The Door to Heaven Page 12
And just then, when Dominic had never felt more tired, more wounded, more beaten in his life, appearing on the lakeshore was the Door to Heaven. He turned to look at it. The old face in the doorknob was watching him with a curious expression. It didn’t seem upset with him for having gone away. It was the expression his papa had had when he was teaching him how to use his tools. Eric Flu suddenly shifted his weight, knocking him off balance. But he was quick and he threw Eric Flu facedown on the shore and he pinned his arm behind his back.
“Let me go!” Eric Flu shouted.
“Not until you let me see your face,” Dominic demanded.
“You will die if you see me.”
“You can’t hurt me anymore. I’ve beaten you.”
“No one can look on the face of God and live.”
“You’re not God.”
“You’re not good.”
These words made Dominic think. He had heard them before, but he didn’t know where he had heard them. “Perhaps you’re right,” he admitted to Eric Flu. “Perhaps I’m not good. It’s not good to be alone.”
Faster than Dominic could think, Eric Flu spun over with overwhelming strength and energy, and struck him in the abdomen. A horrible snapping sound echoed across the shore. Dominic fell over backward. He could not breathe. He wrapped his arms around his abdomen but pain shocked him. A rib was broken. Perhaps two. Dominic cried out. His breathing was fast and short. He became lightheaded. The forest and the cave and the lake seemed to spin around him. Eric Flu was not there. Dominic began to see black spots. He told himself not to lose consciousness. He lay on the shore until his breathing slowed and the black spots went away. Feeling less confused he propped himself onto his side and he tried to stand. Pain shocked him again and he collapsed back to the shore. The air was very cold. The island felt like an unfamiliar and unfriendly place. He thought about Pascala. “I want to go home,” he said.
Dominic heard a noise in the water. He looked at the lake. His raft had run ashore near the Door to Heaven. The tide was up. The current must have carried it there. The gentle ripples of the small tide flowed in and around the white doorframe. The old face in the doorknob was looking at Dominic. The face was not upset or worried. It shone with a light that seemed so warm. “I’m sorry for the door you’ve had to go through,” the old face said. “And I’m sorry for the death you are going through now.”
“Am I dying?”
“I told you that you would.”
“But I only have a broken rib.”
“So did Adam.”
“I don’t know him.”
“He did not know himself until his rib healed him.”
“When his rib healed?”
“His broken rib was more whole than himself.”
“Did he die?”
“He introduced death into the world.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Then believe in me. Believing me will follow. Then you will follow.”
“Are you going to open the door for me?”
“Do you want me to open the way I did for your papa?”
“Yes.”
“Yes and no.”
“You’re complex for a simple door.”
“God is simple,” the old face said. “People add complexity.”
“So you’re to open and not open at the same time.”
“No, I’m not going to open for you the way I did for your papa. Not now.”
Dominic bowed his head, feeling relieved and disappointed at the same time. “Won’t I see papa in Heaven?”
“Not yet. His was a different kind of death.”
“My kind must be very slow.”
“As slow as a good conversation.”
“Will I see Heaven when I die?”
“You will see the kingdom of God.”
“The difference must be over my head.”
“And under your soles.”
“My soul is ready now.”
“You still have a long path to walk.”
“Is Heaven farther than the Kingdom of God?”
“Further. Time is in Heaven. The Kingdom of God is in time.”
“That sounds deeper than further.”
“Deep and far and wide,” the old face in the doorknob said. “That’s love for you.”
“Do I have much longer to live?”
“Death can take a long time.”
“Do I have time to say goodbye to Pascala?”
“A few years.”
“Am I going to spend that time alone on this island?”
“That’s your choice.”
“Do I have more choices?”
“You could become a man.”
“I’m not a man now?”
“Not yet.”
“What remains?”
“One small death.”
“Will you open then?”
“Carpe diem.”
“What day?”
“Today. Now.”
“How?”
“Seize the doorknob.”
“It hurts to move.”
“There’s meaning in suffering,” the old face in the doorknob said. “There’s a purpose to pain.”
Dominic rolled over onto his stomach. He gripped his abdomen and he stood. He walked to the Door to Heaven. Walking was painful. He felt lightheaded. He fell to his knees, eye to eye with the old face in the doorknob. He gripped around the old face. Then he turned the doorknob. He expected to see what he had seen the day his papa opened the Door to Heaven. He expected to see that beautiful white light that had not hurt his eyes all those years ago. He expected to see the tendrils of light that had wreathed around his papa and had lifted him across the threshold. But now there was no light. The door swung out toward the lake. Through the white doorframe was the shore extending into the lake with his house in the distance.
Is there no Heaven? he wondered.
For a very brief moment he was confused and disappointed. But then he saw some splashing in the water. Someone was swimming to the island from the mainland. He wondered if his papa had come from Heaven. But then he saw that the person swimming was smaller than his papa. It was a woman with long black hair. Not his mamá. Beside her was a powerful angel from Heaven. It was the woman’s guardian angel. The angel was sublime but the woman was magnificent. The guardian angel was whispering to her. Its words were helping her remain faithful and strong. Its presence encouraged her to keep going for Dominic and not give up on him even though meeting him where he was in his life was the most painful struggle of her own life. The angel helped the woman climb on to the shore of the island. She stood. Water cascaded down her cream colored dress and poured from her long black hair lying smooth over her shoulders. Her makeup had washed away. Her bare arms in her sleeveless dress were dripping. The light glistened off the fine contours of her muscles. She was panting hard as she stared at him with a resolution that he had never seen before. Her resolution was her power. And her power was a gift from God. She was the most powerful woman that he had ever seen because she was a gift from God to him. And now he with his wounded side could not help but whisper the woman’s name with fear and awe.
“Pascala.”
Pascala exited the water with long strides drudging through the tide. She did not seem to see the Door to Heaven. But she said a silent prayer in thanksgiving to God for the gift of her guardian angel Ruth. She had braved the cold and the current. She had fought against her own fear of failure. But there she was.
She walked through the white doorframe of the Door to Heaven and then she paused on the threshold. The sun was bright behind her and she looked as radiant as an angel. She reached her hand out to help Dominic. Nothing trembled in her. She looked into his eyes. Her voice was soft and gentle, yet it was also full of faith and hope and love.
“Let me take you home.”
When I became a man I put aside childish things.
1 Corinthians 13:11
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The Christmas King
Preview of
THE CHRISTMAS KING
In the beginning, after God had created all things, and after Adam and Eve had fallen, God forewarned the Old Serpent in the Garden of Eden about the coming Christ Child. “You and the woman will be enemies,” God explained. “Your children and her children will be enemies, too. You will bruise his heel, but he will crush your head.”
Many years passed after this.
God then came together with a son of Adam and a daughter of Eve, named Abraham and Sarah, who were husband and wife. God promised them that they would have a great family, a family that would become a new and great nation, a family that the Christ Child would be born into. “If you leave your family,” God said directly to Abraham, “and if you leave your father’s house, and if you leave your country and go to a land that I will show you, then I will make you a great nation, a blessing. I will bless everyone who blesses you, I will curse everyone who curses you, and I will bless all the families of the earth through you,” God said, speaking of the Christ who was to come. “Abraham,” God went on, “you obeyed my voice when I called, therefore your wife Sarah will give birth to a son for you in your old age. You will name him Isaac and I will make an eternal covenant together with him. From you, his children will also be a great nation.”
Not long afterward, Abraham and Sarah had their only son, Isaac.
Isaac grew and became a man. He took a wife and they had two sons, Jacob and Esau.
When Jacob became a man, he married Rachel, and God renamed him, “Israel,” because he struggled with God and with people, and he had won.
Israel also had twelve sons; the fourth was named Judah. The twelve sons of Israel moved to Egypt, they gathered around their father, and he spoke a prophecy for them.
“Judah’s kingly scepter will not be taken from him, nor will his judge’s staff, not until they are claimed by the coming King,” Israel said, speaking about the Christ. “All peoples will obey Him.”
The twelve sons of Israel grew strong and they became twelve tribes. The Egyptians feared them, so they enslaved them, but God guided Moses and Aaron to give a new freedom to Israel’s children. To continue guiding the twelve tribes, God also gave Ten Commandments through Moses and an order of priests through Aaron.
Yet in their freedom, the children of Israel wandered without a home in the desert for forty years. At long length, they encamped on the Plains of Moab. But before they crossed the River Jordan, entered the Promised Land, and destroyed the walls of Jericho, there came a prophet named Balaam.
“A star will rise from Jacob,” he prophesied about the Christ, “and a scepter will come from Israel. I see Him and I do not see Him now, but He is near.”
The children of Israel then entered the Promised Land and they flourished. Many more years passed. Fourteen generations followed from Abraham down to David, who was born in Bethlehem, but moved to Jerusalem when God made him King over Israel’s children. King David loved God, and God told him the Good News about the Christ; so King David wrote a psalm to the coming King. “God will say to You: ‘You are My Son and I Am Your Father.’ Your throne will endure forever. Your Scepter will be just since You love righteousness and hate wickedness. God anoints You.”
“I anointed you as king,” God responded to David, “and when you die your children will live on. The Christ will come from you and I will anoint him, too, and He will be the King. I will build His Kingdom, He will build a house for My Name, and I will make His throne endure forever.”
King David died. His son Solomon became king after him. But after Solomon died, David’s Kingdom divided into the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south. And with the kingdoms divided, many more years passed. Fourteen more generations followed after King David to the Exile in Babylon.
However, not long before the Exile, a child of Abraham named Micah prophesied about the city of Bethlehem: “You are the smallest clan of Judah, but the Christ will come from you.”
“Yet,” another child of Abraham named Hosea added in prophecy, “God will also call His Son out of Egypt.”
Around this time, the Assyrians were invading the Kingdom of Israel in the north and taking those tribes into captivity. Yet the southern Kingdom of Judah was not safe either, as the Babylonians, spearheaded by King Nebuchadnezzar, were quickly approaching and planning to take them into captivity, too.
Despite all this turmoil, God would not abandon His children. He sent a third child of Abraham named Isaiah to comfort Israel and Judah with another prophecy of the coming Christ: “He will not only come from Bethlehem, but the Christ will also be a child of Abraham and of King David, and God’s Spirit will rest on Him. The Spirit will fill the Christ with wisdom, understanding, counsel, might, knowledge and a keen awareness of God, and His delight will be in this awareness. God will also give you a sign to know that He Has Come: A virgin will give birth to a son and He will be named, Immanuel, which means God Is With Us.”
“Nevertheless,” another child of Abraham named Jeremiah also spoke prophetically, “when the Christ Child is born in Bethlehem, many children will die for Him. In Israel, there will be much weeping and lamentation; Rachel will weep for her children. And there will be little to comfort that great loss.”
King Nebuchadnezzar with his Babylonian army then invaded the southern Kingdom of Judah. He surrounded Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and took those children of Israel into captivity and exile in Babylon.
The Babylonian Exile was sort of like when they had been slaves in Egypt, only this time they weren’t slaves. They were a people without a home.
A child of Abraham named Daniel became very respected by King Nebu-chadnezzar, the way Joseph had been respected by Pharaoh. And in the same way Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, Daniel also led God’s people out of Babylon. Daniel told the people to have faith in God when he prophesied about the coming Christ:
“He will be a King like David, but unlike King David, the Reign of the Christ will be forever. His kingdom will never be destroyed. He will destroy all the other kingdoms and nations.”
The Exile of the children of Israel in Babylon finally came to an end. They returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt the temple. And many more years passed. Fourteen generations followed from the Exile to the Christ. Yet a few generations before He was finally born in Bethlehem, one more child of Abraham named Malachi told the children of Israel: “There will be one last prophet who will come to tell you about the Christ. Listen to him. He will prepare the Christ’s way.”
At long last, once forty-two generations had passed from Abraham through King David and the Exile in Babylon, the time of the Christ had come.
For more of The Christmas King, and other books by Becket, please visit:
www.becket.me
CREDITS
Book design by Becket
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Young couple in love
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Door to a Mountain Landscape
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BECKET
Becket has a BA in music composition, an MA in Systematic Theology, and an MS in Industrial / Organizational Psychology. He was a Benedictine monk for many years. For the last nine years, he has worked as the assistant to International Bestselling author, Anne Rice, from whom he has learned the craft of writing, and with whom he has co-created the Kindle Bestselling serial: The Blood Vivicanti.
You can find out more about Becket at www.becket.me
Becket, The Door to Heaven