worse?

In the face of a crisis that sweeps an entire high-tech planet back to the age before electricity, your family faces a choice. Will you hoard your possessions to survive—or trust God to provide as you offer your resources and your hearts to others?

Yesterday's world is gone. Now all you've got is your family and community. You stand or fall together. Like never before, you must rely on each other.

But one of you is a killer.

#1 bestselling suspense author Terri Blackstock weaves a masterful what-if novel in which global catastrophe reveals the darkness in human hearts—and lights the way to restoration for a self-centered world.
Last Light
is the first book in an exciting new series.

 

Softcover: 0–310-25767–0
Audio CD, Unabridged: 0–310–26880-X

 

Pick up a copy today at your favorite bookstore!