Introduction
Copyright 2021 by H.D. Shively
Freedom
A Parable of Redemption
Life in this realm sometimes can be likened to a life sentence in a prison camp. The only way out is death, the inevitable outcome of the decay in our bodies which begins the moment we are born.
The only escape from this prison is provided by God. There is a heaven, the place where the God who made the universe and all that it contains resides.
The wall that surrounds the prison camp we inhabit is called “Self-effort and Striving." Some believe that we can escape from our imprisonment if we can manage to climb over the top where we can see the sky and the vast expanse of freedom from this life it promises.
The multitudes that are trying to escape from their prison are attempting to climb that wall, straining and exhorting themselves to attain the perfection that will allow them to achieve the goal of their freedom.
They can’t see that God has provided a door in the wall, a means of escape. The door is unlocked and opens easily.
There is a Voice calling from the other side of the wall, trying to direct those who are struggling to find the door that leads to their salvation. Those who can hear that Voice, will stop striving and follow the call that will set them free.
Part One – The Wall
“Did you hear that?” Ahmad whispered as he stopped to rest from his exertion. He had already climbed so far and he was exhausted.
“Hear what?” the man who was stretched out beside him replied. His hands were clinging to the stones, his knuckles were white and bleeding.
“Shhhh, listen Jacob.”
Jacob closed his eyes and waited in the silence, tuning out the sounds of the other souls around them that were moaning and sighing from their efforts.
“Yes, yes!” Jacob finally exhaled his answer. “I hear it now. It’s a voice calling.”
The two men rested in silence for a few more moments, listening. The Voice was distant, like a whisper in their minds, even though the sound of it seemed to be coming from the other side of the wall. It didn’t make sense, yet the Voice was unmistakably a Voice and it was calling to them. “Climb back down,” it said. “You don’t have to do this.”
“You hear what it’s saying, Ahmad?”
“Yes.”
“We can’t climb down. We’ve come so far already. We have to escape or we’ll die here! I can’t stop, I’ve got to keep climbing!”
With that said, Jacob pulled with all of his might and raised himself up another few inches.
“Did you hear it again?” Ahmad asked. “Listen!”
The Still Small Voice in their minds repeated the command to cease their striving and added, “There is a Door.”
“There’s a door,” Ahmad repeated what the Voice had whispered. “There’s a door?”
“A door in the wall?” Jacob’s voice rasped through a throat that was starved and thirsty.
Then both of the men heard,“Get down now, and I will show you how to find it. I am here to help and comfort you.”
The weary men struggled to believe what they had heard. They were being asked to accept that there was another way to escape that they had missed through all their attempts to gain the summit of the wall through their own efforts. They were being asked to discard everything they had been taught from childhood.
They looked up. The wall still towered above their heads like an insurmountable mountain.
The men were spent and exhausted. The endless climb had only brought them frustration and failure from the many times that they had slipped backward through human weakness.
The men looked at each other. Then they responded to the whisper calling through their minds and into their weary hearts. Slowly the two men began to inch their way back down the wall that they had spent their whole lives struggling to climb.
Was it faith in the Voice, or defeat that led them back to the place where they had begun at the base of their prison wall? They both had been conditioned to think that all they had to do to attain their freedom was to climb the wall, to work, to labor to reach its summit and the acceptance of heaven that was so far above their reach peering at them through the clouds.
Jacob and Ahmad sat together at the base of the wall, resting for a while, trying to comprehend the enormity of what they had just done. Given up? Abandoned the belief that there was a way out if they had just continued to struggle?
They could sense the guards in the watchtower smirking at them. The guards knew the wall was insurmountable. Those who did give up and abandoned all faith in escape climbed back down to wait and die, hopeless in the prison. These ones resigned themselves to their life sentence, serving the guards who hated them and who eagerly anticipated the death of their victims; that moment when the souls abandoned their bodies and could be herded into eternal darkness.
The guards also delighted in the knowledge that those who continued climbing would die on the wall before they reached the summit. No one had ever managed to finish the climb. Lives expired still clinging to the wall before they finally tumbled back to the earth and their souls were gathered to be tormented.
The guards who watched the two men huddled against the base of the wall thought that they were among those who had lost faith. But the guards didn’t know that these two men had heard the Voice.
Ahmad and Jacob remained sitting together in the stupor of their actions. How would abandoning everything they had been taught to believe lead them to freedom?
“What do we do now?” Jacob wondered out loud.
Ahmad didn’t answer.
“What time is it?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know,” Ahmad responded wearily. “I lost my watch. It fell off when I scraped it on the wall. What does it matter what time it is?”
“I was just wondering how much time we had left.”
“Ah, yes, but I think its best we don’t know.”
“Maybe.”
“Shhhh!”
“What?”
“The Voice, I can hear it again. Quiet!”
The men listened.
“Stand up!” The Voice commanded.
The men responded in unison like two seeds sprouting up after being buried in the earth for a long time.
There was more silence. Moments that seemed longer than necessary. It was as if they were being examined, tested. The men could not have known that their obedience to the silent command gained them the privilege of more insights.
Then they both heard the Voice say one word. “Map.”
“Map?” the men repeated.
“There’s a map that will get us out of here? How could we have missed it?” Ahmad wondered.
“Maybe we were too busy climbing to find it?” Jacob offered.
“Where is it then, how do we find it?” Ahmad looked at Jacob as if he should know.
“Why are you looking at me? I don’t have a clue.”
Then Ahmad said, “So we will wait here until the Voice tells us what to do. We have no other choice.”
“You’re right.” Jacob nodded and both men began to descend back into the indentations their bodies had made in the dirt.
“Stop!” the Voice commanded.
The men froze.
“Look at the wall!”
Ahmad looked at Jacob. “The map’s on the wall?”
“It’s logical” Jacob replied. “The wall’s made of Self-effort and Striving, isn’t it? That’s what we all thought we had to do to climb our way out of here. Why wouldn’t the map that shows us how to stop our striving be on the wall?”
“That’s logical.” Ahmad nodded. Both men turned to face the wall.
It was an endless wall that stretched out as far as the men could see in either direction. It weaved and turned abruptly jutting into detours that led to dead ends. To find a door in a wall that doubled as a labyrinth was a secret that could only be revealed to a seeking heart, and a mind that was tired of trying and failing.
The men stared at the cold, gray stones before them.
“Let’s pray.” Jacob said.
“Good idea,” Ahmad answered. “I was about to make the same suggestion.”
As the men stood facing the wall, they closed their eyes and prayed. They prayed for guidance, direction and for God to reveal the map that would take them to the door in the wall that would set them free.
Several minutes passed. Then the men opened their eyes. Four eyes suddenly widened in amazement. Etched into the stones in front of them was a map.
The first thing that came into their minds was, -
“God loves us,” Jacob expressed the words humbly.
“He really wants us to be free!” Ahmad shouted with joy.
Part Two -
The Map
The map didn’t seem to be all that large. It was centered on the wall directly in front of them shimmering like a translucent mirror. The men could see their reflections in it, even though their images didn’t obscure the details the map was revealing.
It seemed at first to be a maze of a different kind, confusing and difficult to decipher. Jacob and Ahmad knew they would not be able to understand it and that’s why the Voice remained hovering within their minds.
Without speaking, the Voice directed the men’s attention to a spot on the map that read, “Start here.” Miraculously, those two simple words were easily understood by the men, even though it was written in Hebrew, Arabic and every other language in the world all at the same time.
“That’s quite a map, “Ahmad said, his voice tinged with awe.
Jacob nodded. He was wondering if he would be able to touch it, to trace where they were being led with his finger. Slowly he reached out to the place where they were told to start and gently touched the map. In response the shimmering intensified. Jacob instantly recoiled as the entire map suddenly changed its form and dissolved into a verdant green landscape.
“What did I do?” Jacob asked. “I’m sorry! I ruined it?”
“You did nothing wrong,” the Voice whispered. “You were seeking.”
The scene before the men’s eyes began to be filled with exquisite details; an abundance of flowers, fruit laden trees, fountains bubbling up from the ground, a vast assortment of exotic animals and two unique human beings, a man and a woman. Their naked bodies were clothed in a glimmering white light.
It took only another instant of wonderment before the men realized they were beholding a living painting of the Garden of Eden.The scene before them was breathtaking and the two men both experienced an intense desire to be there, enveloped in the pristine perfection that God had designed.
“That’s the way it was,” Jacob sighed wistfully.
“That’s the way it was supposed to be forever,” the Voice responded somewhat sadly. “Watch. This is where the map begins. This is where the plan begins.”
“The plan? What plan?” Ahmad asked.
The Voice was silent. The men continued to observe with longing, the idyllic existence that Adam and Eve enjoyed, as God’s firstborn children tended to their garden and interacted with animals that are considered wild today, but were the children’s pets that God had given them to treasure.
Then they watched Eve as she carried a woven basket that she had made to a spot in the center of the garden where two majestic trees were planted opposite one another some distance apart in the clearing. She went over to one of them, obviously disdaining the tree on the opposite side of the tree that she began to harvest. As she pulled the fruit from the branches and placed it into her container, a shadow began to cast its lack of light over the ground.
As Jacob and Ahmad watched, a dark cloud glided to the land and its shape dissolved into the image of a large four legged serpent.
“I know who that is, it’s the bad guy!” Jacob moaned. “I know what happens next!”
“Oh, no,” Ahmad, responded. “I don’t know if I want to watch this, I was having such a good time.”
A conversation began to ensue between Eve and the creature.
“I never could believe that part of the story about a talking snake,” Jacob said adamantly.
“It has to be true or we wouldn’t be watching it, it’s part of the map.” Ahmad responded. “And you just saw that it was something else before it became an animal.”
“The devil!” Jacob exclaimed as the revelation of how a fallen angel can have the ability to assume different forms, quickly adjusted his perceptions. “Yes, of course! That’s how it could have happened!”
“Shhhh, listen to what they are saying” Ahmad said as he leaned his head a little closer to the map.
“Didn’t God say that you could not eat of every tree in the garden?” the serpent asked Eve. Its forked tongue flickered out of its mouth after every few words as if it was there just for punctuation.
Eve replied sweetly, “We can eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden. I especially like the nut trees and the oranges. But we can’t eat from that tree.” Eve pointed to it with a frown contorting her lovely face. "God said that if we do, or even touch it we will surely die. He said something else about having to pay taxes but I’m not sure what that means.” Eve’s voice was clear and pure, innocent like a child.
If serpents could smile, this one did. It nodded its head side to side as it rasped, “No, no, no. I can’t believe He wants you to believe that one. Eve, sweetie, listen to me. You will not die. God knows that if you eat from this awesome, wonderful tree of knowledge then you’ll be like gods, knowing good and evil. There’s a world of excitement out there just waiting to be discovered. Look at that fruit, my dear, isn’t it beautiful?”
The tree was covered in grape like clusters, only they were brown.
“That fruit looks like chocolate,” Ahmad noticed. “I love chocolate. I’m beginning to see how this could have happened.”
The men watched in horror as Eve set down her basket filled with the good fruit, and slowly walked over to the other tree that was forbidden.
“Shout, Ahmad!” Jacob yelled. “Let’s scream! Tell her to stop in her tracks. If she can hear us we can change history!”
“How can she hear us if she wouldn’t listen to God?” Ahmad answered.
“Yell!”
As Eve began to reach for the fruit, Ahmad and Jacob began shouting at the top of their lungs. “No, Eve, stop. Don’t touch it, don’t eat it and whatever you do don’t give it to Adam!”
The guards in the tower heard the sound of the men screaming and turned to look. The two men facing the wall were flapping their arms as they shouted wildly at the stones.
“Ah, we’ve got a couple of crazies down there. This will be interesting to watch.”
But the hysteria quickly dissolved into defeated silence. There was nothing the two men could do to stop the inevitable.
Jacob and Ahmad watched helplessly as Eve gave into the lusts of her eyes, her flesh and the pride of life. The men cringed as they witnessed Adam indulge himself in the forbidden fruit.
As Adam and Eve were enjoying the delicacy, Jacob and Ahmad could see that the hapless couple they were beholding were unaware that the glorious covering of light that clothed them was dissolving to reveal the nakedness of God’s firstborn.
“Eve, this is so delicious. Why didn’t God want us to enjoy something so wonderful?” Adam said as the creamy dark liquid filling of the fruit began outlining his mouth.
Eve looked up between bites, stared at Adam and screamed. “The light’s gone! We’re naked!” Then she threw down what was left of her sin and ran for the bushes. Adam quickly followed her example. They sat for a few moments wondering what to do, then they desperately tried to replace the light that had covered them by sewing fig leaves around their naked bodies. Those leaves could never be a permanent covering, for all leaves when they have been severed from their source will eventually dry up and wither away. Adam and Eve’s lives would do the same as the consequences of their disobedience would eventually become a reality and duplicate the fate of the leaves.
Ahmad and Jacob watched as their ancestors cowered in the bushes awaiting God’s judgment.
“God has every right to destroy them!” Ahmad shouted.
Jacob remained pensive. “Ah, yes, but if He had destroyed them we wouldn’t be here.”
A spotlight suddenly shone down from above the shrubbery exposing the two shivering people who cowered in its light. Ahmad and Jacob listened to God briefly interrogate His children.
“Adam, what have you done?”
“It wasn’t my fault, it was the woman You gave me. I’m never gonna listen to anything she ever tells me to do again!”
“Eve, what have you done?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Eve said as she continued the blame game. “It was the serpent, he deceived me!” Eve pointed to the scaly creature hiding behind the tree.
To Ahmad’s and Jacob’s surprise, the Voice whispered to both men,“Witness the arrival of hope.”
They didn’t understand. Then they heard God declare His judgment upon the evil that had deceived and corrupted His children. The devil would be defeated by One who would be birthed through the woman’s lineage. God’s voice reverberated from the wall. – “I will put hatred between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it shall bruise your head and you shall bruise His heel” (Genesis 3:15).
As God pronounced His judgment upon the serpent, the dark cloud retreated as its representative was stripped of its legs and slithered off into the bushes.
“I read somewhere that snakes have an appendage in their skeletal structure that suggests they may have had legs at some point in time,” Jacob said.
“Okay, the monster isn’t going to get away with it, that’s good,” Ahmad concluded. “But I don’t understand what God told it.”
“You will,” the Voice responded.“Now watch, this is the most important part. It will give you the key to the door.”
The two men eagerly stared at the wall in rapt attention. They watched as the life was suddenly removed from one of the children’s beloved animals. The termination of life that was the result of their disobedience became a graphic reality right in front of their eyes. Then God did something remarkable. He carefully and lovingly fashioned coats for His children from the animal, providing a more permanent solution to their nakedness. There was so much compassion in this act God was performing, it brought both Jacob and Ahmad to tears.
Then the Voice said one word, “Grace.”
The Wisdom knew the men did not understand completely what they were being shown.
“Grace is the key?” Ahmad asked.
“You must understand this principle if you are ever going to find the door,” the Voice answered. “It is only by a sacrifice made by God Himself that mankind can find redemption from their sins, the door to their freedom.”
Still baffled, the men looked at each other as if to say, “What does all this mean?”
The Voice responded to their bewilderment. “You will not understand until the journey is complete.”
The scene before them on the wall began to waver. The lush garden was replaced by a wilderness. One man was seen struggling to plow a field, another was tending a flock of sheep.
One of the lambs scampered away from the other sheep and was quickly gathered into the shepherd’s arms. He carried it over to an altar made of rocks. Then the farmer came with his arms full of the produce, the fruit of his hard labor. Then both of the men placed their offerings upon the altar before the Lord.
The offering of the vegetables was rejected, blown off the altar as if by an invisible hand, while the sacrifice of the lamb was received. Then the farmer looked at the shepherd with jealous murder in his eyes.
Jacob suddenly realized what the scene they were watching was all about. “That’s Cain and Abel!” He exclaimed.
Ahmad nodded. “I think you are right. But what’s this have to do with finding the key and the door? I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I.”
“You will in time,” the Voice answered.
Ahmad was thinking. “Do you suppose that God accepted the animal because it represented the sacrifice that covered Cain and Abel’s parents?”
Jacob nodded. “And maybe the veggies were like the leaves?”
They thought together for a few moments more.
“We’re supposed to understand the principles behind all of this, then that will lead us to the door,” Ahmad said. “Adam and Eve had to work to clothe themselves with the leaves, and Cain had to labor to produce his offering. But the lamb represents the sacrifice that God made to cover them.”
“Very good,” the Voice said. “Now you are ready to continue.”
The men were suddenly astounded as they watched the lamb that had been offered to God spring back to life. It jumped off the altar and began to run toward a hill in the distance. The men were permitted to follow along in the vision almost as if they were really there.
Then the lamb ran into a dense clump of bushes and disappeared.
Ahmad and Jacob could hear the sound of two men talking in the distance. They turned and saw the other men building an altar. Then one of the men, the older one who seemed to be the younger man’s father, pulled out some cords from his satchel, tied them around his son and laid him on the altar.
“That’s our father Abraham,” Jacob whispered in awe. “I know what happens next.”
There was a rustling sound in the bushes. Jacob and Ahmad turned to see that the lamb had been transformed into a full grown ram that was now tangled in the vines.
They turned back to look at Abraham with his knife held high, about to plunge it into the life of his son, when the angel grabs his hand and pointed to the offering in the bushes.
Jacob nodded, “And the boy’s life is spared because God provided the ram for the offering.”
“Just like in Eden,” Ahmad mused.
“Wonderful! You’re getting it!” the Voice responded exuberantly.
“Will we find the door soon?” Jacob asked hopefully.
“That depends on your understanding. You are not quite there yet, but we are not done yet,” the Voice responded.
Once again the vision on the wall began to waver, transporting the men to a land of pyramids and idolatry.
“We’re in Egypt!” Jacob realized. “Not again!”
“Yeah, but were gonna get to see what Moses looked like too.” The concept of actually being able to see their revered prophets was exhilarating to Ahmad.
“But it’s getting dark, we’re not going to be able to see much of anything soon.”
In the fading light the men watched the people hurrying to paint blood upon the doorposts of their houses.
“The first Passover,” Jacob said with wonder. “We’re watching them put the blood of an unblemished lamb on their houses because God said if they did that then their firstborn would be spared from death.”
“So the blood of a sacrifice saved them from death,” Ahmad said thoughtfully. “We’re supposed to be connecting all this with what we’ve seen so far. That’s the key that will lead us to the door.”
“We should be taking notes. Have you got a pen?” Jacob asked as he fumbled through his coat pockets.
“Look, Jacob, it’s changing again!”
Jacob looked back up at the wall. “Where are we going now?”
They heard voices, and chanting. Then the scene revealed people dancing around a golden calf.
“Oh, no!” Jacob moaned. “How embarrassing. My people humiliating themselves, fallen into idolatry. You fools, how could you?!”
“That’s your people all right,” Ahmad replied smugly.
Then both of the men’s expressions turned to horrified shock as they suddenly recognized themselves among the others who were worshipping the idol.
“Noooo! We wouldn’t!” both men exclaimed in unison.
Then they heard the sound of shattering stones. They turned to see Moses glaring at them, the broken list of commandments that God had written lay scattered at his feet.
Then Moses said, “If you have broken one commandment, then you have broken them all.” Then he raised his finger and pointed it at the hearts of the two men and declared, “Guilty!”
Ahmad and Jacob could feel their souls withering inside them. At that moment they instantly recognized that their feeble attempts to maintain their own righteousness was not enough to deliver them from God’s condemnation.
The men felt totally helpless. At the same time they were permitted to feel the despair and nakedness of their first parents who failed in Eden’s garden.
“This is the end, Jacob. We’ll never get out of here. We’re going to rot in this prison, there’s no hope.” Ahmad buried his face in his hands to conceal his tears.
The Voice allowed them to suffer a few minutes longer, as pain has the effect of sharpening one’s perceptions at the right moment.
“Gentlemen,” the soft Voice was suddenly there, calming the storm. “You know the story, what happens next?”
“Ah, well, uh,” Jacob stammered thinking. “Moses was given the plan for the tabernacle…” Jacob felt like he was a little child in a classroom examination.
“That’s right, now continue.”
“It was a lot of work putting it all together,” he answered searching for his words.
“What was it for?” the Voice asked.
“They, the priests that is, they made sacrifices there.”
“What were the sacrifices for, Jacob?”
He thought a moment more before he answered tentatively, “the forgiveness of sin?”
The sound of a bleating lamb reverberated loudly in the minds of the men, almost like a screaming child. As Jacob and Ahmad looked at the wall, they realized they were seeing a blood stained altar in the tabernacle’s inner court, the Holy of Holies.
“We’re not supposed to be here,” Jacob said. “It’s only for the high priest.” He turned to look at Ahmad. “Once a year, he goes in once a year and sprinkles the blood of the sacrifice for the sins of the people on the altar.”
Then the Voice said, “For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that makes an atonement for the soul.”
“That’s from Leviticus 17:11, I know that verse,” Jacob responded.
A foggy cloud began to envelope the Holy of Holies, a man emerged from the fog, clothed in the plain robes of a prophet.
Then he spoke with authority, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away.” (Isaiah 64:6).
“I know that verse too,” Jacob said excitedly. “It’s from Isaiah, that’s Isaiah the prophet!”
Isaiah smiled, nodded, then faded back into the cloud.
“The leaves, he’s tied it all back to Eden,” Ahmad said. “All our righteousness is like those fig leaves, vain attempts to cover our sins before God.” He thought for a few moments before he turned to Jacob and said, “Pride dies hard, doesn’t it Jacob?”
“I’m feeling too helpless and worthless to search for its corpse,” Jacob sighed.
Ahmad looked up, hoping to gain the Voice’s attention. “How do we get the key? How is all this going to help us find the door? We want freedom from all this pain and sin.” Tears were flowing freely down the big man’s rounded cheeks.
The Voice replied, “To connect the dots, correlate everything you’ve been shown so far. Take your time, I’m very patient.”
“Ah, but we’re not,” Jacob sighed and shook his head.
Ahmad closed his eyes and thought. “Where is my heart now? Its broken like those shattered stones we saw at Moses’ feet. Nothing we can do through our own efforts can set us free, Jacob, that’s what we’ve been shown. It has to be only what God can do for us. It’s a gift, like those beautiful warm coats He made in Eden. We need those coats, Jacob. We must ask God for them. Is that the key that will help us find the door?”
The repentance that had broken their hearts, began working in the men’s souls.
Then they heard the lamb cry again. The sound jolted them to remember the sacrifice in the garden, Abel’s sheep that was accepted, the ram that saved Abraham’s son, the blood of the Passover lamb that spared the lives of the Hebrew’s firstborn and shed its blood on the altar over and over again in the tabernacle, until the Truth was grasped.
Prompted by the sound of the lamb’s cry, the men turned to look back at the wall but the animal was not there. Neither was the altar or the Holy of Holies that was within the tabernacle. Instead, before them was a young, pregnant woman lying on a bed of straw.
“Who is that girl?” Jacob asked.
“Israel, and her name is Miriam,” The Voice replied.
“Miriam.” Ahmad whispered the name with a trace of awe in his voice.
“The Christians call her Mary,” the Voice said.
“No!” Jacob cried. After all he had been shown, he was now confronting the unthinkable. “NO!”
“Yes,” the Voice responded. “Now watch.”
The woman began to travail in great labor, in unfathomable agony, emitting a moan for every age that it took to bring her to this place of birthing a new life for humanity. Then silence and a cry, but it was not a human cry, but the cry of a newborn lamb.
In the vision the lamb grew swiftly in the woman’s arms. Then several dark figures draped in black robes came and pulled the lamb from Mary’s embrace. The men carried the lamb to the tabernacle where it was laid upon the altar.
The lamb lay there quietly for a moment as if resigned to its fate. Then it began to writhe as it was impaled. The tabernacle suddenly dissolved into the ruins of a garden turned wilderness as the lamb’s blood spilled into the ground. As its blood soaked the soil, new life began to spring from nothing. Jacob and Ahmad watched in wonder as the beautiful garden that the men had beheld and enjoyed when the map began, the garden that was destroyed by man’s rebellion against God, was instantly restored before their dazzled eyes.
The men remained transfixed by the restoration of the peaceful, restful vision that had instigated their journey through time. Then the light of understanding began to pierce through the fog of the men’s thinking. The lamb had been the key all along.
Somehow they understood that the restoration they were witnessing had everything to do with the restoration of the human soul and had nothing to do with real estate.
“He will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden,” Jacob could only remember part of the verse.
Then the vision of creation in its pristine splendor began to fade. As it dissolved, the stones of the wall beneath it began to emerge, then waver. The grey ultimately gave way to a brilliant, transparent door.
The men could see through the door into another vision of creation; a breeze swept meadow of waving flowers that seemed to be rejoicing beneath a majestic mountain that dominated the horizon in the distance.
Enthralled by the transformation, it took the men several moments to grasp that their sought after means of escape had suddenly appeared before them. It took them even longer to realize that the door was in the shape of a cross.
“It’s the door! It’s the door, its right in front of us!” Ahmad exclaimed.
“I know,” Jacob responded flatly. “It’s a cross.”
Ahmad hadn’t noticed. His eyes scanned upward, then down, then side to side.
“It’s a cross,” he repeated numbly. “The door is in the shape of a cross.”
“It’s the only way we can get out! It can’t be!” Jacob was incredulous.
“It must be, or it wouldn’t be here. And the map led us straight to it. It appeared when the lamb we’ve been following was sacrificed.”
“This is too much,” Jacob shook his head vehemently. “I can’t go through it. It goes against everything I’ve been taught.”
“Me, too.”
The men stood silently staring at their only means of escape.
“I won’t go through it!” Jacob spoke the words as if they were a foot stamping to the ground.
Ahmad stared with longing at the beautiful scene before him and the freedom beckoning to him on the other side of the door. Then he said, “What do you want to do? Go back to the wall and start climbing again? I’m too tired.”
Jacob was thinking. “Maybe we should rest here awhile and think about it. It’s a beautiful view anyway.”
“How much time do you think we’ve got left to think about it?” Ahmad wondered out loud as he turned to look back at the guard house. The soldiers had been watching them the whole time, and they stood with their hands clutched upon their weapons.
“I don’t know, you lost your watch.”
Ahmad returned his gaze back to the meadow that was calling to him through the door. “Look at that!” Ahmad suddenly exclaimed. “It’s the lamb, it’s in the field there, and it’s alive!”
“It came back to life?” Jacob responded.
The lamb was looking at them expectantly as if it was wondering why the men were hesitating to come to him.
“It must be true then,” Ahmad said. “The whole thing about Jesus’ death and resurrection. It all fits, everything we’ve been shown by the map on the wall. It was a pattern, a plan. Why couldn’t we see it before? We didn’t want to?”
Jacob looked at his companion. His expression was an incongruous mixture of irritation, disbelief, and anguish as the pride that shrouded his belief system was ripped to shreds.
Ahmad turned to look at Jacob and he said, “Come to think of it, we never did see any Christians with us climbing the wall, just the Buddhists, Hindus and the rest. Maybe it was because the Christians knew where the door was all along.”
Ahmad looked back at the field. He was startled to see that now a little girl was standing next to the lamb. Her hair was braided with flowers and her white dress was flowing in the breeze. The child looked like a bride in miniature. She was holding a tray of food in her hands. Both of the men were very hungry.
“She wants to feed us” Ahmad said.
“Who is she?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know. Do you want to find out?”
“We have to believe to go through this thing.”
“Do we? I guess that’s what the map was for, to show us, to bring us here. The map made sense. It’s logical. Practical. It made me realize for the first time how much God really loves us, Jacob. There’s life, new life on the other side of that door. A future we don’t have where we are standing now. All we have is those vultures up there in the guard house waiting for us to die. We can escape that, Jacob, if we’re willing to let go of our pride and admit…”
“That the Christians were right?!” Jacob shouted with his fist accompanying his words into the air.
“The plan was right, Jacob.” Ahmad paused before he added, “They just understood it before we did.” He paused again, then added sadly, “and many of them died trying to get us to see. Let’s go through the door, Jacob. What have we got to lose? It’s beautiful over there, and we’ll be free!”
Jacob looked at the tears that were filling Ahmad’s eyes. “Well, my fellow son of Abraham, if you can believe, then maybe I can too.”
They both turned back to look at the door and to their surprise, it was swinging open out into the meadow before them. The little girl was smiling and she held up the tray of delights as the two men walked slowly through the open door.
Part Three – Freedom
The air in the meadow was suddenly alive with butterflies, fluttering above the flowers like winged jewels. They seemed to be celebrating their emergence from the dark embryos of their cocoons. Now they rejoiced in their freedom as the sunlight danced with them upon their wings.
The little girl held out the tray toward the men as they approached. “I made them especially for you.” She said brightly. “He told me you’d be coming today.”
Ahmad and Jacob stared down into an assortment of sumptuous delights that were quite unlike anything either of the men had ever seen before.
“These are the appetizers,” she stated. “We’ll be having our main meal later with everybody.”
Ahmad was quickly chewing. Jacob was chewing.
“Ambrosia in my mouth,” Ahmad declared.
Jacob nodded his agreement, his cheeks bulging, impeding his ability to comment verbally.
“Follow me and I’ll take you to your resting place where you can freshen up before dinner,” the child said cheerfully.
Jacob swallowed and as they began to follow her, he asked, “What’s your name? Who are you?”
“God’s going to give us all new names someday, you know.”
The lamb bleated happily and frolicked along ahead of them.
Jacob didn’t ask the girl anymore questions for the moment as he sensed she wasn’t going to answer them anyway.
Ahmad didn’t pick up on that and asked her, “Where are we anyway?”
She turned to look at him and her eyes were twinkling as she responded, “You’ll find out. All your questions will be answered after you experience the waters.”
“Waters?”
Both men looked up and saw the sun sparkling on a flower ringed pond in the distance. On the shore, there was a canopy spread over a low table that was crowned with a lovely golden tea set. The table was surrounded by colorful cushions to rest upon.
As they approached the resting place, she said to them, “You need to wash before we have dinner with everyone on the mountain,” she said, pointing to the pond. Ahmad and Jacob looked at her wondering. She saw the questions in their eyes. “It’s okay,” she responded. “You can go in with all your clothes on. Trust me.” She was grinning like children do when they know something the adults can’t comprehend.
After everything the men had experienced so far, they knew that they must obey this ethereal child who was radiating so much love for them.
Jacob and Ahmad exchanged glances as if to say, “Ah, well, what can it hurt?”
They walked to the edge of the pond and looked down into the clearest, purest water they had ever seen. Then they both stepped off the shore. In an instant they were standing in water that had risen to their chests. The water was warm and soothing. Both men began to feel like they were children again. Before Jacob had the chance to ask Ahmad if they should start swimming, they both felt an invisible hand push them back underneath the water. Then the same hand lifted them out again.
Ahmad was laughing. “I think we’ve been baptized!”
The little girl was right. After the two men emerged from the pond they understood everything. They knew who they had been, who they were now and where they were - home at last. They knew who the little girl was; their younger adopted into Abraham’s family sister who was the Christian that had been waiting for them all along.
Ahmad scooped her up into his arms and held her as his tears flowed freely. Jacob was beaming, radiating the new life that was now his.
Ahmad set the child back down into the flowers. Then he took her by one hand as Jacob gathered her other hand and caressed it with his own. Then they all walked toward the mountain together where the rest of the family was waiting for them.