It Isn't Dark

This story is from my book, Rise, With Healing In Our Wings. The book is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble internet sites.

The air chills me on this May evening as my wife and I enter a grand mansion converted to a reception center, It is secluded behind a spear-staved wrought-iron fence laced with twining ivy. Inside, ornate paneled walls and ceilings bespeak a bygone era of elegance and 'elan. There is laughing and gaiety in the large room that served as a parlor in an earlier day. Guests are eating cheesecake, sipping lemonade, and small-talking at tables covered with lily-white linen. Glistening-eyed girls in white blouses and black pants rush to serve newly arriving guests and to collect dinnerware departing guests have left behind. Crystal centerpieces and chandeliers strike light off the walls, and in an adjoining room a three-man jazz band unloads licks.

Across the room in which we are sitting, the bride and groom are being photographed as they cut their wedding cake. She picks up a slice and presses it to his mouth. Inevitably, she succeeds only marginally; crumbs and frosting front his black tuxedo. They laugh self-consciously, and then he sweeps her off her feet and kisses her with the still-blossoming, unbounded joy of new love. Whistles and applause follow.

As I raise a forkfull of cheesecake to my mouth, my wife leans to me and woefully whispers, "Look at the girl at the table by the fireplace." I look and wish I had not. The girl is in her early teens, sweetly beautiful, with long blond hair. Her eyelids are closed, permanently. A white stick is at her side. She isn't smiling, isn't talking. She is expressionless. Her parents are with her, as is a younger male sibling.

Suddenly, the whole scene is transformed. I struggle to finish my cheesecake. Everything seems terribly wrong: the joy, the music, the laughter, the gifts, the opulence, the adoring exchanges between bride and groom--all mingle to mock the stark, heart-rending realty that seizes me, sears me. I want to go to the girl, talk to her, tell her how incredibly beautiful she is. I flail at framing the words. Excuse me, but do you know how beautiful . . . I mean, I just want you to know . . . .

But, of course, that won't do. No words will. She could interpret such an act from a stranger as an expression of pity. Her parents would surely perceive it that way. I push the cheesecake aside and stare, wet-eyed, at the chandelier above me. Long, silent moments pass. Then, from the prisms of dancing light, it comes to me. I marvel, wondering "Am I worthy?" But my doubts dissipate as the spirit speaks.

Just as this mansion is whole, has found new life, and is home again to joyful celebrations, that precious daughter of God will find a joyous new life in a mansion on high. Her eyes will be opened. She will see the Father and the Son, enveloped in loving, life-renewing light. She will see what sighted mortals cannot see, nor understand: paradisaical promises in full flower. And she will know, with gratitude grounded in divine grace, what Jesus told the Pharisees at the healing of the blind man was true: "I am the light of the world; he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." (John 8:12)

My wife mets an old friend, so it's late when we leave the mansion. It's late, but it isn't dark.

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