“Oh my; that is quite the request,” she
sighed. She looked out the window with
something in her eyes that made it clear to Jasna that visions of the past were
dancing in her mind. She waited silently
and patiently. Elianna had looked rather
exhausted just a moment ago, but now her whole countenance had changed as
though it were faintly lit with joy. She
then said very quietly, “I was designed for him. That’s the only way I could explain it.”
“It?”
“The friendship we have—had. Something that probably only happens once on
earth every thousand years.
“You know, it’s fitting that you asked about him
right after we spoke of Christ. Because
if I tell you about David you will start to see the glory of Christ in
him. There’s no way you can’t.”
“Perfect,” Jasna whispered.
Elianna continued, “But he wasn’t always a man
like that. He grew up as heathen as a
tavern rat. Nothing his parents did
could curb his rebellious nature. He was
wild—alarmingly so. One time he put
poison in the watering trough of one of the neighbor’s barns. He did it because he hated their son for
being smarter than he was with his figures.
Four of their horses died from that.
And David was only 6. When he was
seven he ran away from home because his parents wouldn’t buy him a gun.”
“Wis
“He stayed out in the woods for three days, and
then they caught him in town stealing food from the mercantile. Up until he was eleven it was seldom that a
week went by without him fighting some boy—or girl—at school.
“Oh Jasna, you can’t imagine his
poor, poor mother! To this day she looks
ten years too old because of what he put her through.”
“It’s a good reason to avoid
marriage,” Jasna groaned. “So where were
you in all of this?”
“Well, I was three years younger,
watching him at school in horror. I was
afraid of him for a long time until one day when I was talking home from school
and heard something like crying. It
happened to be David Ashmore sitting on a stump alone, whimpering like a
baby. I hid behind a tree and listened
(I was always an old soul for my age, and incurably curious). All I was able to make out was one phrase: ‘I
hate myself.” And that forever changed the way I saw him. There was no longer fear, but a form of pity
and compassion. That was when he was
eleven.
“I should tell you that a year
earlier a peculiar thing happened. A
revival preacher came to town. David’s
mother and I both ended up at one of his meetings—she alone, and I with my
family. I don’t even remember the
preacher’s name, but the way he spoke was like hearing thunder and sonnet at
the same time. Po werful,
yet tenderly and vulnerably beautiful.
God saw fit to change my little heart forever through his words. And the heart of Lady Ashmore as well. It was one of the first times I had ever
really understood the reason for God sending His Son Jesus to die for the sin
of His people. The preacher explained
that we were God-haters by nature, which he proved from the Bible and through
pointing out how our daily lives show our total lack of concern or affection
for the God who made us and the world, and who keeps our hearts beating. Then he went on to talk about how the stars
and the planets and the sky show us the glory of God. Sunsets and the full moon reveal something
about the artist who created them. He
asked us, what kind of God would make the haunting, whispering fragrance of the
violet? Must He not be unimaginably
beautiful and intricate and tender?
“Then he said, try to imagine what
kind of artist would make thunder tear the sky asunder, and give rain to evil
people like us. Must not such a God be
awesome in power, bigger and greater than we could fathom, and brimming with
mercy and generosity?”
“That makes sense. I nev
“It made a lot of sense to me too,”
Elianna continued. “And I began to truly
feel the weight of my disregard for God.
God had made everything I loved and thought beautiful, and yet I made no
effort or time to thank Him, to live as He commands me to live, or to know Him
through His word. It was an awful
feeling of remorse in the pit of my stomach.
The foolishness and wickedness of my heart toward this God who had
showed me nothing but kindness and filled the world with splendour humbled me.
“As the preacher went on about the
wonders of God a fierce longing boiled up within me to know and be close to
this God. He seemed like the only thing
worth spending my life in pursuit of.”
Elianna
paused.
“By
the way, I’m telling you all this because it directly relates to David. You’ll see how soon enough. Don’t worry that I’ve forgotten what you
initially wanted to hear about.”
“Oh please go on; I didn’t even
notice. I love hearing about you, too,”
said Jasna.
No comments:
Post a Comment