With a rod of iron a par.., p.54
With a Rod of Iron: A Parable, page 54
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”
“Lord...” he murmured. “I don’t know what to do...I...”
“You have a responsibility; you’ve got the truth, so now you’ve got to use it. You’ve got people around you that care about you. You can’t just go leaving them behind.”
“But I don’t want to go back; I want to be with you. I can’t go back, I can’t sit there and listen to those lies, those misbelieving fools—”
Then, as suddenly as he had come, Jesus was gone. Brian found himself staring at an empty plate. The waitress appeared almost at once; he asked her if she recognized Jesus.
“Of course, silly. I see him here a lot. Did he help you?”
“More than you can know.”
“You look cheerful enough, now. I’d almost suggest some beer or wine, but it’s nearly morning, so perhaps it’s a little early in the day to be imbibing now.”
“Always something, eh?”
She grinned back. “What’s your name? After you’ve been here so long.”
He told her, and then she told him that she was called April. “My parents were fond of the spring,” she suggested.
Inexplicably, he suddenly asked her what her plans for the day were.
“You’re in luck. This is the start of my weekend. I’ll be hitting the sheets as soon as I leave work, but I usually get up by about two in the afternoon. You’re new to the moon, aren’t you?”
He admitted to the charge.
“Why don’t I show you around then? You look like you could use a friend.”
He had nodded in agreement.
* * *
“Hector, we need to talk.” The morning had barely begun; although he knew that Hector hated to be awakened early in the morning, Brian also knew that he couldn’t wait another minute. The night had passed in earnest conversation with the Son of God in a small bar whose name and location he would have a hard time remembering. But, having finally concluded his talk, he had wandered the streets outside, mingling with a surprisingly large crowd in a city that obviously never quite slept. Now, the night gone, the morning come, he stood over Hector’s sleeping form, his own bed beside him unruffled and unslept in.
Surprisingly, he didn’t feel the least bit worn.
“What?” Hector opened a sleepy eye, squinted, and rolled over, pulling the pillow over his head.
“We need to talk,” Brian repeated.
“What? What time is it?” Hector rolled over again, this time his squinting eyes peering up at him from the pillow.
“I’m not going to go back to the Holiness Television Park.”
At that, Hector finally sat up. “What?”
“You heard me.” Brian swallowed. “I can’t go back. I...Hector, how do you know you’re a Christian?”
Hector glared at him. “What’s going on? What’s got into you? Are you sure you’re awake?”
Brian nodded. “Can you tell me?”
“I’ve been saved since I was four. I walked the aisle one Sunday night, took the preacher’s hand and I told him I didn’t want to go to Hell. He told me I was a Christian; they baptized me three months later, after the lessons on what baptism was. It’s not a spectacular testimony, I know—it’s not like I was saved from a life of debauchery and—”
“Did Jesus come to live inside you?”
“Huh? Of course. When you’re saved, he puts the Holy Spirit right in you.”
“Did you feel—”
“What’s got into you? You going weird on me? The Bible says that we get the gift of the Holy Spirit. So, since I’m a Christian, that means I got him. It’s as simple as that.”
“What did you pray?”
“The pastor said something, but—”
“Did you ever talk to God?”
“I pray every day; you know that.”
“Did you ever see yourself...did you ever realize that....that it was hopeless?”
“What?”
“I got an image of myself standing on the edge of an open doorway. It was like I was in an airplane, and I was teetering on the edge. In front of me, Jesus was standing, begging me to take the parachute out of his hands...in fact, he was trying to put it on me and I kept batting his hands away. And then I happened to glance out the door...and...I realized if I didn’t get that parachute on, I was doomed, and there wouldn’t be anything anyone could ever do for me.”
“Sure...I’ve heard salvation described sort of like that.”
“But did you ever feel it?”
“I was only four, for God’s sake.”
“I met Jesus today. For the first time in my life. I’d never met him...well...I’d never accepted that I was meeting him. I’d always pushed him away before.”
“You’ve been a Christian since you were seven. You’ve told me yourself.”
“No. I only became a Christian last night.” He paused. “And that’s why I...” And he paused again. For himself, he didn’t want to go back, he didn’t want to subject himself to the lies...Jesus had come back; praise God, he had come back, and if he hadn’t been able to listen...he’d have continued on his way to Hell, just like everyone...everyone he knew and loved...
“Why you’re what?” Hector pulled himself out of bed and started pulling his clothes on.
“Nothing.” Brian squeezed his lips together. “Nothing at all.”
“You’re looking tired. Did you sleep well last night?”
Brian shook his head. “No. Not at all.”
Hector looked over at Brian’s bed. “Well no wonder you’re talking weird. Look, you’re just stressing—this is hard, being here among the unbelievers, but it’s what God wants us to do. They need an opportunity to hear truth, even if they reject it. And it’s only for two weeks. You can hold out for two weeks, can’t you?”
“Yeah, sure.” His mind was distracted; soon he wasn’t even listening to what Hector was saying. He was thinking back to last night.
Suddenly, he became aware of his surroundings again. Hector was waving his hand in front of Brian’s face. “Hello, anybody home?”
“Uh...yeah...sorry.”
“Thought you’d fallen asleep standing up.”
“No.”
“I slept great,” said Hector. “But I’ve been feeling constipated. I guess we all respond to stress differently.”
“Yeah,” agreed Brian. “Let’s see what we can get for breakfast—and then let’s hit the park.”
“Sure.”
Brian’s mind was whirling, and he wondered what, exactly, he was going to do. About all that was certain, was that at least for the time being, he couldn’t leave his friends and family. But how it would play out—what he might be able to do for them—he had no way of telling.
But he wouldn’t be distributing lies today; he just wouldn’t tell Hector what he’d really be doing instead.
* * *
Brian made his way through the park to a translocator. Approaching the ticket machine, he nervously scanned it, trying to figure out how it worked. In his wallet, he had his ATM card, and he knew he had close to a thousand dollars tucked away safely in his account. When he’d been young, his mother had opened up a savings account for him; although she had long ago stopped putting money away for his college education—since she’d later come to the conclusion that education was an evil thing—he nevertheless had kept the account and, with various summer jobs, had built the fund up. A thousand dollars was a lot for an eighteen year old.
The machine swallowed his card and displayed the query, “destination?” He had the option of selecting from a list, or typing in a name.
He touched a single key and began cursoring through the city names. Unsurprisingly, Jerusalem caught his eye. Hitting the enter key, the machine responded by listing the main terminal points in the city, and requesting again if he wanted to choose from the list or make a specific selection.
Not knowing what else to do, he selected the first terminal on the list.
“Price: $425.00. Is this okay? Y/N.” The question stared at him from the screen.
He hit the Y; an instant later, a small thin bit of cardboard popped from a slot, followed by his ATM card. He took them both and wandered toward the translocator.
As if in a dream, he inserted the ticket and stepped through. His body felt like lead; he wondered briefly if he had suddenly taken ill, before remembering that he had returned to normal gravity.
Everything assaulted his senses: the air was alive with unrecognizable odors; they awakened hungry urges within. The clatter of donkey drawn carts and the honk of impatient drivers blared in his ears. Bright blue sky and a glaring sun made him squint. A man hurried by, driving two camels, their humps arrayed in colorful shrouds. Yellowish-brown walls as old as the Earth itself rose majestically in front of him, plainly visible.
Around him, crowds bustled and shoved through a fog of voices, not many speaking English. He moved to one side, out of the path of the steady flow from the translocator behind. Other translocators round about flashed an almost regular rhythm, disgorging people like sausage machines.
“What have I done?” he murmured to himself. The thoughts that had brought him to this moment seemed impossible to follow; he should be back on the moon, at least pretending to do the job he’d been sent there for. How long before Hector noticed he had disappeared? And once he realized, what would he do?
What could he do?
His parents would be so worried; his friends, too.
Almost, he turned right around and went back; he still had enough money left.
But.
No, he couldn’t go back. Not now; not yet.
The old city, hiding behind its walls, lay off to his left. To the right, the towering skyscrapers of the modern city rose in ungainly contrast. And somewhere, among all this, between the old and the new, was the place Jesus called home. Although everywhere at once, there was some spot Jesus had to live.
The city bustled like the city always had: alive with contradictions and complexity. No two people wore the same clothes.
He followed the road north until he stood opposite what a snagged tourist guide told him was the Jaffa Gate—“the main entrance to the historic old city.” Voices assaulted him from all sides as vendors tried to interest him—or anyone—in checking out their wares. He saw cheap trinkets carved from olive wood; shiny brass candle holders and bowls and vases lined the shelves. Colorful fabrics lay draped and piled, while t-shirts and other garments sported the emblems of tourist interest.
Following the map in the guide, he easily found the Scottish hospice, not more than a block within the walls. Set back from the street, narrow traces of green that pretended to be a lawn and tiny flowers from window boxes peeked out at him.
Once inside the hospice, his eyes took a few seconds to adjust. What light there was petered through the open windows. A few old and somewhat ratty chairs huddled in random disorder around the lobby; the cold stone floor was softened only in one small spot by a threadbare throw rug. A piano in the corner looked to be in serious need of attention. Piled high on top of it were miscellaneous magazines and music sheets.
A desk jutted from one wall and wrapped itself around it. Behind it, a lone man sat, seriously sleeping; even from the door, Brian could hear the snores.
“Excuse me,” he said, addressing the man and banging on the desk top.
The man snorted, blinked dully, then sat bolt upright and popped to his feet.
“Yes sir, what can I do for you, sir?”
“I’d like a room...” he began.
“That’s five dollars a night...just sign the register.”
Brian felt his eyes pop.
“It surprises everyone—but how could we dare charge more? We are not fancy; we are old and run down—but we keep things clean, you see—and neat.” The man spoke with a slight twang; his accent was not one that Brian easily recognized.
The man looked at Brian’s signature, then grinned. “Well, Brian Smith, do you have a preference in your room assignment?”
“Uh, no.”
The man pulled a key from a peg board and slid it across the desk top. “You understand that the room comes with only a bed and a closet. The bathroom is down the hall—you share it with everyone else on your floor—not that we’re so busy. I think you’ll be the only one on that floor, actually.”
“Thanks.” Brian paused, fondling the key. “Can you tell me...where a good place to look for work might be?”
“Work? What sort of work?”
“I...I don’t know. I don’t have any special skills.” Nor did he have an education of any consequence. His mother had cheated him out of both. But he was still young, and all eternity stretched ahead of him. He could always go to school.
“You might try at some of the restaurants around town—I mean in the new city—you can probably land a waitering or bussing job. The pay’s not so great, but sometimes the tips will make up for it, I’m told.”
Brian nodded and thanked the man.
* * *
Some five hours later, he was standing in the back of the King David hotel, pulling crates of food from a large, refrigerated truck. His hands were long since numb; he worked them like hooks.
The restaurant manager had been glad to hire him on the spot. “Can you start now?”
When the last of the crates had been transferred and stacked in the restaurant cooler, he wondered if maybe that would be the end of his job, as well. He didn’t even have a title, and he didn’t know what his pay would be. He wondered if they’d ask to see some ID or something—although barriers between countries had long ago vanished since the coming of Christ. The borders were no more significant between nations than they had been between states in the old U.S.
Arms and legs ached, while his fingers tingled from the cold.
“Hey—Brian isn’t it? Get over here!” The voice was heavily accented; except for his name, he wasn’t certain he had understood. The waving arm of his immediate supervisor flopping back and forth like a sausage clarified the issue.
His boss’s name was Ishmael; he did not look like he had gone hungry a day in his life. His belly hung over the top of his pants and he waddled when he walked. His smooth round face reminded Brian of a baby’s. He looked to be no more than a year or two older than Brian, but he’d heard from the other guys that he was actually closer to sixty.
“You ever been a waiter?”
Brian shook his head.
“Well...one of the guys called in and quit—said he got a better job. We’ll see—he’s done this before. But you’re no good at unloading—my old grandmother was slow as you, but she was old. Come—you need to change—your uniform is in there. Pick one that fits and come back out; I’ll tell you quickly what you need to do.”
* * *
As Brian crawled into bed late that night, he reflected on the day and decided he didn’t do too horrible as a waiter, despite the criticisms Ishmael had colorfully bestowed on him. He had collected nearly a hundred in tips; the King David was frequented by the more well-heeled tourists—and Ishmael told him not to be late tomorrow.
“I expect you precisely at noon. Don’t oversleep!”
Like he could sleep past noon.
The rest of the week was a blur. He did even better in tips, and the man who had quit did not try to come back. “If he does, I’ll tell him to take a hike,” said Ishmael. “You are better than him. Of course, my old grandmother is better than him, too. You better hope that she doesn’t need a job.”
He was learning to take such comments as complements. With the addition of his pay check on Friday, he wound up with more money in his account than he’d started with on the Moon—and it was easy to pay his hotel bill ahead for the next week.
“We don’t normally take money ahead.”
“I don’t want to have to worry about it.”
“Suit yourself.”
In a week of work, he had seen no sign of Jesus—or for that matter, much sign that Jerusalem was anything special compared to anyplace else on Earth. The feeling endured until he got to the temple mount one Friday after work.
A single individual among the stream of tourists, he let the bus drag him around the periphery while the guide droned on about the size and expense of the new Temple and the new government house where “the King of kings resides and rules the world.” The guide quoted a couple of familiar verses from the Scriptures, and for the first time in his life, they made sense to him.
“Mom, what would you do if you could see me now?” he muttered, under his breath.
“What was that?” The young woman in the seat beside him asked the question.
He’d been trying to ignore her since the tour began; but the harder he tried, the less success he had. Her perfume was a seductive signal in his nostrils, and her clothes, though modest, seemed to feed his imagination. Now, her voice questioning him was like lighting a fire in his heart.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Oh.” And she dropped him from her attention.
He felt both relief and disappointment.
“Where are you from?” He couldn’t believe he was saying something to her.
“Melbourne.”
“I thought I recognized the accent.”
“You’re an American.”
He grinned. “You can tell that from my voice?”
“Your accent’s quite pronounced.” She flattened her voice so that her own Aussie tones disappeared and for the briefest moment, he thought her accent disappeared. But then she laughed and went on. “You can’t hear your own, silly.”
“I don’t think I can imitate yours...” he said in an attempt that was ludicrous at best. She was busting up long before he could finish his sentence.
“I just don’t have an ear for such things.”
“Or the tongue, more like it.”
“My name’s Brian.” He held out his hand.
She took it and responded with a surprisingly strong grip. “Marla. Your first time in Israel?”
He nodded. “Been here a week, now.” He told her about picking up a job at the King David.
