the Requiest

Sometimes it’s so hard to have what many times feels like a one way conversation.  While we rest on the many promises, it’s still difficult to feel like our prayers are being heard. Do you ever feel this way? Do you sometimes feel like shaking your fists at Heaven and just yell out, "Give me an answer. Show me your face. Let me know that you’re here with me."

Well if this has ever been the case then I’d like to share with you something that a good friend at work just shared with me this morning.

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I was standing out on Lake Frank, in the middle of the night. The lake was well lit by the light from a full moon. I could tell it was well below freezing outside but never really felt the sting from the breeze that blew the light powdered snow about. For a crisp clear evening the quiet was almost deafening in it’s obviousness. The only sound was the scuffling of my footsteps as I slide walked ever further to the center of the lake.

The lake was ringed by the leafless, barren, winter trees that stood about like spectators waiting in silent expectation for some as yet unstated play to unfold. Their stark shadows splayed out foreboding and ominous. Spectral dark fingers that reached out to take hold of me and pull me into their bosom, hurrying my steps ever toward the center of the lake.

If you’ve ever been to a frozen lake then you’ll know the sounds that the frozen ice will make as it expands and heaves. There were deep boomings that sounded like they were coming from the bottom of the lake. The echoes from the sound rippled from shore to shore, coming back to me off the hills. Popping and cracking sounds that I could feel beneath my feet leaving me to wonder if my next step would leave me floundering in the icy water. But now there was a muffled sound reaching my ears, and as I continued to make my way to the center of the lake the noise became more distinct. It was a lite pounding or hitting that I was hearing and it seemed to come from directly beneath me.

I looked down and all I could see was the milky white ice. But as I continued to stare downward and the noise grew increasingly distinct I saw the ice become clearer so I could see the water beneath. But it wasn’t water that I was seeing, but upturned faces, pressed up against the underside of the ice. Fists pounding, nails futilely clawing against the bottom of the ice. The faces of a multitude silently screaming in the horror of being trapped beneath the ice with no way to escape. Each person alone, raging in anguish against the nightmare in which they found themselves.

All of this happened in mere seconds. And as I continued to stare down at my feet and the faces looking back up at me I realized that they couldn’t even see me. They weren’t pleading with me directly to release them from their prison, they were just trying to escape. And it wasn’t to get out of where they were but to get to where they wanted to be. Even as my mind reeled at what I was seeing I understood the meaning of this nightmare. This was an image of the damned, each trapped, frozen in isolation, separated from God. It was with that heart rending knowledge that I startled myself awake, drenched in a cold sweat.

It’s been years since I had that dream, but the memories and the images have been burned into my mind. Time has not lessened the feelings of horror and dread that I witnessed in that dream, if anything time has further clarified my understanding. I believe that coming before the Judgment Throne of God, we will all be allotted the opportunity to not just see but know who are Creator truly is. We will feel His majesty to our core. Our spirits will leap in recognition. We will smell the morsels from our Masters table and our souls will taste the mist that blows off the fountain of living water. And just as quickly, for those who never called him Lord, they will find themselves torn from his presence, cast into an eternity of separation. Hell is knowing what you could have had. Hell is feeling the Glory of God wash over you (even while being condemned) and knowing that you will never feel anything like it again. Hell is finding yourself alone, without any contact or comfort and where the only solace is the memories of your own pitiful existence played out over and over and over and over till then end of all…

There is no end that’s the hell of it.

Sweet dreams,
Rong

I’ve always wanted a garden. From as far back as I can remember I’ve wanted one. I envisioned what I would have and how beautiful it would be. I dreamed of how I would take care and nurture it. How I would lovingly care for it and everything that it produced. Now I didn’t come to this idea lightly. I knew that there would be problems at times and there would be lots of hard work. I knew there would be days when the sun would feel to hot to work and the bugs would annoy me to distraction, but the picture in my mind would just as quickly brush these thoughts aside. I knew that with a garden I would have a place where I could simply be me not the lie I felt the world demanded me to be. I would find contentment in a garden, in my garden.

Well I have a garden. I’ve had one for almost 20 years now. I worked very hard at getting it, but at the time the work was all pure joy. No matter how much of myself I put into it I felt that I was getting double the return. For a time I did find contentment in it. There was nothing better at the end of a long day than to spend time tending it all of it’s various needs. My wife was/is equally devoted to (now) our garden. It took a little bit of doing on my part to convince her to work with me, but she did. With slight variations in breadth of vision, she caught on to the same dream and diligently worked beside me. At times we would even talk about how we could expand our garden. We knew it was a grandiose idea, yet it had appeal.

However, as time passed I became complacent about tending to the gardens needs. Weeds would sprout up and I would more often than not, try to ignore them. There would be long dry spells and the garden would need watering, but that would have entailed me going out in the heat and so I’d just turn away hoping that a summer rain would nourish it. My wife would come home from an even rougher day and she’d still go out into the garden to tend it, but there was no longer any joy. The garden had just become another job to deal with. Because she’s not the procrastinator that I am, she’d make sure the garden doesn’t die, but at the same time she felt very alone in taking care of it. Because of her diligence and my lack I grew angry with myself, but all too often would turn that anger on her. Now don’t get me wrong, there were times I’d still get into working on the garden with the same glee that I had years ago. On a cool summer morning, even before I’d had breakfast, I could find the joy that I had been missing and even conjure up those more youthful visions of what the garden could become. But those days were few and far between. More often than not, I’d work on the garden so as not to get in trouble with my wife. The garden was not the place of quiet solitude and happiness that it once was.

I used past tense verbs in the previous paragraph on purpose. In the past 2 months I have realized, through more than a little help, that my lack of attention to the garden is causing irreparable harm. I had thought, or at least hoped, that the little bit of attention that I was giving it was enough to sustain it. Of course I was also overly relying on my wife to hold it all together. The reality is that the garden may look good when we clean out the weeds but the soil lacks the nutrients needed to continue using it. So instead of doing the maintenance work all along that was needed, I find myself having to regroup my efforts and begin from scratch giving the garden a fresh start. It’s going to mean a lot of time and energy on my part to clean out all the dead plants and re till the soil, but the investment that I’ve already made, and that my wife has made, is too great to let it continue to fall apart. We both still have our vision of an abundant garden flowing with the fruits (or vegetables) of our labor.

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