Hope and Difference

Rescue and Grace

Hope and Difference

By: Tim Holt

I walk among desolation, cities crumble around me. I have a promise to keep, but I seem to walk alone. The towers around me raise the alarm at my approach, but I don't think that they see me yet. These vultures descent to feast upon dead causes. Those crumbled towers around me swarm with the winged things, already allowing the foundation to be broken away by steel-beaked creatures. My feet fumble along the path, a path littered with blood and rubble. I have a promise to keep, but I seem to walk alone.

An arrow suddenly streaks high into the air, cutting through the air around it with a vicious hiss. It arcs and hangs in the air, then descends with deadly precision and lands in my arm. I reel in pain and looked down, expecting blood to paint over my pale skin, but the spot where the arrow had struck immediately turned to stone and fell from my body, smashing to pieces as it struck the ground. The demonic vultures descend upon the stone and greedily chomp away at it, eying the rest of my body, still covered in flesh for now. But the skin on my arm slowly contorted and reformed itself, the pain only becoming a scar of memory. High above, the archer falls, suddenly dead. I walk on. 

The air becomes darker and thicker, and for a moment I am completely blind, and I can only hear the alarms of the watch towers. The crumbling stone of the city is gone, all has been eaten away this close to the dreaded gates. 

Presently, a man appears to my right, and when I look upon him, the shroud around me clears and everything becomes brighter and more full of hope. He is kingly, and somehow other-worldly, but at the same time seen as if he is my brother. He walks on without a word, simply beckoning me, and I follow close behind, though I do not feel worthy to be next to such a kingly figure. 

We soon come upon a gate, thousands of miles high, and thousands of miles wide, seeming to have no end. From the inside there are sounds of torture and cries of countless hopeless souls. The promise I must keep lies beyond the gates, but I cannot see any way through. I look upon the kingly man in hopelessness, and he simply looks to the gate with a stern glare upon his face, and the mighty obstacle falls to nothing. We enter, and we behold a true hell.

Men and women in countless droves all around have scars coving their bodies like those from my arrow wound, except that these had not healed, and blood still flows openly from the wounds. They are clothed in nothing but rags, and that is if they were the lucky few, for many stand shivering in the cool air, naked. The ground around them is of rough and jagged stone, and they wear no shoes, so their feet make bloody footprints mark where they've been. They are surrounded by jeering, ugly creatures with no skin, constantly oozing a thick, black liquid from many different parts of their bodies. In their disfigured hands there are weapons of many kinds, jagged knives, whips with nine heads, and clubs, which they beat their prisoners with. When we enter the rubble of the gates, they take one look at the kingly man that is beside me and fled as if rabid dogs were biting at their heels toward a great dark figure in the center of the city many, many miles away.

The scattered, emaciated people slowly stop wailing at the lack of pain searing across their bodies and look up at the two strangers that drove away their jailers. The kingly man holds out a hand in invitation with a warm smile. But, oddly, the men and women stand back in fear and doubt; this seems much to good to be true. The kingly man began to loose his smile, and our mission seems lost, but look! A small girl suddenly breaks free from the droves of the tortured and with a childlike sense of hope, jumps with glee into the arms of the man. The kingly man has tears fall from his eyes as if he were a parent who held his long lost child for the first time in countless years. At a joyous laugh from the kingly man, the scars and burns on the girl's body fade away, and her skin seems like she had just emerged from her mother's womb. She stood behind him with a smile, fully clothed in warm garments, clinging to the robes of her healer. The kingly man outstretches his hand once more, and many more come to be healed of their hurts, but not all come forward. Many still stand back, and went back into the darkness, some embarrassed and others even mocking the kingly man for being a fraud and a false hope even though they had seen the change with their own eyes.

In the distance, behold! the great shadow that the torturers had run toward springs to life and rushes at the kingly man. The world seems to grow dark again, and I know that death is now upon me! The newly healed men and women begin to cry out and tremble in fear, and I along with them! We fall to the ground in fear, but the kingly man stands tall! Indeed, he seems to grow in size and power until he is even taller than the great shadow! A look of intense wrath is beheld upon the kingly man's face, and even I, who have traveled with him, tremble with sheer fear. The great shadow stops, but the kingly man makes not a sound. He simply raises his right hand in defiance at the shadow, and the a scream comes from the colossal cloud as it dissipates, yelling, "I destroyed you, Son of Man!" 

The kingly man's wrath suddenly fades as he looks upon us, even as his children, and beckons us out of the demolished gates. Behind us, already seemingly a shadow of our memories, the gates are suddenly rebuilt and the tortured screams continue, never to abate. He turns back to the foul city and raises a mournful cry for those that chose to remain behind, so sorrowful is it that one thinks that he has just lost a son or daughter. Then he turns to lead us away to a place where fear, pain, and hopelessness have no home.