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Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)An extra podcast to celebrate Easter: four retellings of the Resurrection from various perspectives, drawn from all four gospels.Happy Easter!Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

The most important event in scripture can’t be told through just one set of eyes—and so the gospel writers seemed to think, also. Each gospel gives a slightly different angle, which might seem contradictory at first on some minor details, but which I believe all harmonize. Matthew says two women went to the tomb, Mary Magdalene and Mary the wife of Cleophas, and there was only one angel. This was the first encounter with the resurrected Christ. Mark concurs that they were both there, but adds a third woman, Salome—and in his version, they saw only one angel, and not Jesus himself yet. Luke includes Joanna among the women as well, and says there were an unspecified number of women, so it’s possible there were more besides. His version includes two angels, and there too, the women did not see Jesus, but only the angels. In John’s version, only Mary Magdalene went to the tomb, and she goes twice. The first time, she sees the empty tomb, then tells Peter and John, who return with her to see the empty tomb as well, and then leave. It’s after that that Mary sees both the angels, and then encounters Jesus himself.

With help from Andrew Wommack’s Living Commentary, here’s how I’m synthesizing all this: Mary and the other women (who, in my retellings, I just list as Mary wife of Cleophas, Joanna, and Salome) all planned to meet at the tomb, which was why Mary was alone, but also why she was listed with the others according to some gospels. If she went first, saw the empty tomb, went and got Peter and John (in Luke only Peter is mentioned), and then lingered after they left, she still could be the first and only one to see the resurrected Jesus. The other women could have arrived before or after this. I’m assuming when Matthew says the women saw Jesus, he was again lumping them all together—Mark tells us the other women did not see Jesus, and John tells us that Mary Magdalene did. So in my retelling, I err on the side of the writers who are most specific, assuming the omissions are merely less detailed. Likewise, it’s possible that the two angels versus one is really just a matter of detail. Only one angel spoke, even though there were two, so perhaps because of that, Matthew and Mark only bothered to mention one.

Only in Matthew’s gospel do we get the specifics about the guard that was set to watch over Jesus’ tomb. Jesus had told the disciples plainly on a number of occasions that he would die and then rise again (Matthew 12:40, 16:21, 17:22-23, 20:19; Mark 8:30-31, 9:31-32, 10:33-34; Luke 9:22, and 18:31-33). Apparently he’d done it in the hearing of the chief priests, Pharisees, and Sadducees too—and they were the only ones who seemed to be expecting at least something to happen on the third day! A Roman guard included fifty soldiers, and typically four of them at a time worked four hour shifts. So there would have been four guards watching the tomb at the time of the Resurrection. Also, the stone sealing the tomb was “very large,” according to Mark—yet in Matthew 27:66 we’re told that the Romans actually sealed the stone in place, too. (This reminds me of Elijah on Mount Carmel, telling the spectators to pour as much water on the sacrifice as they please; it won’t make a bit of difference!)

Only Matthew records the earthquake before the angel descends and rolls the stone away from the tomb. There’s an earthquake the moment Jesus dies, during which the curtain in the Holy of Holies is torn from top to bottom (a woven curtain which was 8 cm thick—that’s a thick curtain!—and 30 feet high, Matthew 27:51), there’s an eclipse, and tombs split open. A bunch of saints who had died are seen walking around the city right after this (Matthew 27:52-53). This is never really explained, but I assume these were the saints who had died and were waiting in Abraham’s bosom (only really mentioned in the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man in Luke 16, as a subdivision of Sheol) to be taken to heaven as soon as Jesus paid the price to “set the captives free” (Isaiah 61:1). Presumably they were on their way to heaven and just stopped over on earth briefly, like Jesus did when Mary encountered him “before he had ascended to the Father” (John 20:17)?

Then, when Jesus rises from the dead, there’s another earthquake. I imagine this much like Paul describes in Romans 8:22: the earth itself groaning (and quaking) at two unnatural events. How can its Creator die? Yet it happens, and the earth cries out in protest (Luke 19:40). And then again, as the Curse from the Garden is reversed, the earth cannot keep silent! This reminds me of Aslan’s resurrection in “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe,” which C.S. Lewis describes as “even deeper magic from before the dawn of time”—and the stone table where he was sacrificed splits right down the middle. So, so awesome!

Luke’s gospel is the one that tells the story of two disciples on the road to Emmaus, though Mark also alludes to it. Luke names one of the two disciples as Cleopas. I’m just assuming this is the same person as Cleophas, the husband of Mary, though the spelling is slightly different so it’s possible it’s someone else. The other disciple is not named, but Cleopas and the other disciple rush back to tell the rest of the disciples that they have seen the Lord. They announce, “The Lord has indeed risen, and has appeared to Simon!” This seems a strange thing to say right then, unless the other disciple was named Simon. I’d assume that means Simon Peter, since we don’t know of another Simon, though why suddenly call him Simon rather than Peter? Also, if Peter wasn’t the other disciple on the road to Emmaus, then he must have encountered Jesus another time that day, and it just wasn’t recorded. I doubt this, only because it isn’t until John 21, when Peter is surrounded by other disciples, that Jesus specifically restores him after his denial. Seems to me that if Jesus had encountered Peter alone and earlier, he’d have done it then. On the flip side, when the two disciples return from Emmaus, it says they “found the eleven and those who were with them” gathered. Peter was one of the eleven, so if he was the other disciple, shouldn’t it have said they found the other ten gathered? I’m not sure how to harmonize this. I’ve heard another speculation that the other disciple on the way to Emmaus was actually Cleopas’s wife Mary, but that doesn’t make sense to me either, because Cleopas tells the stranger “some of the women of our company were at the tomb”… Mary would have been like, “Hello, I’m right here!” Anyway, for the purposes of my retelling, I found it more poignant to make the second disciple Peter. This also makes sense to me, because Jesus spent quite a few hours opening the scriptures to those two disciples (and unfortunately Luke doesn’t record what he said, so I inserted my own theological understanding in Jesus’ mouth there). Peter then turns around and presumably gives the same sermon on Pentecost in Acts 2, just after the Holy Spirit falls.

While Jesus prophesied his death and resurrection many times, in my opinion the disciples can be forgiven for not understanding that he meant this literally. He so often spoke in metaphor, and Jesus knew that their worldview was that the Messiah would come as an earthly king. This was patently obvious when James and John asked to sit on his right and his left when he came in to his kingdom (Mark 10:37), and when they argued about which of them was the greatest (Matthew 18:1-4, Mark 9:33-36, Luke 9:46-47). Why did he not disabuse them of this notion then? Why, when he predicted his death and resurrection, did he not open the scriptures to explain why it was necessary beforehand? All I can figure is that Jesus knew they would not receive it in advance (John 16:12); perhaps they would not have understood. If he told them what he knew they would not receive, perhaps he would have been subject to more opposition from them, similar to Peter’s attempt to dissuade him from the cross (Matthew 16:23). I suspect this was a temptation to Jesus—of course! He knew what he was in for, and desperately did not want to have to go through it if there was any other way (Matthew 26:39). If all his disciples understood that he really meant to die, how much more opposition might he have had to endure? He was God, but he was also man, subject to like temptations as we are (Hebrews 2:18). Another possibility is that Jesus knew that Satan and all the kingdom of darkness was also listening. Had they truly understood his mission, they would never have crucified the King of Glory (1 Corinthians 2:8). If Jesus really spelled it all out for the disciples, maybe Satan never would have enticed Judas to betray him. So instead Jesus spoke in parables, so that “they may indeed see but not perceive, and may indeed hear but not understand” (Mark 4:12).

I wonder how many truths in my own life are like that: staring me in the face, but awaiting the moment when my worldview “blinders” are removed, so that I can at last see, hear, and understand them. Wish I knew how to speed up this process!Consistently post-resurrection, those who knew Jesus best did not recognize him at first. He must have looked very different somehow. I am assuming in my retellings that this is because the scarring, which evidently was still present in his hands, feet, and side (as he specifically shows these to the disciples to convince them it’s him), is also still present on his face. Jesus was brutalized before he was crucified, for us—“by his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5, 2 Peter 2:24). Almost certainly his face was not spared. He could have healed his scars too (!), but he chose to keep at least those mentioned above. Was this to serve as a reminder of what he had suffered for us?

Another possibility is that, even pre-resurrection, Jesus could blend in to a crowd without being noticed, even a crowd that specifically sought to kill him (Luke 4:28-30, John 8:59). Perhaps he merely allowed a veil over the eyes of those who saw him until it suited him to remove it.

Finally, I want to point out one very strange statement Jesus makes in John 20:22. He breathes on the disciples and says “Receive the Holy Spirit.” What? They don’t receive the Holy Spirit until Pentecost, forty days later (Acts 2). One interpretation here is that, as in Luke 24:49, Jesus is telling them to wait in Jerusalem until Pentecost, when they will receive the Holy Spirit. But the way John writes this, that he breathed on them, seems more significant. God breathed life into the first Adam; Jesus now breathes life back on his disciples the very first time he appears to them post-resurrection. Is this the born again experience: the moment when the Holy Spirit first dwells within them (Ezekiel 36:27), as distinct from the baptism of the Holy Spirit in power that they receive in Acts 2? After all, Jesus himself was God, so he had the Holy Spirit from birth, if ever anyone did! Yet he still required the baptism of the Holy Spirit after his water baptism in the Jordan River, prior to beginning his ministry (Luke 3:22). This seems to me a good argument for the idea that the two experiences of being born again and the baptism of the Holy Spirit are separate.

The Guard:

I do what I’m told; that’s all. I don’t have opinions.

I was present at the brief trial of this man Jesus. I had heard of the so-called miracles he had performed, and I watched eagerly as the soldiers tried to goad him into performing one for their benefit before they crucified him, but was not surprised when he refused. I suspected it had all been hearsay anyway. I knew that the chief priests had him killed out of jealousy, though why they would have been jealous of a fraud, I did not know. Religious politics were not my area of interest.

I did not personally drive in the nails or administer the whipping. It is a grotesque way to die, but I had seen enough gruesome deaths in my time as a soldier that mere gore had ceased to move me. I will say this, though: there was something about the man Jesus that unnerved me. The way he spoke, the way he bore the taunts, the way he endured such unimaginable suffering was unnatural. I even heard his whisper through cracked and bloody lips, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

That statement. It would haunt me all my life.

I sat at the foot of the cross with the other soldiers and gambled for his clothing as he gasped for breath above me, his lungs collapsing under his own weight. When I lost the roll, I got away from there as fast as I could, never looking directly at him.

I was with fellow soldiers in Pilate’s halls, joking and laughing and pretending my thoughts were not still back at the cross where that innocent man hung dying, when all at once the sky went dark. The ground beneath us trembled so violently that I thought the marble beneath our feet might split apart. All the laughter stopped. I caught the fearful looks of my fellow soldiers before they could wipe them away. I knew then that all of them thought what I thought, and felt what I felt.

What if he truly was the Son of God?

The ensuing hour was filled with strange reports: the earthquake and eclipse had both coincided with Jesus’ final breath. The quake had indeed split open both rocks and tombs. There were absurd rumors of the long dead seen walking around in Jerusalem. A wealthy religious man named Joseph of Arimathea came and requested the body for burial. Pilate granted his request, and ordered that the body be taken down and given to him.

I went home that night, shaken. It was not my job to have opinions, or feelings. I did what I was told. But all night long, I heard those words echo in my mind: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

He was praying for me.

The next day I got the order. The chief priests and Pharisees were apparently not satisfied with the brutal murder of their adversary. While Jesus was alive, apparently he had said in their hearing that three days after his death, he would rise again. I was to be one of fifty soldiers on four-hour shifts outside the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea until the third day—so that his disciples would not steal his body and claim he had done it.

So, though I very much wanted nothing more to do with Jesus of Nazareth, I went for my shift on the last watch of the night on the third day, I and three others: Antonius, Decimus, and Marcus. I found that the stone had been sealed, too, though I did not see why that was necessary. No ragtag group of Jewish disciples were going to get past four armed Roman soldiers, even if they could have budged such a stone. They had to seal it shut, too?

Normally it was impossible to get Decimus to shut up. He cracked jokes nearly as often as he took a breath. Marcus was always his sidekick, laughing and egging him on. But tonight, all four of us were strangely subdued. Decimus tried for a few jokes, but they fell flat, so he gave up. I wondered if they all felt the hairs on the backs of their necks standing on end, as I did.

“I’ll be glad when all this nonsense is behind us,” muttered Antonius in the deepest darkness just before the dawn. I nodded my hearty agreement, and was just about to reply when the ground beneath our feet began to tremble.

“What is with all these earthquakes lately?” shouted Decimus, as it knocked all four of us to the ground. He was trying to make light of it, but his voice cracked, betraying him. Behind us, I heard the sound of the tomb’s seal breaking.

And then, a glowing man descended from the sky—bright as lightning and all dressed in white.

He took his time. He wasn’t hiding. In fact, he did not seem to mind or notice us at all. I lay motionless where I had fallen, too terrified to move, as the man’s feet touched the ground. He walked to the tomb, casually rolling the stone away from the entrance. Then he hopped up lightly and sat on top of the stone, as if waiting for something. But he couldn’t sit still. He bounced a little, and his legs swung in anticipation, an enormous grin on his face. Was he actually humming to himself? Either that, or he might have been laughing very softly, or perhaps a combination of both.

I dared not move. All four of us stared at the entrance of the tomb. When nothing more happened for a long moment, I looked back at the stone and found that the man had vanished.

“All right,” murmured Antonius at last, though his voice trembled. “One of us has to do it.” He got to his feet very, very slowly, and crept to the mouth of the tomb to peer inside.

“Well?” called Decimus behind him anxiously.

Antonius did not move, but he shook his head. “There’s no one here.”

“What do you mean, there’s no one there?” I asked sharply, now leaping to my feet and running to his side. “How can there be no one there?”

When I reached the mouth of the tomb beside him, though, I answered my own question. I indeed saw where the body should have lain—and two sets of linen even lay neatly folded, one for the face and one for the shroud. It looked very much the way napkins are folded at the end of a meal, as if to say, “Thanks, but I’ve had enough!” But there was no body.

I felt lightheaded. I reached for the stone wall to steady me.

“We have to tell them,” Antonius murmured to me. “Pilate and the chief priests. We have to go and tell them what happened right away, or they will think we failed to secure the tomb.”

“We did fail to secure the tomb!” I almost shouted back, the sound of my voice echoing back to me. “They’re going to kill us!”

Marcus and Decimus finally joined us, and Marcus put a hand on my back.

“Not if all four of us tell the same story,” he murmured.

“What story?” I pressed. “What just happened, exactly?”

None of them had an answer. We all looked at each other, shook our heads, and set off to give the unwelcome report to the chief priests. If they didn’t kill us, I knew that Pilate and the chief priests would spin a tale to explain away the missing body, and we would be forced to spread it far and wide. No one but the four of us would ever really know what had happened here tonight.

No. That isn’t true, I thought, my heart burning within me. Everyone will know. Even if they deny it, deep down, everyone will know the truth. Just as I do.

And the truth was, the tomb was empty.

Mary Magdalene:

Ever since Passover, I could hardly breathe for grief. I’d wept until I was numb, until I thought I would never feel anything again. Then a fresh wave of despair crashed over me, and I did it all over again.

All my hopes were in the tomb with him. Nothing made sense anymore. He’d delivered me from what I later found out were seven demons, and gave me my life back. After all his miracles, after the way he silenced his accusers, the grace and wisdom and power of his words—he wasn’t the Messiah? How was that possible? How could the true Messiah have done more great works than he had done? How could he have spoken with greater authority than Jesus? Even the way Jesus died—oh! A sob choked me at the very thought. The image of him hanging on the cross, so mangled he scarcely looked human anymore, let alone like himself, was seared into my memory like a hot iron. But that very last moment when he died! He said, “It is finished,” and I watched as the breath left him. In that second, the sky went dark, and the earth beneath us quaked. I later heard that in the same moment, the curtain in the temple that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies tore from top to bottom. There were also rumors that the dead were seen walking around in Jerusalem, but who knew if that was true. All these stories landed in my brain but did not take root, because I had no place to put them anymore, no worldview to make any sense of them. What did any of it matter? What could possibly ever matter again, now that Jesus was dead?

If I slept at all on Passover Night, it was accidental. On the Sabbath I periodically slipped into blessed unconsciousness, though I only realized it when I awoke again with that dreadful feeling of oppression hanging over me that something awful had happened, but for a few blessed seconds, I could not quite remember what it was.

Sometime on the evening of the Sabbath, I slept my way into determination. On the first day of the week, I would go to the tomb. I would anoint my Lord’s body with precious spices. He deserved that much, and there was nothing more that I could do for him. Besides, I needed a plan—any plan. I forced myself to rise and go to see my sisters who had also followed the Lord’s ministry with me: Mary the wife of Cleophas, Joanna who, like me, had been delivered of evil spirits by the Lord, and Salome. I found each of them much like me: heartbroken, numb, and in desperate need of a plan of how to move forward in this new, dreadful reality. Each of them agreed to accompany me at dawn. I lived a distance away from the three of them, so it would be easier for them to walk together and meet me at the tomb.

I rose at that darkest part of the night, just before dawn appears. My heart was heavy, but I had no tears left. I simply put one foot in front of the other. On the way, suddenly it occurred to me: how were we going to get to Jesus’ body to do what we intended to do? There was an enormous stone sealing the mouth of the tomb, far heavier than anything I could budge. Even with the help of my three friends, I doubted we could manage it.

As I was thinking this, I arrived at the tomb before my sisters. I blinked. The stone had been rolled away, and the mouth of it stood wide open. Without thinking, I ran to the mouth of the tomb to peer inside, heart pounding.

There was no body. I saw the linen cloths, but… but… where was Jesus?

My feet got the message before my heart did. The next thing I knew, I was running, but I did not know where I was going until I arrived at Simon Peter’s home. I pounded on the door, frantic, though I could not explain why.

Peter opened the door wearing a haggard expression, the dark circles under his eyes attesting to his own grief. But I had the impression I had not awakened him. He did look mildly surprised to see me so early, though.

“Mary? What—“

“They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him!” I burst out.

I saw John emerge behind Peter at the sound of my voice. He and Peter exchanged a look, and without a word, each took an outer garment in a rush. They followed me outside, but then they took off running, leaving me in the dust behind them.

“Wait!” I cried out, panting, my basket of spices jostling on my arm as I pounded after them to no avail. “Wait for—” But then I gave up—they were already out of earshot. John was fast, I suddenly marveled. He’d well outstripped even Peter.

I arrived well after the two disciples. John waited outside the tomb and met my eyes, his face shining. Peter emerged from inside the tomb, his expression unreadable. I burst into tears at the sight of him, and covered my face.

John approached and put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “What if?” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “I mean, remember what he said, on the third day? That’s today! What if…?” But he clearly could not finish the thought, and I didn’t want him to. I couldn’t bear it.

Peter and John eventually went home again while I wept on, as their footsteps trailed away. I went to look into the tomb one more time now that the first streaks of sun had begun to appear--just in case I had somehow missed some indication of where they had taken his body.

When I peered inside, I started. I saw the linen cloths I had seen before, but now there were also two young men inside, all dressed in very bright white, sitting at what would have been the head and feet of the nearly folded linen cloths.

“Woman, why are you weeping?” one of them asked me.

I realized that while the tears still streamed down my face, I had momentarily forgotten to weep at the shock of seeing two live, glowing men inside the tomb. Surely their brightness was due to the sun streaming through the mouth of the tomb… even though it wasn’t.

I found my voice again. “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”

It did not occur to me to ask these men where the body had gone; I was afraid of them, and just wanted to get away. I turned from the mouth of the tomb and saw another man standing behind me. I gasped again.

This man also said, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?”

At least this one was not glowing like the others. Then suddenly it occurred to me: perhaps he was the one who took the body! Perhaps he was a gardener or something. I blurted, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.”

The man dipped his chin so that he could look directly into my eyes. His face was heavily scarred for one so young. I could hardly imagine the trauma that must have caused such scars. Along his forehead I saw a pattern of circular scars that might have been puncture wounds… like from a crown of vicious thorns…

“Mary,” he said.

I let out a startled cry. It was him! It was his voice, it was his eyes… “Rabboni!” I cried out, falling at his feet.

He laughed, and the sound was so full and rich and deep, it was as if it contained all the joy in the whole world. His hand—oh, that beautiful, scarred, tortured hand!—stroked my hair as he said, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”

I did not want to let go of him, and I did not understand what he meant. But then, what of this did I understand? All I knew was that hideous cross, and yet here he stood, alive!

Mary, wife of Cleopas:

As much as I dreaded this awful task, at the same time, I was so grateful to Mary Magdalene for suggesting it. We should have anointed Jesus’ body for burial when Joseph of Arimathea laid his body in the tomb on Passover—but none of us were thinking straight. This was now the morning of the third day; it was possible that there might already be a smell. I had no desire to see the mangled body that I loved so much in such a state, but I comforted myself that at least it could look no worse than when I had last seen it. Bloodless and white could only be an improvement. Besides, it was not about me. This was the last act of love that I could perform for my Lord.

“What about the stone?” Joanna asked suddenly, breaking our silence.

“Oh,” I said. I had forgotten all about the stone. All my logic had left me three days ago.

“Who will roll the stone away for us?” Joanna persisted.

“Perhaps all four of us can combine our strength?” Salome suggested, meaning Mary Magdalene as our fourth, when she joined us at the tomb. But she did not sound very convinced, and for good reason. We all knew that such a boulder was beyond our combined strength to budge. We faltered in our steps, wondering now if there was any point in going on.

“We promised to meet Mary,” Joanna reminded us. “We should at least go to the tomb to meet her, then, and we can discuss bringing some of the other disciples back to roll away the stone later in the day, perhaps.”

We were already almost there, anyway. Salome, a slightly faster walker than the two of us, rounded the corner and stopped in her tracks.

“What is it?” Joanna called.

“The stone,” Salome said, in a very strange voice. “It’s been rolled away already.”

“Someone has already been here?” I concluded, perplexed. “Perhaps other disciples have done what we intended to do?”

“On the Sabbath?” Joanna countered, and I took her meaning. It was against Jewish law to work on the Sabbath, let alone to touch a dead body.

Together, the three of us approached the now open entrance to the tomb. I prepared myself yet again for the shock of seeing Jesus’ corpse.

I was shocked, but not for the reason I expected. Inside the tomb were two young men, both glowing white and very much alive. One sat where Jesus’ head should have been, and the other at his feet—but on the slab beside him were folded linen garments. No body. They seemed to be waiting for us.

“Do not be alarmed,” said one young man, because clearly, we were alarmed. “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.”

“He has risen?” Joanna echoed, as Salome backed away from the mouth of the tomb, grabbing on to my garments and tugging me with her. I realized when my legs began to move again that I was trembling.

We overtook Mary Magdalene, heading in the same direction. Her face was glowing and she wept freely—but, it seemed, for joy. She did not seem to be afraid.

“Did you see him too?” she gasped, wiping her face.

“The—the angels?” I managed.

She blinked at me, and her face split into a wide grin. “The Lord!”

Her words tumbled out over themselves: how she had seen the empty tomb, told Peter and John who had already seen it as well, and then as she lingered at the tomb alone after they left, saw Jesus. He told her he was ascending to the Father when she saw him, that she had caught him in transit—though from where to where and doing what, we did not quite understand. But he promised to return in Galilee! We would all see him! Her enthusiasm was infectious, and our fear at the strange appearance of the men in the tomb melted away. Soon all of us were laughing and crying in a muddled blend of amazement and joy. We now had three witnesses: the angel who spoke to us, Mary, and as the angel reminded us, Jesus himself had prophesied that he would die and rise again on the third day. It was true! He was alive!

We were at Simon Peter’s house by the time she finished her story, without discussing beforehand where we would find the rest of the disciples. The guess was correct: all eleven of the remaining disciples gathered there now. Peter and John had apparently called them together after they had found the tomb empty that morning.

“I have seen the Lord!” Mary declared, and described her encounter again. We let her have the floor, but then when it was our turn, we talked over one another to describe our encounter with the angels. We barely noticed that the expressions of the disciples ranged from astonished to skeptical.

“Remember how he told us he would rise on the third day!” I insisted. "Today is the third day!”

Of the eleven, only John’s face reflected the joy we felt. He believed us. Peter wanted to, I could tell, but I understood why the others hesitated. Hope was a very vulnerable thing. After the utter and complete devastation of Passover, dared they ever hope again?

Simon Peter:

I didn’t know what to think. Or perhaps more truthfully, I knew what to think; I just didn’t know what to feel.

I no longer knew who I was. Down was up and up was down. Before Jesus died, before that hideous night of his arrest, I knew it all. I was one of his “Sons of Thunder”: one minute commended for my revelation and told he would build his church upon it, and the next minute rebuked as Satan’s mouthpiece. My convictions, right or wrong, were bedrock, hence the new name he gave me: Peter. I swore I would die with him. If everyone else abandoned him, I surely never should!

Then I denied him. Three times. They crucified my Lord, and I was not even there to see it.

The last three days I can hardly describe. They were a jumble of every possible negative emotion, so intertwined that I could not separate one from another. Sometimes self-loathing would dominate. Sometimes devastation and grief, worse than anything I ever imagined possible. Sometimes hopelessness. Sometimes fear. Sometimes hatred—of Judas, primarily, though that had subsided into an ugly sort of satisfaction after his suicide. Then occasionally the overwhelm grew so great that I felt nothing at all, and sat for hours simply staring at the shuttered doors against the anger of the Jews.

John had taken Mary, Jesus’ mother, into his home, after—well. After. He split his time between comforting her and comforting me. She had finally fallen asleep on the morning of the first day of the week, when he came to see me before dawn. That was why he was with me when Mary Magdalene came.

Then I saw the empty tomb. My heart burned within me, but I could draw no conclusions from that alone. I dared not. Yet apparently I did, because I immediately called together the rest of the disciples to tell them what John and I had seen.

Then Mary came back with the other women who had gone with her to the tomb. The other women had seen angels, who declared he was alive. Mary had seen the Lord himself.

It was as if I were at war within myself at this news. My heart burned as before, telling me something, but I did not know what it was, and I did not want to know. My mind shut it down. I couldn’t bear it.

Later that day, Cleopas, wife of the other Mary who had gone to the tomb that morning, came to my home. He had an errand in Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. He invited me to walk with him, as he had some things he would like to discuss with me. I knew what they were: he had heard Mary’s story and wished to know what I thought.

If only I knew.

I gratefully accepted, though, as I needed to get out; I’d been shuttered indoors for three days, except for the brief run this morning to the empty tomb. Fresh air and a listening ear would do me good. Perhaps I might be able to get my head on straight.

“Mary believes he lives,” Cleopas told me, shaking his head. “She is utterly convinced of it, though she herself did not see him.”

“What do you believe?” I asked him, once we were outside the city.

He opened his mouth, shut it again, then replied, “I—don’t know what to believe. We all watched him die. It was no trick. He could not have survived it.”

His sadness irked me. I did not want him to be sad. I suddenly realized that I wanted him to convince me that his wife was right. "But then, we’ve seen the dead raised,” I argued. "He was the one who raised them!”

“Yes, but who was there to raise him?” Cleopas countered.

I shrugged. “Himself? The Father? Would he need another, if he was who he claimed to be?”

Silence fell between us at this, as my question hung in the air. If he was who he claimed to be. That was the question, wasn’t it?

“But why?” I responded to my own question, surprising myself with my sudden vehemence. “If he intended to raise himself from the dead, why let himself be crucified in the first place? He said in Gethsemene that he could have called twelve legions of angels to deliver him if he chose to, and he didn’t do it. Why not? What was the point?”

“What is this conversation that you are holding with each other as you walk?”

Both Cleopas and I started at the third voice, and turned to look at the stranger we had not seen approach. He smiled, and seemed friendly enough. Heavily scarred in face, I noted, and wondered what had happened to him. Cleopas and I exchanged a look, and Cleopas answered him, somewhat guarded.

“Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?”

“What things?” the stranger prompted, still wearing that strange smile.

I almost felt exasperated. The man had no right to be so pleasant in such dark times as this. I said, “Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a man who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.”

"Yes, and besides all this,” Cleopas cut in, “it is now the third day since these things happened. Moreover, some women of our company, my wife among them, amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning, and when they did not find his body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive.”

“I and one of my brothers went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said,” I continued, “but him we did not see.”

The stranger’s expression—what was it about that face?—took on what felt an oddly familiar combination of compassion and exasperation. “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” was his startling reply. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”

I blinked, and my mouth hung open. I probably should have been affronted. I’d been one of the man’s closest disciples. Who was this stranger to presume to instruct me about the Christ? And yet, the burning in my heart held my tongue. I wanted to hear more.

“From the beginning, the Father gave authority on the earth to men. Men obeyed Satan in the Garden rather than God, making Satan the god of this world, for a time. The Father then gave progressive covenants with men who chose to obey Him, giving Him authority to bless them in accordance with His will: first to Noah, to never again destroy the earth for its wickedness in a flood. Then to Abraham: God blessed him for his faith, and all his seed after him, what became the nation of Israel. The Mosaic covenant formalized the idea that man was subject to the god he chose to obey. When he obeyed the Lord God, he was sheltered under the shadow of His wings, with all the blessings and abundance that the Lord always longed to bestow upon His children. When he sinned and obeyed Satan, that protection lifted, by man’s own choice, giving Satan access to steal, kill, and destroy. These were the curses of Deuteronomy. Inevitably, the children of Israel sinned, and the wages of sin is death. To restore Israel to the right side of the covenant, yearly blood sacrifices were necessary--of that which was sinless, spotless, and perfect.

"Yet these animal sacrifices in themselves carried no power to remit sins; they were only a type and a shadow of the True Sacrifice which was to come. This meant that except for those few who were true children of Abraham, those who looked forward to the Messiah and understood that they were already justified through Him, there was no real fellowship with the Father. As David wrote, 'He revealed His ways to Moses, yet only His deeds to the people of Israel.' Fellowship was the Father's desire: to restore what had been lost in the Garden all those generations ago. But there can be no communion between light and darkness. The darkness had to first be swallowed up, once and for all time, for all who would accept it.

“So, for generations, the Father sent prophets to speak of the coming Messiah. You have understood him to be a great king, the King of Kings, and so he is and shall be. But first, he had to become the sacrificial Lamb of God—as he was identified by John the Baptist, that last and greatest of the prophets. For this to occur, a few criteria had to be met: he had to be a Son of Man, that he might die as a representative sacrifice. He had to be guiltless of his own sin, so that he could bear the iniquities and transgressions of others, as Isaiah wrote. He had to lay down his life willingly—‘like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.' Finally, he had to be eternal: God himself, that He might cover all sin that ever was and ever will be, in one single sacrifice: as Isaiah wrote, ‘the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.’

"Yet the Father 'would not abandon his soul to Sheol, or let his Holy One see decay.’ Death could not hold the King of Glory, the Creator of life itself! And so it shall be for all who believe. Just as the first Adam introduced death, so the second Adam introduced life from the grave.

“And now, the payment is made!” declared the stranger. “There is no more curse for the true children of Abraham. There is no more curtain to shield the Holy of Holies. Those who believe may now, at last, go boldly into the Throne of Grace before the Father, for He Himself loves them who have believed in His son—His Lamb—His Messiah!”

We had reached Emmaus, and I had not even realized it. Was I even breathing, as this stranger opened the scriptures to us?

Cleopas turned toward the village where he intended to rest for the night, but the stranger did not follow us: he stayed on the main road, as if he intended to go farther.

“Stay with us,” I blurted to the stranger—begged him, really, “for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent.” The stranger met my eyes with that piercing gaze of his. It was as if he could see clear through to my soul. He smiled, nodded his assent, and followed us inside.

We climbed to the upper room of an inn, and the owner brought us bread, wine, and meat for supper. This stranger was clearly the authority in the room, so Cleopas asked if he would break bread and bless it for us. His eyes twinkled with—amusement? Was that the expression?—but he agreed, and reached across the table to the bread in the basket.

Then I saw his hands. I saw where they had been pierced.

I looked up sharply to his face as he broke the bread and said a prayer of thanks to the Father. He passed half to Cleopas and half to me.

It was him.

He grinned at me, so full of mirth that he could hardly contain himself. Then he vanished.

I dropped the bread. Cleopas shoved back his chair and jumped to his feet. I think both of us exclaimed loudly, but I’m not really sure.

“How did we not know?” I shouted at some point between the dinner table and the road, as we gathered our cloaks. “How did we not recognize him?” There was no question that we had to go straight back to Jerusalem and tell everyone else.

“Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while opened to us the Scriptures?” Cleopas exclaimed.

I probably should have grabbed some of the bread for the road—fourteen miles round trip with no food was not the best idea I ever had—but I suddenly had more energy than I'd ever had in my life. I could have run the whole way back. I did run as much of it as Cleopas allowed.

We found the rest of the disciples still in my home as they had been that morning. Cleopas burst out before I had the chance, “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!”

“And you!” I cried, and we hurried to get our story out. The disciples all watched us with a look of amazement and skepticism, and I suddenly realized how frustrated the women must have been that morning at our reception of their tidings. I wanted to shake them. This is the best news in the history of the world! What is wrong with you?

Then I noticed that none of them were looking at us anymore. They had all suddenly turned to look at something behind us. Many had turned white. I turned around.

There he was.

“Peace to you!” Jesus declared, looking at each of the faces in the room. His eyes met mine with warmth—yet, suddenly, I was ashamed. I had not been before, as I had not known him until the very last moment. Now I knew it was him, and he knew I knew. My betrayal stood between us; he knew of that too. He had prophesied it. I had failed him, in the most despicable way. I dropped my eyes.

Jesus said to the rest, all of whom looked frightened except for John, “Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet,” he spread them out for all to see—those hands that had tipped me off at last. “See that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have.”

James the Less and Bartholomew were the courageous ones. They went forward, very tentatively, as if to see for themselves that his words were true. He watched them with tender amusement, as one might watch a small child. Then he added, “Have you anything here to eat?”

Matthew ran to fetch something left over from their supper that night: a piece of broiled fish. He handed it to Jesus, still wary. Jesus picked it up with his fingers, ate it, and swallowed it. In silence, the group stared at him, as if half expecting to see the flaky white flesh fall straight through him. When it did not, the disbelief grew tentatively to joy.

“These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.”

John sat at the Lord’s feet as he opened the Scriptures to my brothers as well, as he had done with Cleopas and me on the road. “Thus it is written,” he concluded, “that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I am sending the promise of my Father upon you, the Holy Spirit. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

I wished, and yet did not wish for a moment alone with the Lord that night. I wanted to fall at his feet and beg his forgiveness. I knew this was absurd; I knew he forgave me, but I wanted to ask for it anyway. I simultaneously never wanted to discuss my failure, ever again. Yet it hung between us: an insurmountable wall of shame between me and the one I loved most.

When the sermon finished, he vanished again, just as he had appeared. I did not get my moment that night, for which I was both relieved and disappointed.

I did love him, didn’t I? He had said just before the cross that “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.” My love for him, clearly, was not so great as that. It was not the agape he had for me, however much I wished it might be. I had only phileo for my Lord and Master, and could claim no more; my actions had shown the truth of it.

“Peter?” John approached me, placing a hand on my shoulder as the others shouted and toasted and celebrated behind us. “Are you not rejoicing?”

It was a gentle admonishment, but it hit me like a blow, shocking me out of my selfishness. Who cared about my little failure? Jesus was alive!

“Yes, brother,” I declared, “Yes of course!”

I accepted a glass, joining the celebration. Yet once again, I did not sleep that night, my mind awhirl with both joy and questions. I pondered the things Jesus had said on the road, and with the other disciples that night. I wondered what it would mean to be His witnesses in all nations. I wondered what it would feel like to be clothed with power from on high, and how we would know when it had happened. I remembered when Jesus had said, "Those who believe may now, at last, go boldly into the Throne of Grace before the Father, for He Himself loves them who have believed in His son—His Lamb—His Messiah!”

I opened my mouth and whispered into the night one tentative word. “Father?” I swallowed, cringing for a moment, as if waiting to be struck down for my insolence in using the same word for Him that Jesus himself had used. When it did not come, I went on, “I don’t know how much longer Your Son will be with us physically. So before he returns to You for good, please… give me a chance to make it right.” Tears slipped down my cheeks as I spoke.

For I knew that He heard me. He was my Father now, too.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post: Blueberry Extract for Cholesterol. 

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Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)This week's meditation is on 1 Samuel 16-17, the story of David anointed as king, and then his defeat of Goliath.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

Shortly before the David and Goliath story, Saul had so disobeyed God that Samuel declared God would take the kingdom away from him and give it to someone else, a “man after God’s own heart.” (This is sad to me, considering Saul’s son Jonathan, already next in line for the throne, was definitely a man after God’s own heart! But I digress.) Because word might get back to Saul that a new king had been selected when God sent Samuel to the house of Jesse, he had to have a cover story: he was inviting Jesse and his sons to a sacrifice. But inviting only them would have looked too strange, so he had to extend the invitation to the elders of Bethlehem too. More witnesses might not have been ideal: the more people who knew, the more likely it was that word might get back to Saul, who would surely kill both Samuel and the new anointed (1 Samuel 16:2). Fortunately, this never happened.

David, meanwhile, was out tending the flocks when the “sacrifice” occurred. He was the youngest of eight brothers, and it’s generally believed that David was somewhere between the ages of fourteen and seventeen when he was anointed. I went with fourteen in my retelling. Apparently his eldest two brothers were a lot more kingly-looking than David turned out to be, and Samuel initially thought one of them must be the Lord’s choice. This is where the famous verse appears that says, “the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Sam 16:7). Interestingly, though Samuel had a direct connection to God, God didn’t tell him that there was still another brother out in the fields. God let him go through every one of the boys assembled before him, and when the answer was no for each, Samuel had to ask Jesse, is this all? Do you have any other sons? God didn’t volunteer any extra information; he waited for Samuel to ask. (I don’t know why God works this way, but I’ve certainly found it to be true!)

Even though Jesse wasn’t impressed with his youngest son, someone must have been, though. When Saul became tormented with an evil spirit, one of his servants knew of David, and recommended him with these words: "a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, who is skillful in playing, a mighty man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a handsome person; and the Lord is with him” (1 Sam 16:18). Yet he’d never even been in a battle before! All I can figure is word must have gotten out that he’d killed the lion and the bear while tending his father’s sheep (1 Sam 17:34-36), which seems pretty bold. (I’d have just let the lion and the bear have the sheep, and run for it. No sheep is worth that!) Also, he happens to be good with a lyre—which makes me think of Proverbs 22:26: “Do you see a man skilled in his work? He will stand before kings; he will not stand before obscure men.” God used this talent of David’s to get him into the palace.

It was a risk for David to go into Saul’s service, though: again, there were witnesses that he had been anointed as Saul’s replacement, and when Saul finally figured this out, he did try to kill David. Fortunately, at this point Saul had no idea. In fact he paid very little attention to David, which is evident by the fact that after David killed Goliath, Saul had to ask him whose son he was, even though he’d been in the king’s service as both his musician and his armor-bearer for some time.

Meanwhile, the Israelites were at a standoff with the Philistines, which David learned at the palace. Rather than engaging in an all-out battle, Goliath came out daily for forty days as their champion, and uttered blasphemies against God, demanding that the Israelites send a man to fight with him. He was estimated to be 9 ft 9 inches tall, and he wore 125 lbs of armor, with a spear head weighing about 15 lbs! He didn’t even carry his own shield; he had a shield bearer who ran before him and carried it. Because the Israelite army was only looking at Goliath in the natural, they were terrified of him. So day after day, he continued to come out and bellow his threats.

I have to wonder, though: where was Jonathan? Surely he would have challenged Goliath in a heartbeat. He’d already proven his faith in God to overcome the seemingly impossible (1 Samuel 14). For whatever reason, I suspect God prevented Jonathan from challenging Goliath—either he wasn’t there, or Saul refused to let him do it, or something. David’s triumph over Goliath was what put him on the map in the eyes of Israel. God needed him to be the one to win that glory.

When David began to stir himself up to go out and fight, though, the elder brothers whom Samuel had passed over for king started to mock him. Surely they did this because David's courage condemned their cowardice, but their criticism does not seem to bother David. He doesn’t second-guess himself, doesn’t wonder if maybe everyone else has it right and he has it wrong. David had courage where they did not, because he understood what they did not: just as Jonathan had called the Philistines “uncircumcised,” David used the same language to describe Goliath, indicating that he too understood his covenant. He had God on his side, while this “uncircumcised Philistine” had nothing. Goliath was even mocking God! I love David’s response: he’s not frightened, he’s indignant that anyone should speak against the Lord. His faith is almost childlike—he walks so much by faith and not by sight that he can’t even understand the reaction of his brothers and his fellow Israelites. I can’t think of another biblical character with more inspiring faith, aside from Jonathan (whom David meets shortly after this. I’m sure Jonathan recognized a kindred spirit in him when he heard the story, and this is what forged the deep bond between them.)

In large part, though, I think the reason why David had that kind of faith in the face of Goliath is because he had already tested and proven his covenant while facing the lion and the bear (1 Sam 17:34-36). On the back side of a mountain, when no one was watching, David overcame these “smaller” challenges so that when the giant came, he was able to stand with courage and say, “This uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them.” He knew that “the Lord will cause your enemies who rise against you to be defeated before you. They shall come out against you one way and flee before you seven ways” (Deut 28:7). May we also collect and rehearse our previous victories when we find ourselves facing giants!

I guess you could call me a dreamer. Not because I live in my head rather than in reality, but because I like to think I see beyond reality. The facts, by themselves, are rather uninspiring: I’m the youngest of eight sons of my father Jesse, of the tribe of Judah. I’m fourteen. I tend sheep for my father, which most consider to be a dull occupation punctuated with occasional danger from wild beasts. But I’ve never been in a real battle before—my older brothers, who are also taller, stronger, and better looking than I am, are the soldiers in the family. I have no great prospects for my life. I have one real talent, though it’s considered useless to most: I play the lyre with passion and skill. I do this because there is something about music that gives voice to the feelings that I know not how to express in words. I feel things so deeply that I must find a way to express them, even if my father scolds me and tells me I should spend my time cultivating a useful trade instead.

So much for the facts. But in my mind, my mundane tasks are all grand adventures. Even when nothing much is happening, when I’m merely out watching the sheep as they graze, a sunset can pierce me to the heart. A sky full of stars makes me raise my hands to the sky and praise the God of Israel, who kept His promises to the one He called His friend, Abraham. What must that have been like, to be called the friend of God! My own heart aches for such a distinction. If I identify with any of the patriarchs, though, it would be Joseph—he was a dreamer too. He, too, was the youngest of his brothers. He, too, had inauspicious beginnings—far more so than mine. I don’t wish to spend a decade or more in prison before rising to the palace! Yet something in my heart tells me that I am destined for great things. Maybe everyone’s heart tells them that when they are fourteen. That’s what my father says when I try to share my dreams with him, and then he dismisses me.

But I know.

When the lion and the bear attacked my sheep, I fought and killed them with nothing but stones in my sling and the pounding of blood in my veins. There was no one to see my victories; even my father and brothers did not believe me when I told them. Yet somehow, I did not feel disappointed. Someday, my skill would matter. I imagined myself saving a beautiful young maiden from a Philistine someday. Perhaps she would be Michal, the daughter of King Saul! I’d never actually seen Michal, but the rumors were that she was very beautiful. I imagined myself saving her from a ravenous lion. I’d sweep her into my arms, and she’d at once fall desperately in love with me…

“David!”

I startled out of my reverie to see one of my father’s servants hurrying toward me. I frowned, wondering what in the world could be so pressing to make the young man run.

“Your father summons you,” he said. “I shall watch the sheep in your absence. He is at the sacrifice with your brothers, where he was summoned by the prophet Samuel!”

This explained nothing. “If he wanted me there, why didn’t he invite me to come in the first place?”

“I know not, sir, but make haste! Samuel has said that they are not even to sit down until you arrive!”

Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. But I shrugged, handing my staff to the young man and setting off down the hill to where I expected to find them. So it had been Samuel who had asked for me, not Father. That made a bit more sense, but what could the great prophet to the king want with me?

When I arrived, I did indeed find my father and all my brothers standing around a table laden with food from the sacrifice. At a glance I could see anger and resentment in my brothers’ postures, and my father’s expression was unreadable. But my gaze went straight to Samuel. He wore priest’s robes, having been trained at the Temple. His hair was gray and his face lined, but his eyes bored into mine with approving intensity. I saw a slight smile curl his lips as he moved toward me with a horn of oil in his hand. He tipped the oil against his thumb, and drew a stripe of it across my forehead.

“David, son of Jesse, I anoint you as the new king over Israel,” he declared. Before I could react, he placed the horn of oil on the table and took me by the shoulders, as if memorizing my face.

I can’t exactly explain what I felt next—but no, it wasn’t a feeling. The emotion I felt was still shock. At the same time, there was a knowing in my gut that this was real, and it was from the Lord. As I glanced at my brothers, and particularly the murderous expression on my oldest brother Eliab’s face, I again thought of Joseph after he’d declared the dreams he had had before his brothers.

Samuel left without partaking of the sacrificial meal. My brothers and father stared at me, and I at them for a moment so long it grew awkward. I cleared my throat and shuffled my feet, and was just about to offer to go back out to tend the sheep when my father forced a smile and offered me a seat at the table.

“Won’t you join us, David?”

So I did. It was the most uncomfortable meal I’d ever eaten. My brothers ignored me with determined ferocity, but my father snuck glances at me when he thought I wasn’t looking. It was as if he were seeing me for the first time.

I barely slept that night, replaying the event in my mind over and over again. My brain spun with the implications of it. I tried to envision myself as king, but the idea seemed so absurd that I couldn’t. I knew it would happen, because Samuel had said so—I just couldn’t picture it. I’d never even seen the palace. To top it off, when I rose the next day, I went right back to tending the sheep.

“I’m the king,” I said to myself, alone on the grassy hills with the sheep, my staff in hand. “I am the King of Israel. Greetings,” I bowed to an invisible courtier, "I am King David, of the House of Jesse… hey! Get back here!” I cried out as one of the sheep scampered too close to a steep drop-off. I secured my staff around his neck and gently led him back to the herd. Then I laughed, and muttered again to myself with more irony this time, “Why yes, I realize keeping sheep is an unusual pastime for royalty. But I find that it keeps me humble. Keeps me in touch with the common man, wouldn’t you agree?”

Weeks passed, and life was much the same as it had ever been. The only evidence that the encounter with Samuel had happened at all lay in the changed way my father regarded me, with that new and contemplative expression of his.

Then one day, when I was out tending the sheep as usual, my father himself came out to the pasture, along with one of the servants, Mushi. This in itself was strange: ordinarily Father would just send a servant to fetch me, if he wished to speak to me. He seemed out of breath, and his eyes were wild. I frowned.

“Father? Is everything well?”

“Come with me, David,” my father said. “I have spoken to Mushi about taking over your position with the sheep in your absence.”

I handed Mushi my staff, and followed my father back to our house, perplexed. He explained, still catching his breath, “The king has sent for you.”

I froze, fear suddenly seizing my heart. He knows, was my first thought. He knows I’ve been anointed in his place, and he sent for me to kill me.

“I know what you’re thinking, David, but it is not so,” my father hurried to tell me. “The king has been tormented, and his servants believe that it is from a harmful spirit. They heard rumors of your skill with the lyre, and King Saul therefore requested that you be sent with your instrument, to soothe him in his distress. Hurry: we will send you with bread and a skin of wine and a young goat to the palace. You cannot go into the king’s service empty-handed!”

So we saddled a donkey with these provisions, and I went with the king’s messengers to the palace. The change in my situation did not hit me until I saw the palace for the first time. But then my eyes widened, and the words came into my spirit: One day that will be my home.

A servant ushered me into the king’s chamber that night. I found him tossing upon his bed in torment, groaning, tugging at his hair and beard, and occasionally shrieking. I had never seen a person tormented by an evil spirit before, and therefore had no idea what to expect. But I saw at once why the servants had declared that to be the trouble. I had rehearsed an entire speech of introduction, but dispensed with it when I saw the king’s agitation. At once, I began playing with all the skill I could muster. Within moments, the king’s writhing settled, and he grew quiet and docile. My heart swelled with gratitude that I should be here, should be instrumental in such a great moment! Strange to say, considering Samuel’s prophecy and my fears, but in that moment I loved the king as I loved my own father. I wanted nothing more than to bring him peace.

“You play well, boy,” croaked King Saul at last, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“Thank you, my lord,” I replied.

The king turned his head to look me up and down, as if assessing my size. “I would like you to remain at my side, in case I find myself in need of your services,” he managed. “I shall therefore also appoint you as my armor-bearer.”

I bowed my head, feeling overwhelmed. “I am—honored, my lord,” I managed. “I will be pleased to serve you in any way I am able.”

The king sent word to my father that I had found favor in his sight, and asked that I remain in his service. Of course this was more a formality than a request. From then on, I spent most of my time at the palace, but still went back and forth to feed my father’s sheep. I played for the king whenever the evil spirit tormented him, and my music acted as a balm to his soul.

In the king’s service, I learned that Israel was in a standoff with the Philistines. Every day, the king’s army, including my three eldest brothers, went out to fight. But something was unusual about this particular battle, because for forty days, no fighting actually occurred. I was terribly curious what was going on, but I was only a boy, so no one would tell me.

One day when I was back at my father’s house, prepared to return again to the king, my father told me, “Take for your brothers an ephah of this parched grain, and these ten loaves, and carry them quickly to the camp of your brothers. Also take these ten cheeses to the commander of their thousand. See if your brothers are well, and bring some token from them.”

The request greatly pleased me, as it gave me an excuse to go to the front lines and see for myself how we could be at battle, yet not at battle. Early the next morning, I rose to obey my father’s instructions, leaving the sheep in Mushi’s care.

When I arrived, I saw a most unusual stage for the battle: the Philistine army was on top of one mountain, and the Israelites on the top of another, with a vacant valley in between. I left my father’s provisions with the keeper of the baggage, and then ran to the Israelite ranks to greet my brothers. No sooner had I done so, though, our attention was arrested by an absolutely enormous man who ventured down from the Philistine camp into the valley below.

“Have you seen this man who has come up?” the soldiers of Israel whispered among themselves. They were not speaking to me, but I heard them. “Surely he has come up to defy Israel. And the king will enrich the man who kills him with great riches and will give him his daughter and make his father’s house free in Israel.”

My eyes grew wide as the giant approached, and I took in every detail of him. He had a helmet of bronze, was armed with a coat of mail, and had bronze armor strapped to his legs. A javelin of bronze bigger than any weapon I had ever seen was slung between his shoulders. A much smaller man ran before him, bearing his shield.

Then the giant opened his mouth and bellowed, “Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us. I defy the ranks of Israel this day! Give me a man, that we may fight together!”

I drew back at the declaration of this uncircumcised Philistine in disgust. He defied the ranks of Israel, did he? The ranks of the servants of the Most High God? How dared he!

But as I looked around at the men of Saul’s army, expecting to find all of them equally incensed, I saw something else entirely in their faces. These men were terrified. But why? Didn’t they know their covenant? Hadn’t they heard the story of how Joshua and Caleb only entered the Promised Land of all the children of Israel, because they believed the Lord’s promises? Caleb went in and defeated many giants like this one in his eighties! Surely one of these men in their prime of life would claim the great rewards they themselves had said Saul offered to the man who defeated this one man!

I leaned over and tapped one of the soldiers before me on the shoulder. He looked back, and then his eyes had to track downward to my face. He scowled at me like I was an annoyance, but I didn’t care.

“Excuse me,” I whispered, “I thought I heard, but please tell me again. What shall be done for the man who kills this Philistine and takes away the reproach from Israel? For who is this uncircumcised Philistine, that he should defy the armies of the living God?”

So they repeated the promise from Saul: riches, his daughter (Michal! I thought), and freedom for his father’s house. “So shall it be done to the man who kills him.”

My oldest brother Eliab was still nearby, and overheard my pesky questions. He sneered, “Why have you come down? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your presumption and the evil of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.”

Eliab had not been able to speak a civil word to me since the evening I was anointed, but this was too much. I had come to bring him refreshments from our father! “What have I done now?” I protested, and gestured at the soldier who had answered my question. “Was it not but a word?”

I moved away from my brothers to escape further censure, but I could not go just yet. I wanted to make sure the others had heard the same rewards promised from the king. So I tapped yet more soldiers on the shoulders, and repeated my question. What would be done for the man who kills the Philistine, whom I heard called Goliath of Gath? They all told me the same thing. I mostly fixated on Michal, who had featured in so many of my boyhood daydreams. I felt myself grow a little bit taller every time the promise of the king was repeated. I started to see myself honored, wealthy, and wed to the beautiful Michal. I pictured myself as the son-in-law to King Saul himself! I would not have dared to presume that I should be the one to receive all these things, except that nobody else seemed willing to face the giant. This seemed utterly ludicrous to me. Surely they had the same desires and dreams I had. Surely they too were men!

The soldiers who previously seemed to consider me a nuisance now regarded me with the same look of curiosity my father had given me after Samuel’s visit to our home. I remained with the soldiers long after my errand was complete, intently watching Goliath and considering how I might be chosen as the one to go down and face him. Presently Abner, the commander of the king’s army, solved the problem for me.

“The king has asked for you.” Abner said, and beckoned me.

Yes! I thought fiercely, as I followed Abner to where the king was stationed on the mountaintop amongst his men and advisors. When I stood before the king, I was smiling with anticipation. The king looked me up and down, as he had done the first time he met me. There was no recognition in his eyes, but perhaps that was because I was out of context. He probably thought of me as his servant with the lyre, not as a man of war.

“I was told that a boy was asking about the reward for facing Goliath,” the king frowned at me, clearly unimpressed.

I stood up straighter and puffed out my chest. “Let no man’s heart fail because of him. Your servant will go and fight with this Philistine.”

King Saul’s skeptical frown deepened. “You are not able to go against this Philistine to fight with him, for you are but a youth, and he has been a man of war from his youth.” Not to mention he’s about six times your size, was his unspoken addition.

I shook my head. “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father. And when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and struck him and delivered it out of his mouth. And if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard and struck him and killed him. Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God. The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.”

I could see the effect this speech was having upon the king. As I spoke, his frown vanished, and his eyebrows rose. I’d been told before that my faith was infectious, because it was not in myself, after all: my faith was in the covenant my God had given to Israel. I was an Israelite, was I not? Just as Caleb and Joshua had been, I too would be victorious. So would they, if only they knew it.

Saul gave me an incredulous smile, and finally declared, “Go, and the Lord be with you!” Then he beckoned his servant who was serving as his armor bearer that day, taking from him the armor I had earlier squired about for the king. I hesitated, not wanting to contradict the king, but I knew what I would feel even before he placed his helmet of bronze and coat of mail upon me, strapping on his own sword last of all. I began my journey down to the valley in all this finery, but the weight was such that I could scarcely move.

At last I realized, whether I offended the king or not, it was my life on the line. I returned, shaking my head as I informed him, “I cannot go with these, for I have not tested them. I will go as I am.” I carefully placed the sword back in the king’s hand as I said this, and removed the helmet, handing it to the armor bearer.

As I removed the coat of mail, the armor bearer frowned and said, “Then what shall you use as a weapon?”

I stooped to the ground, inspecting the stones there until I found five smooth ones. I placed them in my shepherd’s pouch, and by way of answer, removed my sling from it to show them. I held it in one hand, pouch on my belt, and flashed the king and his men a confident grin. Then I made my way alone down the mountain toward the Philistine.

I was about halfway down the mountain to the valley before Goliath even seemed to notice me. He began to move in my direction, his shield bearer before him. The giant glimpsed my sling, and sneered in a booming tone, “Am I a dog, that you come at me with sticks?” And he roared curses against me by his gods. “Come to me, and I will give your flesh to the birds of the air and to the beasts of the field!”

The spirit of the Lord—for such I now realized it was—burned with indignation, and I shouted back loudly enough that both armies could hear, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head! And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the Lord saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give you into our hand!”

The Philistine roared in incomprehensible rage, running toward me and drawing his sword. I roared back, running toward him and reaching into my shepherd’s pouch. I withdrew a smooth stone, fitted it into my sling, and let it fly: straight into the Philistine’s forehead. It was at such close range that it sank into his flesh, crushing his skull. He fell before me with a mighty crash, face first.

I did not stop running. I had said I would cut off his head, and I would do exactly as I had said: for who knew whether the Philistines and the Israelites could yet see from this distance that their champion was dead? I wanted to leave no doubt in their minds. So I ran until I reached the Philistine, withdrew his own sword from his scabbard, removed the helmet of bronze, and cut off the giant’s head. I held the sword with one hand and the giant’s head by the hair with the other, and raised both with a mighty shout so that both armies could see.

At once, the men of Israel and of Judah joined my war cry, and ran down into the valley. On the other mountain, the Philistines scattered and fled. But Israel had been galvanized, and I knew we would overtake our enemies at last.

The battle raged on, though my part was now done. Presently, Abner brought me again before King Saul, and I went, still clutching Goliath’s head by his hair. I saw new respect now in the king’s eyes.

“Whose son are you, young man?” he asked me. I thought the question an odd one, as I had been in the king’s service for some time now, but again reasoned that he could not be expected to remember each of his servants.

“I am the son of your servant Jesse the Bethlehemite,” I replied, and saw the light of recognition enter the king’s eyes.

“The boy with the lyre!” he cried. “Well, well! My servant spoke of you truly when he declared you ‘a man skillful in playing, a man of valor, a man of war, prudent in speech, and a man of good presence, and the Lord is with him.’”

I blushed at such gracious words, an odd response while I still held the head of my enemy. I had never heard myself spoken of in this way. Who, indeed, would have made such a report to the king about a lowly fourteen year old shepherd boy who had never seen battle before this day? In whose eyes had I obtained such favor?

I remembered then the words that the angel had spoken to Gideon, before he had yet tasted war, and while he still hid himself from his enemies: “Hail, O mighty man of valor!” And I heard in my spirit, The Lord speaks not what is, but what shall be.

I would hold on to those words spoken by my king for many a bleak year after that day. More than once would they encourage me, as a prophecy of the man I would one day become.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, A Calorie Isn't Always Just A Calorie

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Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's podcast is a meditation on and retelling of the book of Jonah.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is the transcript of my retelling, though the podcast also includes a discussion.

I sometimes think I got a raw deal, being chosen as a prophet of the Lord. Why me? What did I do to deserve this?

And why now—this moment in history, I mean? I love my nation, and I love the Lord. But King Jeroboam is wicked, and yet I have to serve him anyway. When the Lord gives me a word for him, I faithfully deliver it, even though the truth is, I’ve secretly resented the fact that I feel like God has just been using me for a long time now.

Or I guess maybe not so secretly, since the Lord knows my every thought.

Still, I do what He tells me to do, partly because I don’t think I could do otherwise. God’s words, when they come, burn inside me until I utter them.

But enough is enough. This time, God’s word was, “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me.”

No. I am not doing that.

Because Nineveh is a threat to Israel, and they’re horrible people. Horrible! And I know why God said it, too: He’d have no reason to send me to proclaim against them unless He intended to give them the opportunity to repent. He wouldn’t bother sending me if He didn’t think they would repent, either. If He wanted me to go call down fire from heaven to consume them all, that I would happily do. But no—He wanted to use me as an instrument of their redemption, the redemption of my Gentile enemies!

Forget it. He could call someone else if He wanted to spare those wretches. I was tired of being mistreated and used as God’s mouthpiece against my will. He loved all those abominations in Nineveh, but what about me? Did he care what I thought or how I felt?

So, for the first time since the Word of the Lord came to me, I went in the opposite direction. Instead of heading for Nineveh, I went to Joppa. Truthfully I didn’t really expect to get that far—I thought God’s rebuke would burn inside me so painfully that it would force me to turn around, or else that he would send another prophet across my path. But I heard nothing, and saw no one, and thought—maybe He’s going to let me run! Maybe?

So I boarded a merchant ship for Tarshish, and climbed below deck. I felt emotionally spent—though the Lord had not barred my flight, I’d expected Him to at every moment, and I’d been on edge all day. All I wanted to do was sleep; unconsciousness seemed like a blessed release.

The next thing I knew, the captain of the ship, to whom I’d paid the fare, was shaking me awake. “What do you mean, you sleeper!” he shouted. “Arise, call out to your god! Perhaps the god will give a thought to us, that we may not perish!”

As he spoke and I regained consciousness, I saw what he meant: the boat had sailed into a tempest, and we pitched so violently that it threw me from one side of the cabin to the other, now that I stood. Cargo that shared my lodging slid and hurtled across the room, and from the dim light that filtered from the upper decks, I could see that the captain was soaked through with sea spray.

A sinking dread filled my heart. As I followed the captain back to the upper decks with the rest of the crew, I said to the Lord, Was all this really necessary? Couldn’t you just have sent another prophet to rebuke me instead?

The mariners hurled cargo into the sea to try to lighten the load, but it was no use of course—our problem had nothing to do with the weight we carried. The mariners seemed to realize this and huddled together, keeping their stance as best they could in the turbulence. I approached them, and heard one shout over the spray, “Come, let us cast lots, that we may know on whose account this evil has come upon us!” I hesitated just a bit when I heard this, and tried to hang back, but the sailor urged me to join them. I drew my lot, knowing very well what it would reveal. Of course, the lot fell to me. All the mariners regarded me with wide, suspicious eyes, and the one who had urged me to join yelled, “Tell us on whose account this evil has come upon us. What is your occupation? And where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”

Well, it was all over now. I heaved a sigh, looked up to heaven and shook my head at the Lord. Then I told them, “I am a Hebrew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.”

Now they seemed afraid. Though they were Gentiles, and served other gods, they had all heard of the great and mighty deeds of the Lord. “What is this that you have done!” several shouted. I opened my mouth to reply, but the ship bucked so hard that all of us flew into the air and then back down onto the deck again, along with the crash of a wave. Forgetting their first question, the mariners moved right on to the more pressing issue—for them, anyway. “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?”

The answer came to me, just like every other word the Lord had ever given me, though I liked it even less than the last one He had spoken. Still, I knew better than not to give it.

“Pick me up and hurl me into the sea,” I shouted, “then the sea will quiet down for you. For I know it is because of me that this great tempest has come upon you.”

The mariners stared at me in shock. They had not expected me to say such a thing. No ordinary man would have recommended his own execution to save strangers. But they didn’t know what it was to be a prophet of the Lord… I had to do and say what He gave me to do and say. Clearly.

The captain did not comment on my recommendation at all, but commanded the men, “To the oars! Let us see if we can row to dry land until the storm passes.”

I shook my head and shouted, “It won’t work!”

They ignored me, though, and the men obeyed the orders of the captain, each man to his station. They rowed as hard as they could, but the harder they rowed, the harder the sea bucked against them. Cargo flew around like projectiles. More than once the ship came down half inverted, and I had no idea how it did not capsize altogether. In a moment of brief reprieve, I called out to the captain, “I told you so! Hurl me in! You must!”

The captain and several of his mates exchanged a look of horror and resolution combined. Then he called out to the heavens, “O Lord, let us not perish for this man’s life, and lay not on us innocent blood, for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you!”

I wondered what drowning was like. It seemed an unpleasant way to die. As I allowed the captain and three mariners to hoist me onto their shoulders and hurl me into the tempestuous sea, I prayed I’d strike my head against the ship as it bucked and it would all be over quickly. Instinctively I raised my arms above my head so that I might dive rather than splash, but a wave caught me broadside while I was yet in the air, thrusting me down, down, down.

Somehow, I opened my eyes below the water, and though they burned with salt, I was able to see to the surface. Already the sun had come out, and the waves calmed. I swam for the surface, for air—but before I could breach, I sensed a very large presence behind me. I turned to see an enormous mouth perhaps twice the size of my body, wide open and filled with blunt teeth.

I hadn’t even time for horror before the thing swallowed me whole, and the world went black.

When I awoke, the world was still black. It also smelled of like rotting flesh. I wasn’t sure the flesh wasn’t my own. My skin felt like it was burning off, and my eyes were on fire. Also, had I ever been this nauseous in my life? I didn’t typically get seasick, but then, ships didn’t typically dive down and resurface again like this creature was doing, either. I vomited countless times, mingling my own sick with the unknown liquid contents surrounding me until my own stomach was empty and all I could do was dry heave. I blessedly lost consciousness then, but awoke again some time later.

Eventually, the fish who carried me leveled out long enough for me to think about something other than my nausea. I recognized the situation then for what it was: the Lord giving me a second chance. I should be dead right now, but I wasn’t.

I wished I was.

No, I didn’t. What I wished was to be back on solid ground, back in the sunshine, and out of this pit of Sheol. And I would be; that much was suddenly quite obvious. I still despised the Ninevites and wished them a fiery death, but the Lord was the Lord, and He would have His way. I would go to Nineveh, and I would say what He gave me to say.

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress, and he answered me,” I whispered. For He had answered me in my spirit. “Out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me; all your waves and your billows passed over me. Then I said, ‘I am driven away from your sight, yet I shall again look upon your holy temple.’” I pronounced this with emphasis—I knew it to be true, and yet I said it to remind myself. Deliverance was even yet coming. “The waters closed in over me to take my life; the deep surrounded me; weeds were wrapped about my head at the roots of the mountains. I went down to the land whose bars closed upon me forever; yet you brought up my life from the pit, O Lord my God.” He had not done so yet, but it was as good as done, and so I spoke it as done, my voice growing louder. “When my life was fainting away, I remembered the Lord, and my prayer came to you, into your holy temple. Those who pay regard to vain idols forsake their hope of steadfast love!”

I cried this last line as a shout, muted though the sound was in this dark pit. I felt the forward momentum of my host halt, and then turn. A rumble began from deep within, and the burning liquid around me began to churn. It was as if my words themselves disagreed with the creature. Encouraged, I cried out, “But I with the voice of thanksgiving WILL sacrifice to you; what I have vowed I WILL pay. SALVATION BELONGS TO THE LORD!”

The churning and rumbling around me grew. Then all at once I was tumbling head over feet, expelled with a mighty heave.

I lay facedown on dry sand, covered in slime. I gingerly pressed my hands against the sand, testing it to make sure it was real before at last opening my burning eyes, squinting against the rays of sunshine. It took a moment for my vision to adjust. The sick all around me was green and mingled with bones, large and small. That was when I got a good look at my hands and arms. I was naked; apparently my clothing had burned off in the acid from the creature’s stomach. All pigment from my skin had also bleached white. I started to tremble uncontrollably.

Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time. “Arise,” He said, “go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it the message that I tell you.”

“Yes, Lord,” I whispered.

I had no money for passage or clothing, but if the Lord provided a great fish to swallow me and then vomit me up, He could provide that too—and He did. Several mariners had evidently witnessed the whole event, and took pity on me. I croaked out my destination, and with little effort on my part, was on my way.

I arrived in Nineveh, and briefly forgot my aversion to the people in my awe of its greatness. I had never seen a place so vast. I went on foot one day’s journey into the heart of the city, drawing stares due to my strange, ghostly appearance. Then on the second day, I found a discarded crate in the bustling marketplace. I inverted it and stood on top of it like a platform. The people nearby, who had kept a wary eye on me already, quieted and gathered around.

“I am a Hebrew and a prophet of the Lord, the God of heaven!” I cried. "This is the word of the Lord to you: yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!”

Initially my proclamation met with silence; then horror swept through the crowd in whispers. This was all the Lord had said to me, so I said no more. I’d done my part. I stepped down from the crate, and left the people of Nineveh in angst as they parted to make way for me. I heard wailing begin around me, and the sound of clothing ripping. I ignored it all, stalking right through the crowd and out of the city.

It was a three day journey from one end of Nineveh to the other, and I’d already traveled one day, entering from the west. I had yet two days more. I did not proclaim the Lord’s warning again, but I did not need to. Apparently my words had spread like fire among the citizens, from the least of them to the greatest. I heard on my second day that the word had reached the king, who had covered himself in sackcloth and sat in ashes. He had then issued a proclamation, stating, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.”

No one approached me as I stalked through their land, but they all clearly knew who I was by the description of me that had no doubt circulated. Who could miss the terrifyingly pale prophet of doom? Nor did my manner invite approach. I was furious. Because I knew exactly what the Lord would do—or rather, what He would not do.

At last I exited the east side of the city, and climbed to a vantage point where I could see the whole of Nineveh laid out before me. I sat down to glare at it. Then I realized, I had yet thirty-eight days to wait. So from the nearby trees, I constructed a booth for myself, like a makeshift tent. I hadn’t spoken to the Lord in days. I was too angry.

But as the days stretched on, at last my bitterness gave way to words. “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than live!”

The Lord did not reply immediately. But at last He said in that infuriatingly probing way of His that contained the answer embedded in the question, “Do you do well to be angry?”

I did not reply. I refused. I stared at Nineveh. The booth I had constructed was poor shade from the scalding sun—all the more scalding, probably, to my bleached and sensitive skin. But I wouldn’t move; not yet. I wanted a front row seat to the fireball from heaven when it came, or the destroying army, or however God would do it.

Presently, I noticed a plant beside my little booth growing exceedingly fast. In hours, it had become a tree, with a spreading canopy over my head. I closed my eyes in a silent prayer of thanks, and moved my booth beneath the tree. The Lord had not forgotten me, after all.

But the next day, the tree had withered as quickly as it had sprung up. It offered no more shade. If that weren’t bad enough, a scorching wind blasted me from the east, and the sun beat down on me so that I almost swooned from dehydration and heat.

He had forgotten me. The Lord could have spared the tree for my sake, but He didn’t. He just wanted to use me as His mouthpiece. He loved those miserable people down there in that wicked city, but He didn’t love me at all!

“Just let me die, Lord!” I moaned. "It is better for me to die than to live!”

The Lord replied, “Do you do well to be angry for the plant?”

“Yes, I do well to be angry,” I retorted, “angry enough to die!”

The Lord said, “You pity the plant, for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not pity Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle?”

I understood His point. I knew I was being childish, and I knew when I’d said to myself that the Lord didn’t care about me beyond what I could do for Him, that it was a lie. I didn’t care, though. At the moment, I took a perverse pleasure in clinging to it anyway, because it seemed to justify my bitterness.

God wasn’t going to destroy Nineveh. I knew that from the first moment He sent me to proclaim their destruction. What was I still doing here? The blistering sun hurt my acid-bleached skin, and I didn’t need to rely on a booth or a tree or anything else to protect me from it. I could just go home. I’d done what the Lord had commanded.

I rose reluctantly, but shook my fist at the vast city below.

“They deserve to be destroyed, Lord!” I cried out. “They’re not even Your people. They’re the enemies of Your people!”

Yet I had the premonition from the beginning, for as long as the word of the Lord had come to me, that the day would come when the distinction between the Lord’s people and the Gentiles would no longer be about bloodlines. The Lord loved all people, of every race, no matter how wicked. He wanted all to come to repentance, and He would equally extend the opportunity to all.

Man, I hated that.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Health Benefits of Celery (and Celery Juice)

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Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's podcast is a meditation on the prophecy of the birth of Isaac to Abraham, and a retelling of the story from Genesis 13-21.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

The story of Isaac’s miraculous birth spans twenty-five years, and eight chapters in Genesis. It’s also inextricably linked with God’s promise to Abraham that he would inherit the land which would ultimately become Israel, but God reveals His plan to Abraham in stages.

By Genesis 13, God has already called Abram (this was his name at first) to leave his father’s house and go to the land that God would show him. But it isn’t until after Abram and his nephew Lot separate that God specifically promises the childless Abram, then in his seventies, that his descendants will be like the dust of the earth. The word used here for descendants in Hebrew is zera, which means seed, or semen. This is significant because in Genesis 15, still childless, a heartsick Abram starts to wonder if the child will be from his own body after all, or whether perhaps it might be an adopted servant. God corrects him then, and tells him that yes, the child will be his biological son. He also gives Abram a new image to cling to: that of the stars in the heavens as a symbol of his numberless progeny. Now Abram could meditate on God’s promise to him day and night: both the dust of the ground and the stars in the heavens were a symbol of the promise. This is the first time that we’re told “Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness,” later quoted in Romans 4:3 as an example for us all.

At the same time that God gives Abram this new word picture, He promises him the land for his possession. Abram asks God for a sign, which elsewhere in scripture indicates lack of faith—but since the writer of Genesis just got finished saying that “Abram believed God,” that can’t be what it was. Perhaps Abram was asking for something to cling to, like the image of the dust of the ground and the stars of the sky, to help him continue in faith for the land during the long years he expected to elapse between the promise and its fulfillment. In response, God tells Abram to gather animals and to cut them in half. Abram at once knows what this means: as we’re told in Jeremiah 34:18-19, this is the preparation for what the ancients called “cutting a covenant.” In this ritual, both parties walked between the pieces of the animals in a figure eight as they made their vows, in effect saying, “so be it done to me as it was done to these animals, if I break my end of this agreement!” Abram understands that God is going to make a covenant with him. But rather than God and Abram walking between the pieces, God puts Abram to sleep and gives him a vision of a flaming torch and a smoking fire pot passing between the pieces instead, as God tells him the terms of the covenant. This is significant, because Abram doesn’t have to do a thing—the covenant is between God and himself! Fire is often used as a symbol of the Lord throughout scripture. The flaming torch—the light—has been compared to the Word of God (“The word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” Psalm 119:105), and Jesus is the Word made flesh (John 1:1). One alternative interpretation I have heard is that the smoking fire pot is a furnace or crucible, and because the covenant God speaks includes the bondage of Abram’s descendants in slavery for 400 years, perhaps this is a symbol of God’s covenant with the people of Israel, and the fire pot is a symbol of their suffering (Deuteronomy 4:20). Regardless, Abram himself does not pass between the pieces, which means he does not have to do anything in order to bring about the promises. As far as he’s concerned, they’re automatic!

It’s also interesting to me that God includes both the blessing and the 400 years of slavery in this original covenant. Otherwise, the Israelites could have justly claimed that God had not kept up His end of the bargain when they found themselves in bondage—but He put it in the original contract, so to speak.

So much of Genesis 15. But God has not yet specified that the child of the promise will also be Sarah’s. This is why Sarai (as her name then was) suggests to Abram in Genesis 16 that he take her Egyptian servant Hagar as a wife, which is how Ishmael comes to be. Seems like Abram could have asked God for clarification at that point!

By Genesis 17, now 24 years have elapsed from the time of the original promise. God visits Abram again, and this is where he changes his name to Abraham, and Sarai’s name to Sarah. I’ve heard two explanations for this: one is that God added -ah to both of their names, taken from His own name: Jehov-ah. In Hebrew, ah means breath or spirit. God has breathed on them, and in the breath of God is life (which is how Adam and Eve came to be!) Another explanation is that Abram means ‘exalted father,’ while Abraham means ‘father of many nations.’ Likewise, Sarai means ‘my princess,’ whereas Sarah means ‘princess of a multitude.’ Again, God is bringing the promise front and center for them: now, every time they call one another, every time they hear someone speak their new name, they are hearing the promise. “God calls those things that be not as though they were” (Romans 4:17), and “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God” (Romans 10:17).

In this same encounter, God gives Abram the first sign of the covenant in which he has a part to play: every male in his household must be circumcised. Covenants in the ancient world always involved the shedding of blood. This would be a permanent physical sign, though a personal one, that these men belong to God. Circumcision also occurs on the organ of reproduction, which may make it a symbol that their fruitfulness (spiritually speaking) would now come as a result of their partnership with God. Jesus later says, “The one who remains in me, and I in him, will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5).One more very significant thing comes out of this encounter: finally, God tells Abraham that the child will be Sarah’s too. Sarah is the one who always gets the bad reputation of laughing when she hears the promise, but Abraham laughs too, and it’s the same word in Hebrew as when Sarah laughs! This might be why God says that his son will be called Isaac—which means laughter. Ouch. God doesn’t directly rebuke Abraham like he does Sarah, but maybe this is the rebuke.

In my retelling, I put the next encounter with the Lord ten days later in Genesis 18, because Abraham and the men of his household are recovering from circumcision, and this takes about ten days on average. It seems that God wasn’t even intending to talk to Abraham this time—the three men, one of whom was apparently the Lord and the other two presumably were angels, were on their way to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and Abraham happened to see them passing by. God reiterates the promise, and now Sarah hears it. This is where she laughs, and the Lord rebukes her. But we know from Hebrews 11:11 that she eventually does come to believe the Lord’s promise, even though she’s eighty-nine years old at this point! And she must have come around pretty quickly too, because the promise is for “this time next year.” So she must have gotten on board in at least three months.

Then there’s this weird interlude that I didn’t put in my retelling. Once before, when Abram was seventy-five and Sarai was sixty-five, she was apparently so gorgeous that he told Pharaoh as they passed through Egypt that she was his sister, and not his wife—lest Pharaoh try to have him killed so that he could take Sarai into his harem. (This was sort of true: she was his half sister. They did that back then.) Then in Genesis 20, AFTER God had already given the promise that Isaac will be born within a year, Abraham does it again! As he passes through Gerar, he tells King Abimelech that Sarah (who is eighty-nine at this point) that she is his sister! Apparently she was still stunning, because Abimelech took her into his harem. How God responds to this is very interesting: he closes the wombs of all the women in Abimelech’s household, and then tells him in a dream that Sarah is actually Abraham’s wife. Then, even though the fault is totally Abraham’s, because God made a covenant with Abraham, Abraham has to pray for Abimelech so that the curse is lifted. But this isn’t just any curse. It’s a curse of reproduction. Could it be that God was jealous of His promise, twenty-five years in the making, and now on a very tight deadline? At this point, it’s days to months at most from when Sarah is scheduled to conceive. I suspect God REALLY didn’t want anyone to think Sarah’s child was anyone’s other than Abraham’s.

And then in Chapter 21, at long, LONG last, Sarah is pregnant, and Isaac is born.

Why 25 years? Was all that really necessary? Is it possible that Abraham and Sarah could have shortened the wait, or was it always destined to be so long? No idea. But (despite his bizarre lapses here and there), I definitely think Abraham deserves the title, “Father of Faith.”

I’ve reimagined what these twenty-five years must have been like through Abraham’s eyes. I hope it helps you as it did me, to experience the story in a new way!

Now it was just us.

I shouldn’t feel lonely—I still had Sarai, and my herdsmen and servants, cattle and flocks. But with my nephew Lot gone, I was the only one of my blood kin in a land of strangers and giants. Lot chose the better land, the fertile Jordan Valley, but that did not matter. I came on this journey in the first place because I had a promise from the Lord. Several, actually, which I rehearsed to myself on a regular basis whenever I felt low, like I did right now.

"I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." And later, when He appeared to me upon entering Canaan, glowing and white, He said, “To your offspring I will give this land.”

Offspring, I thought, and my spirit sank. It wasn’t that I doubted what the Lord said—He was the Lord. Obviously He would know. It was just that the very promise stirred a longing in me that I had long buried in order to cope with my disappointment. I was now seventy-five years old, and my wife Sarai, stunningly beautiful though she still was, was sixty-five and barren. The Lord said there would be offspring… but He did not say when or how or by whom.

“Abram!”

I jerked my head up, but there was no one there. Not this time. It was like the first time the Lord had spoken to me: I heard the voice only in my spirit, but I knew to my bones that it was Him.

“Lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward, for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. I will make your offspring as the dust of the earth, so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted.”

I caught my breath, dropping my eyes from the land to the sand that had gotten trapped in my sandals and stuck between my toes. Then I gazed with new wonder at the dust of the ground.

So not just offspring, but—I will make of you a great nation, the Lord had said the first time I heard Him speak. A huge nation, apparently!

“Arise, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you,” the Lord said to my spirit.

Yes, Lord, I said in my spirit, and hurried to obey. I told my servants to move our tents to Hebron, by the oaks of Mamre. I went to explore the land that was now mine by divine right—mine and my myriad offspring’s! As I walked, I imagined them. The dust under my feet was a picture of how many there would be. I pictured cities of the future, using what I had seen in Egypt as a guide for how they might look. And the people of my nation going about their lives: soldiers and tradesmen, shepherds and priests, women and children. I heard their laughter, their haggling, and at times their bickering.

When I returned to our tents at Hebron, my heart was full. I had seen the future, and the how was not my problem. God made the promise; He would see that it came to pass. There I built an altar to the Lord of smooth stones for sacrifice, just like I did the first time the Lord appeared and spoke to me. I did this because, after what I had seen and envisioned, my heart demanded a response. The Lord was so good to me.

Later, as the years slipped by with no sign of a promise fulfilled, I was grateful to have built the altar for another reason. The Lord had given me one sign, of the dust under my feet. Yet I saw the dust daily, and did not always think of my offspring to come when I did so. But for the altar, there might have been times when I would have been tempted to think I’d dreamed the whole thing. But it was there, real and unchanging, and I remembered when I looked at it how I’d felt when I constructed it. I tried to conjure those feelings of hope and gratitude again, but now they were tinged so heavily with disappointment and heartsickness that the positive emotions were hard to remember. I’d begun to convince myself that when the Lord spoke of my offspring, perhaps He had not meant my physical offspring. Perhaps he meant that one of my servants would inherit from me, and his offspring would be counted as mine. It would be his offspring that would populate the grand city of my imagination.

As I stood looking out over the land the Lord had given to me by promise as the sun went down, beside the oaks of Mamre, suddenly, the Lord came to me again. I knew He was not physically beside me this time, that it was a vision, but the glowing appearance of the man was the same.

“Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great,” He said.

Lovely words, and I did believe them, but they were so non-specific. So my reply came out of my wounded heart. “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.”

Suddenly—in my vision or in reality, I did not know—twilight slipped to darkness. The Lord led me out from beneath the spreading oaks, and pointed up to the heavens. Like every night, the magnificent deep blue sky was spangled with stars as far as the eye could see, and beyond.

“Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. So shall your offspring be.”

I looked, but I could no more number the stars than I could number the sand beneath my feet. Tears of gratitude leaked onto my now wrinkled cheeks. The Lord did not say in so many words that these offspring would be from my own body, but this was his reply when I voiced the concern that they would not be. I knew he meant that they would be mine. And when the promise was at last fulfilled, the years of waiting and heartache would not matter anymore. They would be forgotten in joy.

I do not know how long the vision went on. Perhaps I slept before the Lord, meditating on his great promise. When it was daytime, and I could again see the land before me, the Lord went on, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.”

Remembering the long, unchanging years since the last time the Lord had spoken this promise to me, I said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” I did not doubt that I would, but—like the stars in the heavens were a new sign of the promise of offspring, I wanted a new sign to cling to for the land. Something to combat the doubt, when it next came knocking.

The Lord said to me, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.”

The vision lifted. I was alone again, and went at once to my herdsmen to comply in excitement. I knew what this meant: the Lord planned to cut a covenant with me! When any two kings or landowners or great men wished to join in covenant, the strongest bond of fellowship there is, this was how it was done. If the Lord would do that, then surely there would be no more room for doubt!

I hurried back to the place where I had met with the Lord yesterday at nightfall, and slaughtered the sacrifices. Then I sawed all the animals except for the birds in half, separating them in the usual manner in preparation. And I waited for the Lord to appear.

He did not appear, for hours yet. I washed the blood from my hands. The sun rose high, and began to descend again. The birds of prey eventually spotted my sacrifice, and swooped down to investigate. I shooed them away. As I waited, since I could not yet see the stars, I looked at the sand. I closed my eyes and imagined the city I’d first envisioned all those years ago…

Sometime during the evening as the sun went down, my imaginings slipped into dreams. At first it was no dream at all, but deepest blackness, as if I’d fallen into an abyss where there was nothing but night. Then the Lord’s voice came to me in the dream.

“Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation, for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.”

When the Lord finished speaking, I saw—dream or vision now? I was not sure—two objects appear before me: a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch. I knew that the furnace represented the bondage of my offspring of which the Lord had just spoken, a symbol of oppression. Just as certainly, I knew that the flaming torch was the holiness of the Lord Himself. It was these two objects that passed between the pieces of my sacrifices. My throat constricted. The Lord had cut the covenant with Himself. Without my participation at all! That meant it was unconditional: there was nothing I could do to stop the promise from coming to pass. He would do it.

The Lord spoke again the promise He had given me before, only this time it was an unconditional covenant: “To your offspring I give this land, from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates, the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Raphaim, the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Girgashites, and the Jebusites.”

I awoke the next morning so filled with hope and joy that it was as if the last ten years of disappointment had never happened. I’d never yet told Sarai of the Lord’s promise for descendants, as her barrenness was a very sensitive subject. I had hoped I would not have to tell her, and she might simply conceive one day without my having to say a word. But today I could not hold it in. I told her everything, from the original picture of the sand from the Lord, the vision of the land when we first arrived, to the vision and dream from the last twenty-four hours, of the stars in the sky and the Lord’s unconditional covenant. After all, the Lord had cut the covenant with himself! We had nothing to do with it!

But Sarai was not excited, like I was. In fact, she grew very quiet as I spoke, and withdrew from me. I frowned, and asked her, “What is wrong?”

“The Lord has promised you offspring,” she said at last. “You. Not me.”

I blinked at her, confused. This had never occurred to me until this moment. I had simply assumed that if the offspring were from my own body and not an adopted servant, then they would be Sarai’s as well. She was my only wife, after all. But, now that I thought of it, the Lord had not specified this, had He?

Sarai sucked in a breath, and straightened her spine. Then she fixed me with a steely gaze that I knew hid great pain.

“Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children,” she said. “Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.”

I considered. I could tell from Sarai’s expression that she did not actually wish me to do this, but if the Lord had blessed my body and not hers, what other option was there? Besides, the practice was not unheard of. Hagar belonged to Sarai; therefore, children she bore would also be counted as hers. It was rational. I therefore did as Sarai suggested, and took Hagar as a second wife.

Hagar conceived quickly, and confirmed this to us within a few months. I should have been overjoyed—this was the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise!—and yet. Strife had come into my home. Hagar, who had always been submissive and pleasant to Sarai in the past, now paraded about as if she were a queen, and spoke to Sarai with contempt. Sarai hid her bitter tears from me as best she could, but I caught her weeping several times when she thought she was alone. I tried to comfort her, but I knew Sarai blamed me as well as Hagar: she was jealous of my relationship with her, as well as of the child on the way. It did not matter that it had been her idea now: the pain was too poignant for reason. When I forced her to speak to me, she lashed out.

“May the wrong done to me be on you!” she cried. “I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between me and you!”

I had never learned in all our years of marriage how to control my wife when she was in a fit of temper like this. My default was to placate as best I could, which I did now. “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.”

Sarai narrowed her eyes at me. “I most certainly will.” Drying her tears, she straightened and stalked away from me. I let out a heavy sigh, grateful the confrontation was over at least.

The next day, word from my other servants came that Hagar had fled into the wilderness. Perhaps I should have felt protective—after all, she too was my wife now, and she was carrying my child. The child of God’s promise: the very one upon whom all my hopes for offspring hinged. I should have gone after her. But I kept envisioning that hard, hurt look in Sarai’s eyes. She was a difficult woman at times, but I loved her. I never wished to cause that look again.

So I did not pursue Hagar; but she returned to us anyway, and approached me with an amazing story.

“An angel came to me and told me to return to my mistress and submit to her,” she told me in private, “and also told me that the Lord would multiply my offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude!”

I exhaled sharply as she spoke. Again, I should have been excited, since this coincided so exactly with what the Lord had said to me. And yet, I felt disappointed instead. Sarai had been right. The child of God’s promise to me would come from Hagar, not from her, the wife I loved.

Hagar went on, “And the angel said that I would bear a son, and that I should call his name Ishmael, because the Lord had listened to my affliction. He said that he would be ‘a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.’ This was at the spring that lies between Kadesh and Bered!”

I forced a smile. “Then we shall call that spring, Beer-lahai-roi,” I said, which meant The Well of the Vision of Life. Hagar beamed back at me, now so filled with joy that she even did as the angel commanded, and submitted to Sarai again.

In the fullness of time, Hagar bore a son, just as the angel had said. We called his name Ishmael. I was eighty-six years old.

In the following years, Sarai’s monthly flow ceased, and with them died my hopes that the promised child from the Lord would come from her. My attachment to and love for Ishmael increased after that, as I resigned myself to the idea that he must be the child of promise. Hagar and Sarai were civil to one another, but never more than that; as for Ishmael, Sarai could hardly stand to look at the boy. I tried not to let this bother me, as I understood it was more about Sarai than about him. I explained this to him too, once he was old enough to understand and mind that she despised him.

Sarai and I were scarcely more than civil with one another either in subsequent years, truth be told. I was saddened by this, as I loved my wife still, and wished she would let me comfort her. But again, I understood that she was angry with the Lord, and not with me. After all, it was my seed whom He had blessed, and at her expense. Every day, she had to watch my child of God’s promise by another woman grow strong in her sight.

Then, when I was ninety-nine years of age, everything changed.

While I surveyed the land the Lord had given to my offspring, the Lord appeared before me once more, so blindingly white that I could scarcely look at him. At first I was too stunned to move. The Lord said then, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless, that I may make my covenant between me and you, and may multiply you greatly.” The paralysis left me, and I fell on my face before the Lord. He continued, “Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and your offspring after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”

The Lord continued to speak, as I digested this. Most of what He had said had been said before—all this I knew, except that my name had now changed. Abram, which meant Exalted Father, had now become Abraham, Father of a Multitude. The previous word from the Lord had been that I was to be a great nation. Would I now be a multitude of nations?

“As for you,” the Lord continued, I still on the ground, “you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised. Every male throughout your generations, whether born in your house or bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring, both he who is born in your house and he who is bought with your money, shall surely be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”

As the Lord spoke about this most unusual sign of the covenant, I pictured gathering the hundreds of men in my household and explaining to them what the Lord had told me. They trusted and obeyed me implicitly, and yet—if anything might stretch that trust to the breaking point, it was this. Last time the Lord had cut a covenant with me, it had been unconditional. Now, I had a part to play. I would obey, whether I understood or not. Of course I would obey. He was the Lord.

God continued to speak: “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her and moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her, and she shall become nations; kings of peoples shall come from her.”

I looked up at the Lord now, so shocked that I laughed aloud, incredulous. I was wise enough to hold my tongue, but I could not help thinking, Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah—for so she is now—who is ninety years old, bear a child? Yet I could not miss the significance of the Lord changing her name as well as mine: from Sarai, meaning my princess—as indeed she had always been to me—to Sarah, meaning princess of a multitude.

My thoughts then went to Ishmael, the boy whom I’d resigned myself would be the child of the Lord’s prophecy for the last thirteen years. So convinced had I been of this that I had ceased to believe or look for another, and I had learned to love him, despite all the strife he had caused in my household. It was hard to reverse the direction of my dominant thought all at once. So when I spoke at last, what I said was, “Oh, that Ishmael might live before you!” Did I mean instead of a child by Sarah? Lord forgive me; I suspect I did.

God replied, “No, but Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac.” I winced inwardly—the name Isaac meant laughter. The child himself would be an everlasting reminder of my first reaction to God’s word. “I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. As for Ishmael, I have heard you; behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father twelve princes, and I will make him into a great nation."

My heart eased at this—for if the Lord did indeed give me a child by Sarah, I shuddered to think how she might take retribution upon Ishmael for the years of misery he unknowingly caused her. Even if he was not the child of promise after all, I still cared deeply for the boy, and did not wish for him to be cast out in the cold. None of this was his fault.

The Lord added, "But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this time next year."

This last and most remarkable pronouncement took my breath away. This time next year. The Lord had first spoken to me about this child of the promise twenty-four years ago. I waited a decade after that until Ishmael’s birth. When Sarah’s monthly flow ceased, my heart sickened, and it had been thirteen more years since then. Was it really so? No more waiting?

The Lord God ascended to heaven then, leaving me still lying prostrate on the ground. When I recovered myself, I stood, brushed off my robes, and went to assemble the men of my household. I had a job to do. I explained the relevant part of the Lord’s visitation to me, and it was a credit to the men that despite their dismay, to a man they submitted willingly to my knife. I personally circumcised every one of them until the sun went down that day. The cries of pain throughout the household drew dismayed stares from every female servant as well, but I had no time to stop and explain to them. Hagar attempted to intervene on behalf of Ishmael, but I put her off, and so did Ishmael. “This is man’s business!” he said to his mother, and I was proud of him.

Last of all, I gritted my teeth and circumcised myself. None of the men upon whom I had performed the procedure were in any condition to do it for me, and I did not wish to call upon even Sarah to perform such a task.

Ten days later, when I was recovering at the door of my tent beside the oaks of Mamre, I looked up and saw not one, but three glowing men walking together. One was clearly the Lord, but who were the other two? Were they all three the Lord, somehow, or were two the Lord’s angels? Regardless, when I saw them, I leapt up and ran, heedless of the slight lingering ache in my groin, and bowed before them.

“O Lord, if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant. Let a little water be brought, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree, while I bring a morsel of bread, that you may refresh yourselves, and after that you may pass on—since you have come to your servant.”

They stopped walking, and lingered under the oaks of Mamre. “Do as you have said,” one said to me.

I ran back to my tent to Sarah. “Quick! Three seahs of fine flour! Knead it and make cakes.”

“Three seahs?” Sarah ejaculated. I knew she was reacting to the amount—enough to feed an army. But I would far prefer to offer the Lord too much than too little. I did not stop to reply to her, but hastened on to my herd. I selected a young, spotless calf, and guided it to one of the young herdsmen.

“Quick! Slaughter and prepare the meat for our distinguished guests!”

The young herdsman asked no questions, but did as he was told. Conscious of how long my guests were forced to wait, I prepared the curds myself, and squeezed fresh milk. When all was at last finished, a feast for a kingdom, I brought it before the bright visitors, watching anxiously as they tasted the food. Was it good enough? Was it fit for a king?

Sarah had withdrawn to give me privacy with our guests, but she was inside the tent. I knew she too was listening with curiosity and awe, and perhaps a little skepticism. This was the first time that the Lord had appeared to me in close enough proximity that she too could hear. After I’d circumcised myself and the hundreds of men in my household, I had explained to her some of what the Lord had said to me. I told her that circumcision was a sign of the Lord’s covenant. I also told her that the Lord had changed my name and hers, but I did not yet tell her why. Since she too knew the meanings of the new names, though, I hoped she had been able to guess, or at least suspect. That would make it so much easier when at last, I did tell her the rest.

As it turned out, though, I did not have to. When the three men finished eating, one of them said to me, “Where is Sarah your wife?”

This did not surprise me—this was the Lord, after all, who had been the one to change her name little more than a week ago in the first place. But I knew it would startle Sarah, that they knew her name. Especially her new name.

“She is in the tent,” I said. Clearly that meant she could hear every word.

The one who was the Lord replied, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son.”

Inside the tent, all four of us heard a sharp female laugh. I sucked in a breath, and looked back at our visitors. All of them frowned, and the Lord said, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.”

There was silence for a long moment. Sarah had said no such thing aloud, but I knew that the Lord had verbalized her innermost thoughts. At last, Sarah’s tentative voice called from inside the tent, “I did not laugh.”

“No, but you did laugh,” was the Lord’s disapproving reply. Then the three men rose to go, on their way to the Jordan Valley, toward Sodom, the land my nephew Lot had chosen. I went with them, leaving Sarah behind me to meditate on what she had heard.

Months passed, and apparently, nothing had changed. Sarah had no monthly flow to begin with, so she had not even that to indicate that she had conceived. But as time passed, and Sarah got used to saying my new name, and got used to hearing her own, I saw the change in her. The hardness around her heart began to soften, and the sharpness of her tongue grew tentatively kind. She seemed shy in her hope mixed with fear. I took her outside to show her the stars of the heavens—now a promise for her as well as for me. I pointed out the sand in her sandals and all around us, another symbol of the land that would belong to our descendants. She cried when I showed her these things, and for the first time since Ishmael’s birth, I felt again that she was fully mine, body and soul. Those precious months were like a second honeymoon for us. She still had moments of doubt and fear; so did I. But we strengthened each other with our visions of the future. We spoke of Isaac as if he already were. We made plans.

And then, about six months after the Lord had visited, we noticed the first signs of Isaac in Sarah’s belly. She beamed when she showed me, but she did not cry, because by then she was not surprised. It was merely the confirmation of what she had already known.

A year to the day from when the Lord had first appeared to me and told me of the covenant of circumcision and given me the promise of Isaac, Sarah brought him into the world—our child of laughter. He was born when I was one hundred, and Sarah ninety years old. Both his parents had laughed when we heard of his coming, but now Sarah declared at his christening, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” She was the happiest I had ever seen her, nor could I recall any time in my life when my heart was so overflowing. Isaac was the culmination of twenty-five years of heartache, yet those years were now forgotten in joy.

I circumcised Isaac on the eighth day, this child who symbolized God’s covenant. From him would come nations and kings, the Lord said, and through him, somehow, all the nations of the world would be blessed. He was literally the promise made flesh: impossible in every way, yet here he was, sleeping in my arms.

The Lord was faithful, all the time.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Nutrition for Anti-Aging. As always, the mentioned articles are linked within the post. 

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Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's podcast is a meditation on and retelling of the story of the Shunammite Woman in 2 Kings 4, her son's miraculous birth and the second story of the dead being raised in the Bible.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is the transcript of my retelling, though the podcast also includes the original text and a discussion:

We had all heard the stories—Elisha was legend, as was his master Elijah before him. We’d heard that Elijah had been caught up into the clouds in chariots of fire, and that Elisha had seen him taken. We’d heard of the miracles of both great men. Most recently, the story that Elisha had multiplied oil for the woman in a nearby town, which she sold to pay off her debts so that her sons would not be sold into slavery.

So when Elisha came through Shunem, I was sure to invite him to our home for a meal. At first he resisted my hospitality, but I insisted. Soon, this became his habit, as Elisha passed through Shunem regularly. We always set an extra place at the table for the great man of God. Presently, I pressed my husband to build on an extra room in our home for Elisha’s use whenever he passed by us. My husband usually allowed these expenditures of mine—we had plenty, and he was familiar enough with my pet projects to have learned not to protest. Elisha often traveled with a servant named Gehazi, so we built the room with one bed, but space for another person to sleep on the floor if necessary.

One day when Elisha and Gehazi were staying with us, Gehazi approached me at Elisha’s instruction and said, “See, you have taken all this trouble for us; what is to be done for you? Would you have a word spoken on your behalf to the king or to the commander of the army?”

I was touched at this inquiry, but truly, I had not offered room to Elisha in order to receive a favor from him. I simply admired and respected the man of God, and wished to bless him. I had no need of anything I could think of from the king or the commander of the army; my husband and I were already well off. I was briefly surprised that Elisha knew both men, though, and had favor with them. But then I realized, if I had heard stories of him long before I’d met him, then surely those same stories had reached the king and the commander as well.

“I dwell among my own people,” was my demure reply—which I knew Gehazi, and by extension Elisha, would understand to mean that I asked for nothing in return. Gehazi took this reply back to his master. He then returned to me, and said, “My master Elisha wishes to speak with you.” So I followed Gehazi to the chamber which we had built for Elisha, and stood in the doorway.

Elisha looked me in the face, and announced without preamble, “At this season, about this time next year you shall embrace a son.”

I staggered a bit, and held on to the doorframe for support. My eyes spontaneously filled with tears. He had voiced the deepest desire of my heart, one I had ceased to long for consciously, as my husband was now certainly too old to father children. What came from my mouth was, “No, my lord, O man of God; do not lie to your servant!” It was not that I doubted his word, but I did not want to hope and be disappointed again. The pain of disappointment month after month, year after year was too great. I had closed the door on that pain long ago. Yet now, unsolicited, that door had been reopened.

Elisha assured me that he meant what he said, and went on his way.

About this time next year, I thought. So in three months…

I tried not to think of it. I did not tell my husband what the man of God had said, because I knew he might scoff, and snuff out the tiny flickering hope within me. I held the word closely, meditating on it almost by accident in unguarded moments, remembering the other miracles Elisha and his teacher Elijah had performed. Multiplying the oil. The axe head that floated. The fire from heaven on Mount Carmel. The widow’s son raised from the dead. The chariot of fire into the sky. Surely, if any man had the power to open my womb after all this time, to heal my husband’s seed--it was Elisha. A double portion of Elijah’s spirit was said to rest upon him, and even Elijah had the Spirit of God…

At the third month, I was not sure whether I had conceived or not. I still had what looked like a monthly flow, and at first my hopes were dashed--but then I noticed that it was significantly lighter than usual. When it did not come at all the month after that, I knew for certain. A month later, I began to show. Only then did I tell my husband, and also told him what the man of God had said—when it was too late to laugh.

In the springtime, I bore a son, just as Elisha had said. He and Gehazi continued to stop in Shunem every few months or so, and he watched my son grow with pleasure. I was so proud, so filled with joy.

One morning when my son was seven, old enough to work in the fields with his father and the reapers, he started complaining that his head hurt. His father told one of the other reapers to carry him inside to me. When I saw the reaper come inside carrying the boy, I dropped what was in my hands at the time—I could never even recall later what it was—and ran to take him. Ordinarily my son would have been too heavy for me to carry, but I found the strength now and took him into my arms. He was insensible at first, but began moaning once his weight transferred from the reaper to me. I settled his head on my lap, and stroked his sweat-damp hair as he moaned and thrashed, cooing to him soothingly even though I could do no more. Fear clutched my heart and squeezed hard as the boy’s breathing grew shallow and his face pale. Then his breathing stopped altogether. My fingers flew to his throat. No pulse.

Grief should have come next. But before it could smother me, one word came into my mind: No.

Just that. No. I would not accept his death. I had not asked to have a son, but I had one anyway, at Elisha’s word. Therefore, this boy’s life was Elisha’s responsibility. Elisha was not here, but that did not matter--I had a good idea where to look for him. Summoning my strength from my trembling arms, I scooped the boy up and carried him to Elisha’s room, laid him on the bed, and closed the door behind him. Then I took one deep, steadying breath, and went out to the fields, beckoning my husband to my side. He wiped the sweat from his brow, and approached me, shielding the sun from his eyes.

“Send me one of the servants and one of the donkeys, that I may quickly go to the man of God and come back again,” I said.

My husband frowned. “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.”

My husband was--aloof at best, shall we say. This had often frustrated me in the past, that he seemed to have no awareness of what was going on in my world. He had only a few hours ago sent his son inside from the fields, so ill that he could not walk by himself--and yet I told him now that I needed to quickly go to see the man of God, and he did not even make the connection. I wouldn’t put it past him to have forgotten that his son ailed at all.

At the moment, though, I was actually glad for my husband’s cluelessness. I could have told him everything, but I was barely keeping myself together as it was, and had I spoken of what had just happened, I feared my faith would fail. That frail no in my spirit could withstand no fear from anyone else. So I spoke not of the situation in the natural, but only one word that encompassed it all: “Shalom.” All is well. It shall be well. The word meant complete in number—and there were three of us in this family, not two. It meant nothing missing, nothing broken, and certainly no one dead. Perfect provision. Perfect peace.

I gritted my teeth and clung to that shalom with all that was within me as I rode out to Mount Carmel saddled on a donkey, another mounted servant at my side.

“Urge the animal on,” I told the servant, “do not slacken the pace for me unless I tell you.” There was not a moment to lose. Not because my son was in danger; the danger was passed, technically. I was the one in danger--of losing hope. I could not keep the fear at bay for much longer.

Fortunately, my guess had been correct: Elisha and Gehazi were indeed on top of Mount Carmel. Gehazi came down to meet me, intercepting me on my way to Elisha. He asked, “Is all well with you? Is all well with your husband? Is all well with the child?”

I looked at Gehazi, and decided, as I had done with my husband, not to speak my fear. “Shalom,” I said again. All is well. But onward I rode to meet Elisha.

Gehazi and my servant trailed behind now until I came to Elisha. I dismounted when I saw him, the last of my faith now giving way to terror as I clung to his feet, trembling all over. Gehazi approached to pull me away from his master, but Elisha said, frowning, “Leave her alone, for she is in bitter distress, and the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me.”

I looked up at Elisha, my face now streaked with tears. Still I would not say the dreaded word, but what I said instead was, “Did I ask my lord for a son? Did I not say, ‘Do not deceive me?’”

He heard my meaning. He understood that something had happened to my child, and that I expected him to make it right—the boy was his promise, his doing, and his responsibility! Elisha set his jaw and looked at Gehazi.

“Tie up your garment and take my staff in your hand and go. If you meet anyone, do not greet him, and if anyone greets you, do not reply. And lay my staff on the face of the child.” He thrust his staff toward his servant. Then Elisha looked down at me, gesturing with his chin for me to follow Gehazi. But no way was I leaving with the servant only. I came here for the master, and the master I would get. I was taking no chances with my son’s life. I stood up, lifting my chin, and met the man of God stare for stare.

“As the Lord lives and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”

Elisha watched me too for a long moment, and then I thought I saw just a hint of a smile of respect reach his eyes. He gave me a tiny nod, and saddled his own donkey to follow me.

When we arrived back at my home, the sun had set. Gehazi and my servant had had a head start on Elisha and me, so when the man of God and I arrived, Gehazi hurried back outside to meet us. He said to his master, “The child has not awakened.”

Elisha cast a sharp look at me, understanding. Gehazi’s word had implied sleep, but Elisha seemed to suspect that this was a euphemism for death. Still, I had never spoken the word aloud. We dismounted, tied up our donkeys, and I led Elisha inside to the room we had added on for him. There lay my son, ghostly pale and unmoving. Elisha met my eyes once, stepped inside the room, and closed the door behind him, right in my face.

I took a step back from the door, and another. No one spoke. I retreated to my own bedchamber, falling to my knees before the God of Israel.

Presently I heard the man of God’s door open. I leapt up and ran to see what had happened. Elisha paced about the house, back and forth. My limbs began to tremble. But again that voice came to my spirit: No. Elisha returned to the room, and again shut the door behind him. Likewise, I returned to my bedchamber and to my knees. But I could no longer pray. I had no more words.

I don’t know how long I remained there. It felt like a few minutes, though it might have been much longer before I heard a knock on my bedchamber door. I turned and saw Gehazi standing there, his expression softened with a smile.

“Come,” he said.

I stood at once, and hurried to Elisha’s room on limbs that would scarcely support me. He stood by the bed, where my son still lay. But his color had returned, and he blinked up at me.

“Pick up your son,” Elisha said.

All the pent-up emotions from the day burst out of me at once, in a loud cry. I fell at Elisha’s feet, bowing low before him, unable to even utter my thanks. But he understood, placing one hand upon my head. I released him then, turning now to my boy who held out his arms to me. I lifted him up, clung to him, and wept.

I did not hear when Elisha and Gehazi took their leave. I simply clung to my son, repeating over and over again in my mind the word that had sustained me.

Shalom. Completeness in number. Safety and soundness of body. Peace in covenant with the Lord of Israel.

All is well.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Decaf Coffee: Safe or Not?

Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)

Today's podcast is a meditation and retelling of the ministry and death of John the Baptist. Here are the related passages:

• Birth: Luke 1:5-25, 57-80
• Ministry: Matthew 3, Matthew 11:2-19, Luke 3:2-20, 7:18-35, John 1:15-39
• Death: Matthew 14:3-12, Mark 6:17-29

Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is my retelling, but the podcast also includes a discussion:

“John!” the guard barked from the bars of my cell, rousing me from my doze. I’d been sleeping a lot lately. Too much, perhaps. But what is too much when you spend all day and all night in prison anyway? “My Lord the King,” the guard announced, turning to bow in the direction of the dungeon’s entrance.

Herod strode in, in all his finery. He was a big man, or maybe he only looked big because he wore his enormous ermine-rimmed purple robe and that ostentatiously tall crown that must weigh as much as his head, day in and day out. It was as if he thought someone might forget he was the king. Still, I’d actually gotten to the point of looking forward to his almost daily visits to me in the last year since I’d been here. It was one of the few diversions I had left.

“Drowsing again, old friend?” Herod’s voice boomed and echoed in the dungeon.

“If you wish me to do otherwise, might I suggest a change in venue,” I retorted.

Herod’s laugh at this was disproportionate to the joke. I thought by now I understood why he found it so funny though. As a temperamental king whose word was law, he was surrounded by sycophants. I was the only person who would tell him exactly what I thought. I assumed he found it refreshing. Occasionally I wondered if he’d set me free if he found it slightly less refreshing, but I dismissed the idea. Herodias, his brother’s wife whom he was bedding, would never permit him to set me free, as I made it quite clear that their liaison was an abomination to the God of Israel. If she’d had her way, I’d have been executed long ago. She had her way in everything else. The only thing that had saved me thus far was Herod’s amusement at my sharp tongue.

“It is my birthday today,” Herod declared.

I opened one eye. “Are you fishing for felicitations?”

“That is the traditional response to one’s king, yes,” he growled. But then he didn’t wait for me to comply. “I am hosting a grand feast tonight. All the local dignitaries shall be there. As well as my wife and her daughter—"

“She’s not your wife. She’s your brother’s wife, and you’re living in sin,” I told him for the thousandth time. “Not to mention the way you lust after your own niece. It’s disgraceful!”

“She is very beautiful,” Herod mused, stroking his black beard and licking his lips like he hadn’t heard me. His eyes went soft at the thought of the girl.

“An utter abomination,” I declared, though I didn’t know why I bothered.

For whatever reason, though, my forthright proclamations seemed to amuse the king. He clapped his hands together, and did not contradict me. “Well, John, what news? What do you have to say for yourself today?”

“Nothing different than yesterday. Not a lot happens in here, you might have noticed.”

“That’s not so!” Herod protested, “why, I heard just yesterday that you had a visit from a group of your disciples. Two, in fact! What did they tell you?”

I winced involuntarily. Herod had found the chink in my armor of carelessness. Yesterday had been a particularly bad day for me, as the disciples had told me that it was the one year anniversary of my imprisonment. Somehow I’d thought… what? That Jesus would use his enormous influence on my behalf to free me? I didn’t know why he’d do that—it wasn’t as if he could use my help in his ministry, after all. From what the disciples told me, his message and works were about as diametrically opposed to mine as they could get. While I warned the publicans and sinners to repent or else because the Kingdom was at hand, Jesus had dinner with them! I heard a story in which he refused to stone a woman caught in adultery. He broke the Sabbath, time and again. He healed everyone who came to him for healing, and the people adored him for it. I knew all this already, and for months now when I heard such reports, I’d done my best not to feel envious of my cousin's very different reception from my own.

He must increase, I must decrease. Those were my own words. I’d spoken them to my disciples to encourage them to follow him instead of me. I’d grown to manhood hearing the stories from my mother and father of my miraculous birth, past my mother’s change of life, and of the visit of the angel called Gabriel to my father Zachariah—the very same one who had visited Daniel!—and what he had prophesied of me. I was to be the forerunner of the Christ. The Lord had told me that the one upon whom I saw the Spirit come to rest would be the Messiah, who would baptize with fire. I knew that Jesus’ mother Mary and my mother were great-aunt and great-niece, but I’d never met Jesus before he’d come to be baptized by me in the River Jordan, six months into my ministry.

Six months. That was all I got. It wasn’t really that I was jealous.... I wouldn’t have begrudged my cousin any amount of success. I’d have gloried in it as the fulfillment of my life’s mission, but—well, how could he be the Christ, after all, when his message was so completely different from mine? He wasn’t an ascetic at all! Where was the fire and brimstone of an angry God? The Messiah was supposed to become the king, too! And yet, the current king still held me here in his clutches for his own amusement, while Jesus was off preaching a message of grace unlike any of the prophets of old. Had I gotten it all wrong? Had I missed my entire life’s purpose?

I’d never asked him myself before because at the time, I hadn’t thought I needed to. I’d known Jesus was the One. The Holy Spirit had told me so, and I’d seen the Spirit come down from heaven like a dove and light on his shoulder after I’d baptized him. I even heard the voice from heaven, declaring it to be so. What Jesus had said to me in that moment had been confirmation too—I’d said, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” He didn’t deny my words. What he’d said was, “Let it be so now. It is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness in this way.”

But after a year of rotting in prison, hearing reports of Jesus’ behavior that were nothing like what I’d expected of him, memories of my earlier certainty had given way to doubt.

So yesterday, in a moment of weakness, I’d sent my few disciples to Jesus and just asked him, point-blank, if he was the One or if we should look for another. When they returned a few hours later, they told me, “He didn’t answer us right away. But then in the space of an hour, we watched as he gave sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, made the lame to walk, cleaned the lepers, raised a widow’s only son from the dead, and preached the good news to the poor. Then he told us to come back and report all this to you. Then he added, ‘Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me.’”

I’d closed my eyes in tears when I heard this, and then started laughing. I didn’t know if my disciples understood his answer, but I did. He'd fulfilled all the Messianic prophecies from Isaiah 35, and then threw in raising the dead to boot, just to make really sure I didn’t miss it. If he’d just said, “Yes, I’m the One,” I’d still have doubted. Instead it almost was like he was speaking to me in a code that only he and I would understand. My heart filled with joy.

“Well?” Herod growled at me, bringing me back to the present moment, annoyed that he was not commanding my full attention.

“Have you heard of Jesus of Nazareth?” I asked him.

Herod frowned. “Mmm. Name sounds familiar, maybe. Why do you ask?”

I met his gaze squarely, and prophesied, almost like a threat, “You will.”

A few hours later, when I’d fallen back into a doze, I heard two sets of footsteps on the stone stairs leading into the dungeon. The sound roused me, and I was disoriented. Tonight was Herod’s big birthday celebration. I had expected no visitors until the morrow. But when I saw that my visitors were two of the king’s own guards moving swiftly as if on a mission, I knew at once what this portended. I stood up and squared my shoulders. I was not afraid, but my heart pounded almost painfully in my chest.

“Tell me why first,” I said quietly, but my voice was steady.

“Herod’s orders,” said the executioner shortly, opening the door that stood between me and death.

I shook my head. “He would not have ordered such a thing on his own. Who forced his hand?”

The executioner narrowed his eyes at me. “The king’s word is law. How dare you suggest otherwise?”

I laughed shortly. “At this point? You think I have anything to lose? Let’s be honest, shall we? Herodias pulls the strings in this palace. You know it and I know it.”

As I spoke, the executioner forced me to my knees and stretched my neck forward, which told me the way in which I was about to die. At least it would be quick. His companion guard told me the rest of the story: that Herodias’s daughter had danced for him in such a way that he was thinking with something other than his head. He promised her anything she wanted. She’d asked her mother what to request, and her request had been—

“Your head. On a platter.”

At first I was struck dumb with horror. “Just what every teenage girl wants,” I heard myself say, though even my voice sounded far away. A rush of blood to my ears seemed to muffle all the sound in the room.

But then, an utter calm suddenly descended upon me like a blanket. Jesus’ words through my disciples from earlier that day came back to me. The lame walk. The blind see. The lepers are cleansed. The deaf hear. The dead are raised. Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me.

“No, Lord,” I whispered aloud. “I will not.” My job had been to prepare the way for the Lord. I’d completed my mission. My part was done.

I closed my eyes, stretched forth my neck, and smiled.

Today's podcast is an interview with Kara Landau. Kara, known as "The Prebiotic Dietitian," is a highly respected NYC based Australian Registered Dietitian and Founder of Uplift Food – Good Mood Food - The world's first dietitian created functional food brand to focus exclusively on the mood supportive benefits of gut healthy prebiotics. A previous spokesperson for the Dietitians Association of Australia, and now the media representative nutrition advisor for the Global Prebiotic Association, Kara has been recognised as an entrepreneurial leader in the prebiotic space by Forbes, Women's Health and more; and can regularly be found presenting across the globe at leading gut health and industry trade shows on the importance of prebiotics and their role in your diet. 

Follow her on Instagram as The Prebiotic Dietitian, or find her online at upliftfood.com. 

Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's retelling comes from John 5:1-15.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is my retelling, though the podcast also includes the original text and a discussion:

Each day runs into the next without distinction. Day after day, I lay beneath one of the five porticoes at the pool of Bethesda in a spot that has become mine, for thirty-eight years. Bethesda—the "House of Mercy," it’s called in Aramaic—which is why I and my fellow cripples and invalids spend our days and nights lounging by the pool. Tradition holds that every so often, an angel stirs the waters, and the first one in to the pool when the waters are agitated will be healed. But even that hope is thin, both because I’ve never actually seen anyone healed by this method, and also because I’m a cripple. Other invalids lying near the pool have some other infirmity, but are able of body, and always therefore reach the pool when the water ripples long before I do. I have a brother who cares for me, but he must work, and so I have no one to help me into the pool. When I think of it in these terms, which I often do, I realize how pointless it is to spend my days and nights here. Even if the stories are true, I could spend my whole life here and never make it to the pool first. But my only hope is a miracle, so where else am I to go?

Hope. It’s become nothing but a word to me, one that rings hollow and meaningless from empty repetition. The wise King Solomon wrote, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick.” I know very well that is me, but what can I do about it?

I suddenly become aware of a shadow above me. Well, not really a shadow, as I’m under the shadow of my portico already, but a presence, then. I look up, startled and confused to see a man in the garments of a rabbi. In itself, this was not so strange—outside of the pool is the market, where ceremonial animals are bought for sacrifice. Traditionally, before it was a place of healing, the Upper Pool as it was known then was for cleansing the sheep before they were taken in through the sheep gate to the temple. Yet this man has no sheep with him for cleansing. And he looks directly at me, though we’ve never met before.

“Are you really determined to be healed?” he asks me. No introductions. Just that.

It took me a moment to process the question. I didn’t know what he was asking me. Wasn’t my presence at the pool, day and night, evidence enough of the answer? And yet, he didn’t ask me just if I wished to be healed. He asked if I was thelo—determined and committed—to my healing.

“Sir,” I said, and explained the obvious, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.” But as I said all this, I gazed into the rabbi’s eyes, and something within me stirred—something I hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. Hope. I’d never seen this man before, but I had a premonition that something momentous was about to occur. At the same time, stories I’d heard but never fully listened to began to swirl around in my mind—recent stories of a young rabbi about this man’s age who performed miracles. I thought they said his name was Jesus.

No sooner did I think this, then the man before me commanded, “Get up, take your bed, and walk.” It wasn’t a suggestion.

Had anybody else said that to me I’d have laughed, or perhaps rebuked him for his cruelty in telling me to do what I quite obviously could not. But the authority in this man’s words did something on the inside of me. I wanted to obey him, and at the same time, I believed I could obey him.

So I did obey him. First I rose, putting my weight on my arms like I was accustomed to doing. But then I put one twisted foot on the ground, then the other. And as I stood, my bones straightened out and my ankles and legs grew strong! I stooped, surprised that I was not off balance, and grabbed my bed from the ground to take with me. I took a step, and did not fall! I took another step, and another, and another, and soon I was walking and running and leaping and crying for joy and in disbelief. All around me, my fellow invalids had turned to see what the commotion was, though they mostly registered confusion. Those who had known me for decades looked at me as if they’d never seen me before, as if I must be someone else. I turned back to where the rabbi had stood a moment before, but he was gone.

Still delirious with my newfound mobility, amazed at the strength of my legs and unused muscles, I ran out of the porticoes and into the market. I ran! The market was overrun with scribes and Pharisees and teachers of the law, due to the proximity to the temple.

“Hey! You there!” cried one authoritative voice. I turned and saw that it belonged to a Pharisee with a wide phylactery on his forehead. He narrowed his eyes at me. “It is the Sabbath. The Law forbids you to carry your mat.”

I was still grinning, but the brightness of my smile dimmed just a notch. “The man who made me well said to me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’” Surely this Pharisee would pick up on the salient point here—I was well!

Another scribe joined him, and a third rabbi, watching me carefully. “Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?”

I was at a loss. I never got the man’s name, though I did have my suspicions. And he was gone now. “He slipped away afterwards. I do not know who he was.” I bowed my head to them. “Excuse me!” I alternately walked, skipped, and ran into the temple, drawing stares all around me and shouting to all who would listen, “I’m free! I’m healed! Look—I was lame and now I walk!” I proclaimed this all the way into the outer temple court, where I fell on my knees in worship to God for His goodness. I would have thanked the man who healed me, but I truly did not know who he was or how to find him.

Yet when I opened my eyes again, there he was! The very man himself, looking to me now like a holy angel, his hair illuminated in the light of the narrow window behind him. “Lord!” was what came spontaneously to my lips when I saw him. I heard the whispers around us saying his name—Jesus. So this was Jesus of Nazareth!

“You are now restored to health,” Jesus observed to me. “Do not sin any more, or a worse thing may befall you.”

I nodded and grinned at the time. In later years, though, in later years his words would come back to me and I would ponder them in my heart, wondering what precisely he meant. I did not think that my status as an invalid for thirty-eight years had been due to my own personal sin—it had been the result of an accident in my childhood. It was due to the existence of sin and suffering in the world, though, surely. Yet I was not sinless; of this, my brother and his family could certainly attest. In my misery, I had not been a particularly easy houseguest. But what was this ‘worse thing’ that may befall me? What could be worse than lying impotent beside the pool for my entire adult life?

For years afterwards, I would recall Jesus’ words to me whenever I became tempted to grumble and complain. I’d remember how much the Lord had done for me, and give thanks, fearful lest I should fall “short of the mark,” the literal translation of the Hebrew hhatah.

When Jesus again left me, I found one of the Pharisees, the one with the widest phylactery who had found me in the market. I still clutched my bed beneath my arm, as I had found nowhere to lay it since I’d met him the first time.

“It was Jesus!” I declared. “Jesus was the one who made me well!” I meant only to give Jesus the credit for the miracle he had performed, but I knew at once when I saw the darkening countenance of the Pharisee that I had not done the Lord a favor. He conferred with his fellow scribes and Pharisees, and I overheard enough to realize that they intended to find him and persecute him for healing on the Sabbath—something they considered “work,” and was therefore illegal, just as carrying my bed had been. A group of seven of them banded together and searched the temple court for Jesus. When they found him, a small crowd of onlookers gathered to listen to the exchange. I warred with my guilt that after this man had done so much for me, I had occasioned this confrontation—but my curiosity won out, and I joined the crowd.

I was glad I did, as my respect for Jesus only grew. He listened to the accusations with utmost calm, and replied, “My Father works unceasingly, and so do I.”

His Father! The ripples spread throughout the crowd, and his accusers gnashed their teeth, with murder in their eyes. Had this man really called God his Father?

As if to double down and make it worse, Jesus went on, “In most solemn truth I tell you that the Son can do nothing of Himself—He can only do what He sees the Father doing; for whatever He does, that the Son does in like manner.” He went on like this, preaching and gathering more and more listeners, to the shame of the Pharisees who had accused him. Jesus spoke with authority, backing his words with power. The religious leaders obviously hated him only out of jealousy. They wanted to kill him; I could see that plainly. Yet he was completely unafraid, turning their attacks to his advantage.

Who but the Son of God could do all that?

Today's podcast is an interview with Jacquelyn Sheppard.

Jacquelyn Sheppard is an international speaker on learning and behavior as well as mental, emotional and addictive disorders. For the past fifty years, her extensive research, experience, and concepts concerning the body and the brain have enabled many to live better lives. Her book, Silent Takeover: How the Body Hijacks the Mind, exposes the vital connection between the body, mind, and spirit—and offers practical tools to understand the connection between your mind and body and metabolic root causes for such illnesses as depression, addiction, bipolar disorder, OCD, and others. She is convinced that "We need to treat causes – not merely symptoms. When people understand the causes of their symptoms, they can be proactive in correction." 

Click here for Silent Takeover on Amazon, and if interested in her nutraceutical supplementation recommendations, click here. 

Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's podcast is a meditation on and reimagining of Jesus' first time raising the dead, from Luke 7:11-25.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is my retelling, but the podcast includes the original text and a discussion as well.

The whole thing seemed so surreal, as she walked through the streets of Nain behind the bier carrying her son. Her only son. Only a few short years ago, it had been her husband. Now, her townspeople surrounded her in mourning, in torn garments and wailing loudly to comfort her with shared grief. But how could anyone truly share her grief?

She had nothing. Not only was she left with the devastating loss of the two people dearest to her in the world, but she was also destitute. As a widow, she had been dependent upon her eldest son, only a teenager himself, for support. Now, she was entirely at the mercy of her fellow Jews, and of God the Father.

As she walked, she rehearsed the promises she still had to cling to, though memories of her son’s last moments intruded on her thoughts with convulsions of weeping. God said in the Psalms through David that He is the ‘Father of the fatherless and protector of widows,’ and that he ‘upholds the widow and the fatherless,’ she told herself. Through Jeremiah, He said, ‘Let your widows trust in me.’ The Mosaic law commands reapers to leave the edges of the fields for the fatherless and widows to glean. She tried to picture herself among those gleaning the edges of the fields, and another lump rose to her throat. She was grateful that God had given landowners this command for those who could not otherwise support themselves—and yet she had always pitied those reduced to this. Now she would be among them. The Law prevents anyone taking my garments in pledge, should I find myself indebted. King Solomon wrote that He will ‘maintain the widow’s boundaries,’ so my land is secure. Isaiah writes that He will ‘plead the widow’s cause’…

As she rehearsed these promises in her mind, weeping all the while, she saw a commotion up ahead. A group of men had come to the city gates, just as their funeral procession was leaving it. By the looks of them, it was a rabbi and his disciples. Then she looked again at the face of the man in the center, even as he moved toward her with a look of compassion.

Could this be the one they’re all talking about? she wondered. Could this be Jesus of Nazareth?

“Do not weep,” the man said to her. And, wonder of wonders, she obeyed. Because despite all the devastation that had happened to her, this was Jesus. She’d heard the stories. He was a miracle worker! She’d never heard of him raising the dead before like Elisha did over eight centuries earlier in Shunem, just over the hill from where they were now—but if Elisha could do it, and this Jesus was who he was rumored to be, then surely… surely…

She was almost afraid to hope. But she did hope, all the same.

The widow watched as Jesus turned away from her, and walked toward the bier bearing her son’s body. It lay there without a casket, as the widow could not afford one. His stiff, cold body was there for all to see, his skin like wax. The bearers had stopped too, watching to see what Jesus would do. And to everyone’s astonishment, Jesus lay his hand on her son’s body. The rabbi touched a dead body, deliberately, making him ceremonially unclean! But just as the ripples of shock spread through the crowd at this, Jesus spoke.

“Young man, I say to you, arise.”

The widow did not breathe, even as her son… did! He sucked in a ragged gasp at first, stirred, blinked, and sat up. The startled bearers put the bier down, even as the boy’s feet sought the ground. She began to cry afresh, but this time with joy!

“Mother?” he croaked. His voice was thick with disuse, and he looked around, disoriented. He looked at Jesus first, who smiled at him gently. The boy smiled back, and though his mother clung to him and wept, he couldn’t seem to take his eyes off of Jesus.

The whispers of the crowd began to reach the widow’s ears, their voices filled with awe and terror. “A great prophet has arisen among us!” they were saying. “God has visited his people!”

Jesus turned to the widow. “Woman, receive your son.”

She gasped out her thanks, releasing her son long enough to fall at his feet. Jesus remained for a moment with his disciples. At last, Jesus and his followers moved on, though the funeral procession remained stopped in its tracks, their fear giving way to joy. Those who had been mourners now surrounded mother and son, eager to hear about the son’s experience.

“I was in Abraham’s bosom!” he said to the many awe-filled questions. “Yes, yes, it was as beautiful as they say. It was up to me whether or not to come back, and I would have liked to stay, but I knew I had to come back and take care of my mother.” He lay a hand on hers, no longer cold, but warm with life and vitality. Then his eyes tracked to the receding figure of Jesus. Everyone else turned to follow his gaze. “I have met the Master,” he whispered.

“Master of what?” the widow choked out, though she already knew the answer.

“Of all,” the boy replied simply.

Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's podcast comes from John 11, a meditation on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is my retelling, though I read the text and discuss at the beginning.

Jesus and his disciples were in Bethabara, the place where John the Baptist first baptized the Jews into repentance. It was twenty miles east of Jerusalem, and he was making his slow, last journey to Jerusalem. But he’d stopped there for awhile, and the people came to him for healing and to hear him teach. Many came to believe in him as the Messiah.

While he was teaching and ministering, a messenger reached him from Bethany, two miles outside of Jerusalem, from his friends Mary and Martha.

“Lord, he whom you love is ill,” the messenger reported. Jesus knew this meant their brother, Lazarus. He also was a dear friend to Jesus, and Jesus knew that the sisters emphasized this as a means of gentle manipulation. You love him, they implied, so drop what you’re doing and prioritize him over these strangers! The messenger pressed Jesus, “May I tell them you are on your way?”

But Jesus knew what the messenger did not—in the time since the messenger had left Bethany, nearly a day ago on foot, Lazarus had already died. Even now, they were preparing his body for burial. Knowing this, and knowing that when the messenger returned to Bethany he would find Lazarus already in the grave, Jesus looked at the messenger and replied, “This illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.”

The messenger blinked, looking a little uncertain. “Very well,” he replied, “I will... relay your response to Mary and Martha.”

When he had turned to go, John asked him, “So, are we planning to go then?”

“Soon,” was Jesus’ reply.

Every moment, the disciples expected him to send the people away and start on the journey, yet every moment they were surprised. Silently they exchanged looks with one another, wondering what Jesus was about. They knew very well how dear Lazarus and Mary and Martha were to the Lord; so why wouldn’t he have set out the moment he received the sisters’ message? Among themselves, they wondered if the reason might have been because the last time he was in Judea, the Jews had sought to stone him. He had evaded them deftly enough and without the slightest hint of alarm, and it didn’t seem like Jesus to make decisions based upon fear for his personal safety. But as Jesus lingered in Bethabara for two more days, they finally concluded that this must be the cause of his delay.

Yet after the second day, Jesus announced, “Let us go to Judea again.” Not Bethany; Judea. Exactly the place they thought he was trying to avoid. But Bethany of course was on the way. This perplexed the disciples, and Thomas finally voiced what they were all wondering: “Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again?”

Jesus replied, “Are there not twelve hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.” And with that enigmatic response, he set out on their journey, leaving the disciples to follow.

The disciples looked at each other, trying to puzzle out the meaning of his metaphor. They whispered among themselves, none of them wanting to ask Jesus directly and thus admit that they hadn’t understood him. Somehow Jesus thought this was an answer to Thomas’s question regarding his danger in Judea; that was the first clue. Light and darkness were common metaphors for good and evil, so much so that light often represented God himself, and David wrote in the Psalms that scripture was a “lamp to my feet and a light to my path". Scripture made known the will of God. So perhaps Jesus was saying that if he walked in the known will of God, "in the light," the Jews couldn’t touch him, though they sought to stone him? That would make sense, wouldn’t it, considering the number of times Jesus had made statements such as “my time has not yet come”? He seemed to have a very clear idea of what was supposed to happen and when.

“And yet,” Andrew hissed, “remember when he said ‘I lay my life down that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority—“

“—to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again,” chorused Peter and James with him, recalling Jesus’ recent words with a frown.

“What is that about?” Andrew asked. “He keeps talking about being killed, and being raised, and I don’t know what he means. I’m sure it’s a metaphor too, but--of what? Why won’t he tell us?”

Up ahead of them, Jesus overheard this conversation, and sighed. Then, to clarify his purpose, he called out behind him, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him.”

The disciples hurried to close the slight gap that had fallen between them and the Lord to better converse with him, but John said, confused, “Lord, if he has fallen asleep he will recover.”

They misunderstood again. Jesus meant to choose faith-filled words to illustrate the temporary nature of Lazarus’s condition, but the disciples thought he meant natural sleep. So he told them plainly, “Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there, so that you may believe. But let us go to him.” He turned and continued on his way. The disciples hesitated, though. They had seen Jesus raise the dead before, but they were daunted by the prospect of the murderous Jews in Judea.

It was Thomas who at last rallied them. "Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Not particularly comforting, but it is what they all feared. Jesus was walking right into danger, and if he was stoned, wouldn’t the disciples be stoned along with him?

Eighteen miles on foot gave them the better part of a day to ponder what awaited them ahead. When they approached the village of Bethany, Jesus could tell by the way the villagers stared and then ran back in excitement that he’d been recognized. Of course he’d be recognized—by now, everyone had heard his name, and of his great deeds. Some villagers came out to see them.

“Rabbi, I suppose you have come to see Martha and Mary?” asked one young man who had seen him there before, eating at the sisters’ home.

“I have. What news of Lazarus?” Jesus replied.

The young man’s countenance fell. “He has been in the tomb these four days.”

The disciples behind Jesus began to whisper. Four days? That changed things, didn’t it? When Jesus had raised Jairus’s daughter or the widow of Nain’s son, they had only just died. The Jewish belief was that the spirit of the dead lingered near the body of the deceased for up to three days before departing for Abraham’s bosom, seeking an opportunity to reenter. But it had been four days. Wasn’t Lazarus’s spirit already long gone, then? Not only that, but his body would already have begun to decompose.

Jesus looked beyond the young man who had delivered the news to see a young woman hurrying out of the village to where he stood with his disciples. She broke into a run, desperate to get to Jesus. But he stayed where he was, until Martha had reached him.

Without greeting, Martha burst out, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” It was an accusation. Even Martha, ever in emotional control, had a hard time disguising her hurt. Jesus noticed that Mary was not with her, though surely they had been together. Could it be that Mary was so wounded by his presumed neglect that she did not even wish to come to him? That would be like Mary. Far more likely to indulge her feelings than her more practical sister Martha.

Martha was not finished, though. “But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you." Her words were probing, with an unmistakeable tinge of hope.

Several of the disciples’ eyebrows shot up at this, and they exchanged looks amongst themselves. Wow, the looks said. She thinks after four days, Jesus can still raise Lazarus? But Martha’s faith made them start to wonder as well. He could calm the storm, couldn’t he? The very elements obeyed him. He could walk on water. They had never yet seen Jesus attempt a miracle that he could not perform. So, why not?

Jesus replied to Martha, “Your brother will rise again.”

A flicker of uncertainty crossed Martha’s face, and she said cautiously, as if being tested, “I... know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day…” Her original statement had meant, You can raise Lazarus now. But Jesus’ reply did not specify a timeline. It could have been a theological platitude, rather than an immediate promise. Martha was asking, When, Lord?

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”

Even this reply could have been taken many ways, but Martha’s face flooded with hope. She chose to believe he meant now. Her next words burst out of her: “Yes, Lord; I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world!” Then she held up a finger as if to say, wait right there! and hurried back into the village.

“She is calling her sister, I’ll bet,” the disciples whispered amongst themselves. Sure enough, Martha returned with Mary, behind whom trailed a small procession of Jews from Jerusalem who must have come for the funeral and to mourn with them. Mary daubed at her face as she went, clearly still weeping. She broke away from Martha when she was close enough to Jesus, and ran to him, falling at his feet. Behind her, though, Martha’s face still shone with expectation.

“Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died!” she cried out, just like her sister had done. Then she dissolved into sobs, burying her face in her hands. She was not expecting a happy ending today. Behind her, many of the Jews who had followed her out of the house were also weeping, perhaps moved by Mary’s tears. Even Martha’s eyes sparkled, and she pursed her lips together tightly, as if to keep her emotions at bay. Jesus observed all this, and groaned in unintelligible words. The disciples had asked him about this before, and he’d called it “groaning in the Spirit”—the Holy Spirit was helping him to pray to the Father, he said. They’d noticed that this happened not when he had to perform a monumental miracle, but when confronted with human opposition. Their eyes scanned the crowd of the Jews. It was a likely a mixed bunch—some who believed in him as Mary and Martha did, but others who would love to help the Pharisees bring him down. Jesus had remained outside of the village of Bethany to avoid a crowd, yet he had one anyway.

“Where have you laid him?” Jesus asked.

Mary stood, wiping her face, but could not speak for tears. So the Jews said for her, “Lord, come and see.”

They led the way, and Jesus and the disciples followed behind. As he went, several of the Jews who had come with Mary kept glancing back at Jesus, astonished. That was when the disciples realized that Jesus was weeping too. The Jews whispered among themselves. “See how he loved him!” But others replied, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”

The disciples too exchanged confused looks at Jesus’ response. He’d said that Lazarus’s illness would not end in death. They had a pretty good idea what was about to happen, as did Martha, it seemed. So why weep?

The unintelligible groan came from Jesus again, as he walked among these mourners. What he could not explain to any of them was the way this one up close and personal tragedy struck him as a stark representation of all the evil that the Enemy had wrought upon the earth. He had ravaged humanity, stealing, killing, and destroying—but this was not the way it was supposed to be from the beginning. Yes, he knew that this day would turn ashes into a crown of beauty, mourning to the oil of joy, and the spirit of despair into a garment of praise, as the prophet Isaiah had written. But this was one among millions, billions of such stories played out from the beginning of time until the end. He wept not for Lazarus, not for Mary and Martha and the Jews, but for all of creation--for how far the mighty had fallen.

They came to the tomb of a wealthy man: it was a cave, with a large stone blocking its entrance.

“Take away the stone,” Jesus commanded.

Nobody moved at first. They looked to Martha, as the authoritative sister of the dead man. At last Martha said, a bit hesitant, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.”

Jesus turned to Martha, his gaze penetrating. “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”

The disciples tried to recall when they had heard him say this to Martha, since they had been with him the whole time. “The message,” whispered James. “From the messenger, remember? The Master told him to report, ‘this illness does not lead to death. It is for the glory of God’.”

“Oh yes!” whispered the others, nodding. They turned back to Martha, to see if she would agree and believe.

Martha’s expression cleared, apparently remembering this too. She looked at a few of the young men who had come with them, nodding her consent to roll away the stone. When they had done so, there was indeed an odor that made everybody wince. A few of the Jews waved their hands in front of their noses.

Jesus, though, looked up to heaven and prayed aloud. “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” Then he turned to the tomb, and cried in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”

Nothing happened for a few seconds. Everyone waited, holding their breaths. Then, from inside the tomb came a shuffling sound. The shuffling grew louder, until at last a man emerged from the depths of the cave, unable to walk properly because his hands and feet were still bound with linen strips. Gasps rippled around the crowd, and Mary and Martha let out cries of joy. Yet nobody moved toward Lazarus, as if unwilling to trust their eyes.

“Unbind him, and let him go,” Jesus commanded. His word mobilized the sisters, who ran toward their brother, first to obey. Many of the Jews who had come with them remained stupefied, grinning and staring at the reunion of the siblings before them, then turning back to gaze upon Jesus in awe. But the disciples noticed the darkening countenances of some of the others before they turned to leave, not bothering to hide their displeasure. They actually seemed offended.

“They are going to the Pharisees to tell what they have seen,” Jesus explained as the disciples whispered about this among themselves.

Peter grew alarmed at this. “Rabbi, they will try to put you to death! The Pharisees are already concerned that so many of the Jews are coming to believe in you.”

Jesus nodded his agreement, though he looked neither surprised nor concerned. “My time is growing short, but it has not yet come,” he said. “Let us leave this place for Ephraim until the preparation for the Passover. Then we will return for the last time.”

Get your copy of "Messiah: Biblical Retellings" here, or download a free chapter here. (Published under my pen name, C.A. Gray)Today's special podcast is a meditation on the Christmas story as told in the books of Matthew and Luke, and a reimagining of the story from Mary's perspective. Merry Christmas!Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is the transcript of my retelling, but the meditation also includes a discussion and original texts.

Mary had always thought of herself as ‘dutiful,’ as that was the word her father primarily had used to describe her. She was his ‘dutiful daughter,’ he’d always said, and she’d swelled with pride, striving to live up to his words. From a very young age, she’d helped her mother and sisters with household duties. She was meek, selfless, and never complained—a perfect example of the woman Solomon had described in the Proverbs, the kind every young man should wish for in a wife. So though her family was poor, when Mary came of age at twelve years old, the fathers in Nazareth with sons of marriageable age took notice. “Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?” they quoted. “She is more precious than rubies.”

So the fathers of the town were slightly disgruntled when Mary caught the eye of a carpenter named Joseph from the City of David. The house of David is generally meant as the family of David. He was in his early twenties--an older man by the marriage standards of the day. But Joseph first heard the people of Nazareth sing Mary’s praises as a devout and diligent young woman, and then made a point of running into her on her daily errands on more than one occasion. She’d been so charming, demurely casting down her eyes, and he fell in love with her at once. For her part, Mary developed feelings for the older carpenter too, but she was far too modest to believe he could view her as anything but a child—until he called upon her family home one day and brought the bridal gift to her father. It had been like a dream; she could hardly believe it was happening. The two men spoke together for what felt like a very long time before her father had called Mary in to obtain her consent. This was merely a matter of course, and had Joseph been any of the other young men of Nazareth, she would have been expected to consent with grace. But as it was Joseph, she could hardly look at him as she nodded and breathlessly spoke the expected words. Her burning face gave away her feelings, which seemed to please her father greatly. Once the betrothal was sealed, Joseph took his bride by the hand and led her outside her family home. They talked under the stars that night for hours. For Mary, it was the most surreal, magical night of her life.

She fell into bed that night sighing and humming softly to herself long after her family was asleep. But no sooner had she climbed in bed, a bright light suddenly filled the room--so bright that Mary had to squint and look away. When she looked a second time, there stood a man at the foot of her bed! Only he was like no man she had ever seen before. He must have been six cubits tall if he was a span. He wore robes as gleaming white as himself, but even despite them, Mary could see that he was powerfully muscled like a warrior. She knew at once that the brilliance surrounding him was the glory of the Lord.

“Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” he boomed.

Mary just stared at him. She was too terrified to move, let alone speak.

As if reading her thoughts, or at least her expression, the angel said, “Do not be afraid Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Mary’s mind at first went blank—this was too surreal to be happening, and yet she knew without a doubt that it was happening. Her subconscious mind was not creative enough to conjure such a thing in a dream. She then thought several things at once: of the various examples of angels appearing to the patriarchs. Abraham. Moses. Daniel. Elijah. And now…her? Who was she? At the same time, she scrambled to make sense of his words. Among the things she and Joseph had discussed were their plans to wed only once he could prepare a place for her. That would be months, at least. Until then, they would not come together as man and wife—so how could she conceive?

She swallowed and found courage. Hadn’t this warrior angel told her not to be afraid? He would not have said that if it were impossible for her to obey. She managed, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

The angel did not seem to be put out by the question. He replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy — the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”

Mary caught her breath, as understanding clicked in her brain. All her life she had been raised on the prophecies of the Messiah, foretold throughout the scriptures. Daniel’s prophecies had indicated that the time was near. Yet she, like the other Israelites, had always believed that the Messiah would come with fanfare and glory. Not born as a baby, to an obscure child like her! Yet even as she thought this, the words of the prophet Isaiah returned to her: "Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel.” How had she not realized this would be literal?

Again, Mary found her tongue. She bowed her head, and said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.”

No sooner had she said this, the angel vanished. All was still and dark again in her bedchamber, except for the pounding of her heart. She thought of where she was in her monthly cycle—she knew little about childbirth, unmarried as she was, but she did know that her monthly flow was an indication that conception had not occurred, and that it could occur at specified times only—typically halfway between one monthly flow and the next. She did the math and realized that this was approximately the right time. Her hand flew to her abdomen at the thought.

And then another thought occurred to her.She was unmarried. Yes, she was betrothed as of tonight, but everyone knew that she would not come together with her husband until after the wedding. If she was found to be with child before that, according to the Mosaic law, Joseph could have her stoned as an adulteress!

For a split second, terror struck her, but she told herself,No. That won’t happen. Obviously that won’t happen: this is God’s son I’m carrying! He will not let anything befall me at least until I give birth.Not only that; but she knew after tonight better than ever before that Joseph was a kind and just man. Perhaps he might refuse to marry her after all, but he would not have her killed.

Yet the thought that he might refuse to marry her after all brought with it a wave of sorrow, but again, Mary checked it. One problem at a time, she told herself, I can’t worry about that now. Perhaps… oh, perhaps he’ll believe me and marry me anyway! Surely if the Lord saw fit to choose her as His son’s mother, He would have chosen his earthly father just as carefully?

Her turbulent thoughts returned then to the last thing that the angel had said to her: “Behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” Elizabeth! Mary had always liked her great aunt Elizabeth. She was a wise, gracious woman. While Mary always felt that she had to work hard and earn her keep at home, Elizabeth’s peace made Mary feel as though she could just be. Mary had always thought it a great tragedy that Elizabeth, who would have been a terrific mother, had never had children. There was no greater sadness for a woman in Israel than to be barren—and according to the Abrahamic covenant, children were promised, provided the Israelites remained on the right side of the covenant and believed God. After all, it was written, “There shall not be male or female barren among you.” And now, at very long last, Elizabeth’s many years of prayers were to be answered in a birth every bit as miraculous as the birth of Isaac to Sarah and Abraham!

Mary was seized with a sudden desire to go to Elizabeth. If anyone could understand what she was going through now, if anyone could encourage her and give her advice on how to walk the uncharted road before her, Elizabeth could. The angel had said she was in her sixth month, so she was showing now--but in the early days of her pregnancy when she was not showing, who would possibly have believed her?

The next morning, Mary was up before either of her parents, her chores completed and her bag packed for the journey to the hill country to Aunt Elizabeth’s home in Judah. She knew her eyes were bright, almost feverish, as she announced her intention to her parents. They were, predictably, taken aback—why, only last night she had been betrothed! They wanted to spread the news to their neighbors and friends! Mary said, “Yes, and I wish Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Zechariah to be among the first to hear the news.” This was true; it just wasn’t the whole truth. “And also—Aunt Elizabeth is going to have a baby. She needs my help.” She wasn’t sure what made her add this.

Her parents were struck dumb at first, and then they both began to laugh. Her mother became serious again first, and fixed Mary with a stern, reproving gaze. “Mary! You should be ashamed of yourself. What a cruel joke. You know very well that Elizabeth would have loved to have had a baby.”

“It’s not a joke, it’s true! She is in her sixth month. Write and ask her, if you don’t believe me.”

Her parents exchanged a skeptical look, and her father spoke to her as if she were simple. “Mary, how shall I put this delicately? The ‘way of women’ has ceased to be with Elizabeth…”

“Yes, I know that, but nothing is impossible with God!” Mary said impatiently, earning her mother’s reproving gaze for speaking sharply to her father. For his part, he looked taken aback. Mary lowered her eyelashes demurely. “Forgive my sharpness, Father. But I do mean what I say, and you will hear by and by that they shall have a son.”

“And just how do you know even the gender of the child, when she can’t possibly know that herself?” her mother demanded.

Mary sighed, by now thoroughly convinced that she must not stay under her parents’ roof, and must go to be with Elizabeth. If her parents could not comprehend how Elizabeth could be pregnant, they would never, never believe her. In fact, the only person who could be expected to believe her was Elizabeth. She chose not to answer her mother’s question, as she would not lie, but neither could she tell the truth.

“How long will you be gone?” her father asked, frowning.

“Three months,” Mary said without thinking. But as soon as it was out of her mouth, she knew it was the right answer. Three months would be long enough to witness the birth of Elizabeth’s miracle baby, long enough to fortify her own faith in the angel’s words under Elizabeth’s protective roof. Long enough to formulate a plan of what to tell Joseph, and her family, when she returned and her condition became obvious.

“Three months!” gasped her mother, “but what will Joseph think? He asks for your hand and immediately you depart for the hill country for an extended visit to an elderly aunt?”

Mary felt her chin quiver involuntarily at the thought of Joseph’s potential rejection when she returned. But again, she pushed it from her mind. That was at least three months down the line, and she wouldn’t worry about it now. “Please tell him that Aunt Elizabeth needs my help in her condition, and I will return once my cousin is born. He will understand.”

Her mother balked at using a highly questionable circumstance as an excuse. But Mary, not waiting for her parents’ approval for perhaps the first time in her life, took her leave. Her father did, at least, grudgingly lend her a camel for the journey.

When Mary at last arrived at Zechariah and Elizabeth’s home, Zechariah himself answered the door. She greeted him with joy, but he only gestured in reply. She blinked at him, confused, and it took her a few attempts to speak to him before she gathered that he had no voice. But it this wasn’t the sort of hoarse whisper that usually followed an upper respiratory infection—Zechariah was behaving as if he were born mute! Mary had a suspicion that somehow this was related to Elizabeth’s condition, though it did not appear to be related at all.

“May I please see—“ Mary tried again.

“Mary!” came Elizabeth’s voice from the vestibule. She ventured out to greet her grand-niece, revealing her full figure in all its glory, her white head notwithstanding. The sight of her round belly made Mary want to cry with joy. Elizabeth extended her hands to Mary and exclaimed with ringing authority, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

At this, Mary’s eyes widened, and tears slipped onto her cheeks. How good of the Lord! She didn’t even have to tell Aunt Elizabeth anything at all; He told her himself. Moreover, Elizabeth’s words confirmed everything the angel had said to her, as did Elizabeth’s own pregnancy. Mary hadn’t realized that some part of her had been gritting her teeth, trying to believe against all odds and against all evidence, until this moment. The angel had known she needed to be here, to bolster her floundering faith. Caught up in the spirit of rejoicing, Mary cried, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed”—and she knew it was so, even as the words tumbled out of her mouth. “For he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.” How great, for the Lord Almighty to choose her! “And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his offspring forever.”

Three months passed, and Elizabeth’s time drew very near. Mary no longer harbored any doubts of her own condition, and the ceasing of her monthly flow had confirmed it months ago. But Elizabeth pressed Mary to return to Nazareth.

“You are ready, my dear,” she told her. “You must tell Joseph sometime, and at this point he’s liable to see it before you can tell him a thing!” Mary looked down with chagrin—she wore loose garments, but she was a slight creature, and even now her pregnancy had begun to show.

“Which is exactly how you handled it,” Mary teased her aunt, who had confessed to her that she had remained in seclusion for the first five months of her own pregnancy. After all, she’d struggled with her faith enough, without also contending with the scoffing of her friends and neighbors. She waited to come out of seclusion until not even the staunchest skeptic could deny it!

Mary had intended to remain until the birth of her cousin, but Elizabeth insisted she return--and the truth was, Mary was eager get it over with, too. What would happen, would happen, and delaying the inevitable only made her more anxious. On the return journey, she decided she would go to Joseph before her parents. After all, if her parents turned her out, he might marry her quickly and take her in. And if he rejected her too… well, that was the Lord’s problem, wasn’t it? She whispered a prayer as she neared the home of her betrothed, dismounting from her camel. His workshop was around the back of the house, and she knew that was where he would be at this time of day.

“Mary!” he exclaimed when he saw her, startled. “Have you only just returned from—“ He stopped, his eyes tracking to the slight bulge at her abdomen, and his words seemed to die away. He looked at her again, a question and hurt in his eyes.Tell me that isn’t what it looks like, they pleaded.

“Joseph,” Mary took a few rapid steps toward him, and held out her hands. He did not take them.

“I see you’ve been busy while you were away,” he said, a bitter smile twisting the corners of his mouth. “I certainly never would have thought you the type.”

Tears sprang to Mary’s eyes, but how could she possibly explain? She was a very straightforward girl, and it was on the tip of her tongue to tell him everything, whether he would believe her or not. But something told her not to. She only whispered emphatically, “I have not been unfaithful to you, Joseph.”

He averted his eyes from her. “I will divorce you quietly. What you and your child do after that is your own business.”

Mary was crying now, from a combination of gratitude and heartbreak. Even in the first shock of discovering what he believed to be her infidelity, Joseph did not seek retribution. He was protecting her even now, which told her more clearly than anything she had yet learned of him what a good man she was losing. Yet something inside her seemed to whisper,Leave it to me.

She caressed her belly for comfort as she left the man she loved behind her, she thought for the last time, feeling all alone in the world. But she straightened her shoulders, dried her eyes, and rode home to face her parents. Her father was not an observant man, but her mother would know the truth of her condition at once. She clung to the words in her mind:Leave it to me.

Well, she would. What choice did she have?

But Mary, mercifully, did not have to explain to her parents that day. Her father was working, and her mother away tending to sick neighbors. When they were home and preparing supper, she made an excuse that she was tired from her journey and retired to bed early. She slept little that night, though, and rose well before daylight, when it became obvious that she would sleep no more.

The first streaks of dawn the next morning brought a visitor to their door. Mary’s bedchamber was close enough that she heard the approaching footsteps and the knock first, though it was her father who answered the door.

“Joseph, my boy!” came his surprised, booming voice.

Heart in her throat, Mary hurried to greet him, hoping against hope that he wasn’t here to begin the divorce proceedings. That was certainly not the way she’d wanted her father to find out. But the moment her eyes met Joseph’s and she saw his expression—awed, hesitant, hopeful—she promptly burst into tears.

“Mary!” chided her father, looking from her to Joseph, “what is all this?”

Mary hardly heard Joseph’s murmured explanations to her father. The next thing she knew, he’d guided her outside, under the eucalyptus tree where they had spoken well into the night on the evening of their betrothal. Gently he took her hands from her eyes, tilting her chin up to his so that he could see her face.

“Dry your eyes,” he whispered. “Would you like to know why I am here?” She nodded, unable to speak, and he went on, “An angel of the Lord spoke to me in a dream last night. He said to me, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you shall call his name—’"

“Jesus,” she finished with him, and Joseph sucked in a breath. Mary nodded, and said, “He came to me too, though for me it wasn’t a dream.”

The awed look returned to Joseph’s face, and he quoted from Isaiah, “‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel.’”

Mary swallowed, nodded, and managed with a tiny shrug, “I guess that’s me.”

Joseph let out a short, incredulous laugh. “You know, if you had told me, I’d never have believed you.”

“Of course not, why would you?” Mary looked at him seriously. “And you realize, no one else will believe me either. It will be a dreadful scandal.”

“Believe us,” he corrected, gently wiping a tear from her cheek. “We’re in this together now.”

Of course, Mary was right. Her mother saw at once that she was pregnant when she really looked at her, and was too horrified to upbraid her, though her father alternately ranted and cried. She tried to tell them that it was all right, that Joseph would marry her anyway and would not even divorce her, let alone stone her.

“And why should he do that?” her father demanded. Mary explained about her vision and Joseph’s dream. Her father laughed her to scorn, but her mother did not laugh. She did not believe either, but she considered. After all, they knew their daughter as pious and dutiful. Was it easier to believe that she had committed fornication with a stranger than to believe the Lord had chosen her?

Joseph was true to his word, and within a week of her return, he had taken her as his bride. They dispensed with the traditional several day wedding feast that Mary’s father dearly wished for her to have, because most of the people of Nazareth would not have attended anyway, in silent disapproval. By now the story of Mary’s supposedly ‘immaculate’ conception was all over town. Old women who had always had a smile for her now averted their eyes when she passed them on the streets, and old men who had seen her grow up from childhood now shot murderous glances her way, as if they’d have liked nothing more than to enact the full punishment of the Levitical law upon her.

Six months later, when Mary’s time had nearly come, a decree went out from the Roman emperor Caesar Augustus. There was to be a census. Not only did this mean that everyone would be registered as a citizen for purposes of taxation, but each of the Jews must return to his ancestral home to do so. Joseph broke the news of this to his wife—this meant that they had to return to Bethlehem, the City of David. It was a three day journey from Nazareth at the best of times, and with Mary in her present condition, assuming lots of stops to rest, it could be up to a week. Mary did not complain, though.What good would it do?she thought. It would change nothing.

Mary had thought the scorn of her townsfolk was bad, but the journey, sitting sidesaddle on a camel at nine months pregnant, was awful. Joseph did what he could for her comfort, but that wasn’t much. They made the journey in four days because Mary did not insist upon stopping as often as she might have liked to have done. She just wanted to get there. She was grateful she’d pressed on ahead, too, because just outside of Bethlehem, the birth pains began. She clutched her swollen abdomen and looked up at Joseph with wide, terrified eyes, and he understood at once.

“I will find us a room!” he announced.

But they went to three inns without success. Due to the census, many other Israelites who did not live in Bethlehem had poured into the city, and every inn he tried was full to capacity. Joseph grew desperate, as each time he returned to Mary, waiting with the camels, her birth pains had grown closer together. Her face was clammy with sweat, and her breathing came in short gasps.

The innkeeper, moved with pity, followed Joseph outside and lay a hand on his shoulder. “I know of a place you might go, a place that is ceremonially clean and designed for birth, though not exactly of this kind,” he murmured, and pointed. Joseph’s gaze followed where the man pointed, and his brow knit in consternation. The innkeeper had indicated the field of Migdal Eder--the place where Jacob’s wife Rachel was buried, and which was now a meadow where the shepherds raised sheep for Temple sacrifice. At the top of the hill of Migdal Eder was the Tower of the Flock, a good vantage point for the shepherds to view their flocks all at once. The ground floor of the Tower was where the shepherds would take the sheep to give birth to the sacred little lambs, protected from the elements. After all, these lambs must be perfect, if they were to be offered to the Lord.

Mary, between contractions and seeing also where the innkeeper pointed, could see that Joseph was about to refuse.

“Yes!” she gasped, “Anywhere. Please!”

So he took her, reluctantly, the 1000 paces or so from Bethlehem to the Tower of the Flock. She lay upon the ground and pushed until she heard the little mewling cries that made her laugh and cry at the same time, delirious with exhaustion. Joseph bathed and wrapped the child in the swaddling cloths intended for the newborn Temple lambs, and laid him in the manger intended for the sheep to feed.

Mary had no idea how long she lay there, alternately cradling her son and dozing off, when the shepherds from the field suddenly crowded into her birthing chamber. They told her husband an incredible story, of yet another angel who had appeared to them in the fields. “Unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord!” was what they said the angel told them. “And this will be a sign to you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” The Temple shepherds cut one another off in their haste to tell the story. Another one said, “And then suddenly there was not just one, but legions of angels in the heavens, crying out, ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom He is pleased!”

Mary gazed at the baby in the manger, treasuring the words of the shepherds and pondering them in her heart. What a place for the birth of a king, of the King! Such an idea almost defied belief. And he certainly looked like an ordinary child, though to her eyes he was perfect.Yet so every mother always says, she thought. How good of the Lord to confirm for her, again and again, that this was no ordinary child, despite everything her senses told her. She could stand against all the gossip and slander, and this poor child, her little Jesus, would have to do the same. The rumors of his illegitimacy would follow him all his life, she feared. But it didn’t matter. Joseph believed her. Elizabeth and Zechariah believed her. These Temple shepherds believed her. She knew that the Lord would continue to send her encouragement when she needed it, words she could treasure and ponder as fortification against the sneers of the rest of the world.

The angel had said to Joseph in his dream, “he will save his people from their sins.” The lambs, usually delivered in this room, wrapped in this cloth, and laid in this manger, were merely a type and shadow of the forgiveness of sins. This child was to be the real thing. But what could that mean?

She tried to imagine what this precious child would grow up to become. But how could she imagine? Such a thing had never happened before in the history of the world.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Chronic Infections Suppress Vitamin D Receptor Function. 

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Today's podcast is a meditation on the healing of the blind men (including Bartimaeus) from Matt 20:30-34, Mark 10:46-52, and Luke 18:35-43.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is my retelling, though the podcast also includes the original texts that a discussion.

Jesus has known for years that his journey will end in Jerusalem. He has purposely avoided going there until now, knowing that his time had not yet come. But now, three years later, it’s time. He will reach Jerusalem in just a few days.

He has tried repeatedly to explain this to his disciples, but they refused to understand, even though he spoke to them plainly. No parables; no figures of speech. He tried to tell Peter, James, and John on the way down the mountain that he would suffer at the hands of the Jews, just as his cousin had done, and then he would rise from the dead. He tried again just days ago, before they entered the old Jericho, with all twelve of the disciples. He said, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day.” He couldn’t say it any plainer than that. And what was their response? The Sons of Zebedee wanted to know if they could sit on his right and his left in his kingdom. After all this time, they still thought he would be crowned in Jerusalem, as an earthly king in the line of David. They saw and heard only what they expected to see and hear, and were blind and deaf to all else.

The route to Jerusalem winds through both the old and the new Jericho—the old, the one Joshua conquered by commanding the Israelite army to march around it seven times and blow the trumpets until the walls fell, is largely abandoned by this time. But it's not completely abandoned, and everyone in Israel has heard of Jesus by this point. So most of the remaining inhabitants drop what they’re doing and follow him as he passes by, wending his way through the city and down south to the new Jericho built by Herod. He knows the fickleness of the crowds, though. They adore him now; but give them a week and a half, when they’ll be stirred up by the religious leaders. Their love can turn to hate on a dime.

The climate is tropical; the air is balmy, and the palm trees for which Jericho is famous blow softly in the wind. Beggars line the road between the two cities, hoping to receive alms from traveling strangers. It was for this reason that Jesus set his Parable of the Good Samaritan on this very road. Now as he passes by, the dull roar of the crowd behind him, a few voices rise above the din.

“Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”

At first they are soft, but Jesus hears the crowd try to shush the voices, and they respond by shouting all the louder.

“Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!”

It's their persistence that brings a smile to Jesus’ lips. That, and the title they gave him. Son of David. These beggars know their scripture. They are acknowledging him as their Messiah, and they don't care who knows it. He stops walking.

“Call them,” he says to those nearest him, turning to face the beggars, but not approaching them himself. He wants to see how they respond to this. It's clear they are blind by the way they move even before they are close enough for Jesus to see their eyes. Both of them rise to approach him, but one, he notices, springs up with enthusiasm, throwing off his outer garment-- the one that identifies him as a beggar. Jesus’ mouth twitches, pleased. This man knows he is about to get healed. That simple act shows that he is anticipating it.

The crowd quiets down, parting for the blind beggars to make their way to Jesus. When they reach him, Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” He knows the answer, at least for the one whom he’d heard the crowds call Bartimaeus, the one who cast his garment aside. But not every blind beggar wants healing, he knew. It would mean everything in their lives would change. They would have to learn a trade, provide for themselves--create a whole new identity.

Yet both of the men answer the same way. “Rabbi, let us recover our sight.”

The request is so plaintive, carrying with it the years of struggle and heartache. Moved with compassion, Jesus reaches out to touch their eyes.

“Go your way; your faith has made you well,” he says.

Bartimaeus and his friend blink and squint in the sunlight. They look first at Jesus, who is smiling at them. Then they look at each other, at the crowd, at the road and the palm trees where they have spent so much of their lives. Bartimaeus falls to his knees before Jesus in worship, and his friend follows suit. They laugh. They embrace. The crowd even celebrates with them, amused by the way they turn this way and that, drinking in the sights as if they cannot get enough. The beggars fall in with the crowd then, following Jesus on his way.

As for Jesus, he leads the way, moving toward New Jericho. Toward Jerusalem. Toward the cross.

This week's podcast comes from this blog post: Gut Dysbiosis and Bile Acids

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Today's meditation comes from Matthew 17:14-21, Mark 9:14-29, and Luke 9:37-43.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!

This is my retelling, but the meditation includes the original text and discussion.

I hardly saw where I was stepping. I couldn’t stop replaying what James, John and I had just seen. Jesus, our Teacher and Master, was—glowing, so white we could scarcely look at him. His face changed too. I don’t know how to describe it, except to say he became a perfected version of himself, and yet so altered that he looked like someone else altogether. Two other men stood with him and talked with them, men who hadn’t walked up the mountain with us. I’d never seen them before, but by what they said to him, I recognized them as as Moses and Elijah. I’d felt like we were eavesdropping on a conversation we couldn’t understand. They said Jesus was going to Jerusalem, and then he would be leaving. Leaving where? I wondered. What were they talking about?

I started babbling something to the Master about building tents for him, Elijah, and Moses, but I didn’t know what I was saying. Sometimes when I’m on emotional overload, I just talk for the sake of talking. As I spoke, a cloud descended on us. There were clouds all around us, of course--the mountain was high. But this cloud spoke. I might have fallen on my face when I heard it, but I’m not sure. Even now, the memory of that voice from the clouds still makes me weak in the knees. It sounded like thunder, but I didn’t register what it said until I thought about it afterwards. At the time I was too overwhelmed. What it said was, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him.”

James and John weren’t speaking either as we made our way down the mountain. They seemed just as rattled as I was. Jesus too was quiet, but his silence seemed different from ours. He was lost in thought, presumably contemplating what he had heard from the Voice, and what Elijah and Moses had said to him.

The Son of God. I was still wrapping my mind around that one. How exactly did I get here, one of not only his disciples, but in his intimate inner circle? Who was I? Just a simple fisherman… I wasn’t even educated.

Presently as we descended, Jesus said, “Tell no one the vision, until the Son of Man is raised from the dead.”

None of us replied right away; I assumed James and John were trying to riddle out what he meant by this, as I was. Jesus always spoke in metaphor and parable. Son of Man was him, I got that much; but what was this “raised from the dead?” What did that represent? I didn’t want to ask, for fear of rebuke.

John spared me, and asked instead, “Then why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?”

Good save, I thought. Way to divert the question. He was referring not to the vision of Elijah that the three of us just saw in that radiant white light, but to what the prophet Malachi had written, that the prophet Elijah would return to make the way for the Lord. We had wondered about that too: everyone had more or less expected that he would return to earth as he had gone, in a chariot of fire and a whirlwind from heaven, so that there would be no question as to who he was or where he had come from.

“Elijah does come,” Jesus replied, “and he will restore all things. But I tell you that Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but did to him whatever they pleased. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands.”

As he spoke, it clicked. He was talking about his cousin, John the Baptist. The guy Herod had beheaded in prison. He was Elijah? Well, no wonder he could appear on the mountaintop then—he’d lately been freed from his body. A little while later, I replayed the rest of what Jesus had said in my mind though. So also the Son of Man will certainly suffer at their hands. In the same way John the Baptist had? Surely not.

At the foot of the mountain, there was a crowd waiting for us. There was always a crowd following Jesus these days; we had to climb a very high mountain to get some peace and quiet. But as we drew near, we saw that it wasn’t just any crowd. There were some of the usual onlookers, but front and center were the scribes, surrounding the other nine disciples whom we’d left behind. My heart sank. The scribes were always trying to question Jesus, but he was too clever for them. So like wolves attacking the sheep while the shepherd is away, they had descended on the disciples. We could see from their antagonistic postures and my brothers’ distraught expressions that it wasn’t going well.

Jesus asked the scribes, “What are you arguing about with them?”

No one answered at first. The scribes looked triumphant, and the disciples abashed. At last, a man broke ranks and ran to Jesus, kneeling at his feet. He looked harried, and babbled, “Lord, have mercy on my son, for he has a spirit that makes him mute. He is an epileptic and he suffers terribly. He foams and grinds his teeth and becomes rigid. And I brought him to your disciples, and they could not heal him.”

Beyond the father kneeling before Jesus, the nine whom we’d left at the bottom of the mountain pressed past the scribes and onlookers to the front of the crowd. I caught Bartholomew’s and Matthew’s eyes. They both looked sheepish. We had a pretty good idea how Jesus would react to this. The longer we’d been with him, the more frustrated he seemed to become when we failed to imitate him. Sure enough, Jesus’ brow darkened, and he said to no one in particular, “O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you? Bring him here to me.”

The crowd parted as the boy’s father went to obey, and returned holding a boy of about ten or twelve by both shoulders. The boy stumbled along, not looking ahead of him, as if he could not see where his father was steering him. Then all at once, as soon as the crowd fell away and they could not help but see us standing before them, the boy’s eyes locked on Jesus. They widened, rolled back in his head, and the boy convulsed so violently that his father could no longer hold him. He thrashed on the ground before Jesus, foaming at the mouth.

I expected Jesus to simply command the spirit to come out of him, but first he looked calmly at the boy’s father. “How long has this been happening to him?” he asked.

Odd question, I thought. Why does it matter? But it distracted the father from his anguish, at least long enough for him to reply.

“From childhood,” the father replied. “And it has often cast him into fire and into water, to destroy him.” Indeed, when I looked I could see burn scars on the boy’s face and legs even as he thrashed. “But if you can do anything,” the father pleaded, "have compassion on us and help us.”

Jesus fixed the father of the boy with a penetrating gaze. “If you can,” he said pointedly. “All things are possible for one who believes.”

“I believe!” the father cried at once, falling to his knees again. “Help my unbelief!”

Now I understood. Jesus wasn’t asking the father how long the boy had been possessed because it made a material difference to him. But it did make a difference to the father’s ability to believe for his healing. After many years of daily torture, this father was heartsick. He’d clearly had some faith, because he’d heard about Jesus and brought his son to Jesus’ disciples. But when even they could not cast out the demon, the doubts took over. Presumably the disciples’ withering under the questioning of the scribes had only made it worse. That was what Jesus had been trying to elicit—he wanted to bring the father’s faith back to the forefront, however mixed it might be.

Jesus glanced up at the crowd, which had begun to converge upon us again. The onlookers were filled with unbelief after the disciples’ failed attempts and the poisoning of the scribes, and a spirit of unbelief was catching. This father couldn’t handle any more of it; the admission he’d given was the best he could do. So before they could reach us, Jesus rebuked the demon sternly.

“You mute and deaf spirit, I command you, come out of him and never enter him again.”

He said it not a moment too soon; the crowd had just reached us when the demon responded to this by seizing the boy violently. Then he lay still. A hush fell over the crowd. Fear even seized my own heart; the boy truly looked like a corpse. Had Jesus killed him?

“He is dead,” I heard the whispers all around us. The onlookers were distraught or even grief-stricken, but the scribes sounded almost smug. They had been looking to discredit Jesus, and here, at last, was their chance. A wave of dread rolled over me. How would Jesus save face after this? Word would spread all throughout the region, all of his followers would leave, he’d be mocked as a fraud and a charlatan, if not a murderer…

But Jesus, ever in control, interrupted my terrible thoughts by reaching down and taking the boy by the hand. The muscles in the boy’s hand engaged, and the crowd’s whispers quieted. Jesus pulled him to his feet. The boy blinked, focused on Jesus’ face, and smiled. Jesus smiled back. His father started crying loudly, and pulled the boy to him in a violent hug. Where murmurs had been a moment before, there was a smattering of uncertain applause. The scribes grumbled, barely hiding their disappointment.

Jesus turned to go without another word. As he did, I caught just a glimpse of his expression. He looked troubled—which seemed strange, considering he’d succeeded. The boy was healed; the scribes silenced. Yet Jesus wasn’t rejoicing. James, John and I followed closely behind him, as did the other nine. None of us dared to walk beside him, let alone question him.

When we came to the house where we were staying and were alone, I heard Bartholomew ask him at last, “Jesus, why could we not cast it out?”

Brave Bartholomew. I know all the rest of them wanted to ask too, but they were afraid to risk his ire. But Jesus did not rebuke him; he merely sounded tired. “Because of your little faith. For truly I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

“But Teacher, we had faith,” Bartholomew insisted. “You’d given it to us, and we knew that! We had already cast out demons and seen them submit to us! Why was this one different?”

“This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting,” Jesus replied, and walked away.

The twelve of us looked at each other, puzzling out what he meant by this. Fasting? The disciples hadn’t been eating at the time, surely. Were they to stop and pray, to ask God to drive out the demon? He couldn’t mean that either: after all, Jesus himself merely commanded it to leave and it obeyed, and he taught us to do the same. We were to speak directly to the problem in the authority he had given us, not speak to God about our problem. Jesus always spoke in riddles like this, leaving us to make sense of what he had said.

But I saw in the other disciples’ faces the moment that several of them understood what he had meant. 'This kind' did not refer to the demon; it referred to our doubts. That was why he’d said it right after saying our faith was the problem. It was why he’d told the father that he needed to believe. It was why he’d driven out the demon before the crowd, and especially the scribes, could converge upon us again. This kind of doubt—the kind that comes from focusing on what we perceive with our senses, rather than what we know in our heads to be true—can only be driven out by focusing so intently upon the spiritual realm that it becomes more real to us than what we see, taste, hear, smell, and feel.

That was why he was frustrated with the other disciples—and with me too, if I’m to be honest: that after three years with him, we are still more swayed by what we see than by what we know to be true. Here he’s talking about “leaving”, about being “raised from the dead” and “suffering” in the same way as his martyred cousin—which I still don’t understand, and don’t want to think about—yet we’re still nowhere near his level. If Jesus left, we’d fall apart. We’re nothing without him.

I want to go to Jesus and make bold promises. I want to tell him that even if everyone else fails him, I won’t fail him. I will believe, even if all the others doubt. He can count on me!

But deep down, I know it’s a lie. Jesus knows it too, and would say so. Jesus has no peer. For the last three years he’s been trying to make the twelve of us into peers, yet still, he has none. It suddenly occurs to me how lonely that must make him. No wonder he spends so much time alone in prayer. God the Father is his only peer, the Holy Spirit his comforter. The only way any human could ever hope to compare is if somehow God the Father put on us the same Spirit that He put on Jesus. But that’s impossible… we’re sinful men. God’s Spirit would kill us, just as Uzzah fell dead when he accidentally touched the Ark of the Covenant, and Moses had to rope off Mount Sinai when God descended upon it in fire so that the Israelites would not touch it on accident and die. We've borrowed Jesus' power for awhile, but that’s all.

Yet, didn’t Joel prophesy exactly that? I recite it in my mind: "I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days.”

I contemplate these things in my heart as I drift off to sleep that night. The Son of Man suffering. Jesus… leaving. Raised from the dead? This kind of unbelief cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting. God’s spirit poured out... on all people. What did it all mean?

This week's podcast comes from this blog post, Microneedling with PRP by Dr Mariah Mosley. 

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Today's meditation explores the symmetry between the Feast of Weeks of the Old Testament, and Pentecost. We jump around a lot: 

• Moses goes to Sinai and God descends on it in fire (Ex 19:18.) This represents the birth of the nation of Israel as a theocracy: the giving of the Law. 
• This was the first Feast of Weeks at Mt Sinai, 50 days after passover (Ex 19:1.) 
  • Later "official" Feasts of Weeks: Lev 23:15. 
• That day, 3000 Israelites died in rebellion (because Aaron made them a golden calf to worship at the foot of the mountain: Ex 32:28). 
• Joel prophesied that when the Holy Spirit fell there would be prophecy, visions, and dreams (Joel 2:28-29).
• John the Baptist prophesied the Holy Spirit would come with fire (Matt 3:11)
• The New Covenant fulfillment of the Feast of Weeks: Pentecost. The Holy Spirit falls as tongues of fire (Acts 2:1-12) and Peter quotes Joel (Acts 2:14-21).
• That day, 3000 new believers were added (Acts 2:41). Symmetry!
  • Paul says the law kills but the spirit gives life later (Romans 7:10, 2 Cor 3:6)

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Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Lithium as a Neuroprotectant. 

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Today's meditation is on the story of the Centurian's servant, from Matt 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!This is the transcript of my retelling. The podcast includes the original text and discussion as well.

The Centurian is at home, and in one of the fanciest homes in Capernaum—if he had the money to build a synagogue that still stands thousands of years later at least in part, he was a wealthy guy. His home is large, made of stone like the synagogue, and as a commander of thousands, he’s used to not only commanding his legionaries, but he also has a number of servants.

The one who is sick was very dear to him. Probably he had been his servant from childhood, so at this point he was more like family than a servant. Matthew’s account says that he was paralyzed, but Luke’s says he was “sick to the point of death,” so this probably wasn’t a result of an injury. Perhaps this was an elderly servant who had had a stroke. It must have been a severe stroke, to leave him paralyzed—and if he was at the point of death, perhaps he was also unconscious. Maybe he never regained consciousness after the stroke. But the Centurian was very distraught, and knew well that none of the physicians could help. At that time in history, there was nothing that could really be done for stroke victims; they either recovered on their own or they didn’t, and with Luke’s account, this one was going in the wrong direction. The Centurian was used to taking charge. When a problem arose, he dealt with it. He solved problems. The feeling of helplessness to affect any positive change for this servant whom he loved so dearly was awful.

But he didn’t feel helpless for long—as usual, a solution occurred to him, though it was admittedly outside the box. The Centurian lived in Capernaum, the home base for Jesus’ ministry. He’d heard about the carpenter’s son who somehow knew the scriptures inside an out, and who had turned water into wine at a wedding there many months earlier. Since then, the rumors were that he went about healing the blind, the lame, the dumb, and the sick of Israel. He’d heard the rumors among the Jews that he might even be the Messiah that they had been waiting for for centuries.

There was a problem, though: the Centurian was Roman, not Jewish. Even though he’d built the Jews’ synagogue It seemed horribly presumptuous of him to approach the Jewish celebrity and ask him to come to his home and heal his servant. Why would he do it? Jesus’ time was precious—the Centurian appreciated this full well, as his own time was precious, too. His legionaries did not approach him lightly with small matters of their own. They knew he expected them to work out their problems on their own, and only approach him if absolutely necessary. They respected his time, his authority, and his position. He could not approach Jesus with any less respect.

But then he remembered a story he’d heard that had taken place in this very city, only some months earlier—and to a Gentile, no less! A nobleman, an official in Capernaum’s son had taken ill and was dying. The official had made bold to approach Jesus directly, and begged him to come and heal his boy. Jesus didn’t go with him—but he healed him anyway. At his word, from a distance! What was it he’d said? “Go; your son will live.” The official believed him, headed home, and was intercepted by servants along the way who told him that his son had begun to recover at the exact hour that Jesus had spoken those words.

That was his solution, the Centurian realized. Of course! He could ask Jesus’ help with minimal inconvenience to himself, if he didn’t ask him to come to his home—he could simply request that he speak a word. That was good enough for the nobleman’s son; why would it not be good enough for his servant? He dared not even approach Jesus directly himself, because he was a Gentile. Jesus focused on the Jews. He thought his appeal might be better received coming from the Jews. He had a relationship with them, having built their synagogue—so he summoned some of the Jewish elders and told them his plight.

“I ask a great favor,” he said, “and if I had another choice I would not. But my servant is very dear to me, and his only hope is a miracle. Jesus of Nazareth can heal him, but I have no basis upon which to appeal to him to do so. Would you approach him on my behalf?”

So the elders went to Jesus. These were not scribes and Pharisees, but elderly faithful Jewish men among those who followed Jesus and hung on his words. They approached him, told him about the Centurian’s servant, and then made the case for him: “He is worthy to have you do this for him, for he loves our nation, and he is the one who built us our synagogue.” Jesus did not protest; he agreed to go with the elders to the home of the Centurian to heal the servant.

The Centurian saw Jesus and the elders approaching his home when they were not far away, a crowd following along behind Jesus. The emotion to immediately seize him was less relief than shame. This had not been his intention, to pull this important man away from his ministry! He did not deserve such deference, especially as a Gentile. His friends were gathered at his home to support him through the apparent death of his dear servant, so he hurriedly sent some of them on ahead.

“Please tell the Lord not to trouble himself any further!” he expostulated, “I am not worthy to have him come under my roof! Therefore I did not presume to come to you. But say the word, and let my servant be healed. For I too am a man set under authority, with soldiers under me; and I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes, and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”

His friends hurried off to intercept Jesus, and the Centurian watched anxiously from a distance. He was close enough that he could see Jesus stop and absorb what his friends said on his behalf, before he turned to say something to the crowd behind him. Then after another moment’s delay, Jesus turned and moved away again, the crowd clinging to his every move. The Centurian’s friends set out back to his home, just when another servant rushed up to the Centurian.

“Your dear one has recovered!” he gasped, out of breath. “He awoke again and sat up, and is asking for you!”

The Centurian swallowed the lump of gratitude in his throat, looking out over the hills at the retreating figure of the Lord. He was not an Israelite, and was not worthy—and yet the master deigned to come to his home to grant his request. He wiped his eyes just as his friends who had spoken to Jesus on his behalf returned. They were beaming.

“What did he say?” The Centurian managed, on his feet already to go and see his servant.

“He was impressed,” his friend grinned back. “When we told him what you’d said, he turned to the crowd and said, ‘I tell you, not even in Israel have I found such faith.”

The Centurian’s heart swelled. He, a Gentile, had impressed Jesus. For a moment, the Centurian wished that he himself was a Jew, so that he could join that crowd and follow the Master. But instead, he went to his servant’s bedside. He found him sitting up, drinking a mug of water, and looking better than the Centurian had seen him look in years.

“Thank you,” the Centurian whispered. And even though he never had and never would meet Jesus face to face, he somehow knew he’d heard.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post: Spotlight On: Cinnamon. 

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Today's podcast meditation comes from the three accounts of the friends lowering the paralytic through the roof to Jesus to receive his healing:Matt 9:2-8/Mark 2:1-12/Luke 5:17-26Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!Imagine being that paralytic—he never goes anywhere, he just lies at home all day and friends take care of him. He’s clearly either got a big family or is very well loved, because otherwise he wouldn’t have so many people to drop what they’re doing, band together, and take him to Jesus. And they really go to a lot of trouble too—they try to get him through, but the crowds are spilling out of the house where Jesus is teaching and into the streets! And here they have this bulky stretcher, and nobody will let them through. So these enterprising four friends think, we’ve come this far, and our friend/brother WILL get his healing today. So they climb on the roof, and probably hoist up his mat on a pulley system. How hard must that have been? How long did it take them to get him up there?And whose idea was cutting a hole in the roof anyway? Did they even think of how angry the home owner would be? Probably not; they were laser-focused on getting their friend to Jesus. Once they cut the hole, they all collectively had to lower him by ropes when they saw where Jesus was teaching. The audacity! But would Jesus be mad? If they thought this was a possibility, they didn’t care. They really loved this friend.And what of the friend himself? He must have had some really good qualities to inspire such loyalty in those around him, so maybe he was one of those people who bears adversity with a smile, or finds a way to see the good and the things to be grateful for. We at least know that he had faith to be healed when he heard about Jesus. Was it his idea or theirs to go to all this trouble to get him to Jesus? Either way, he was definitely on board, because “Jesus saw their faith,” which includes his. I imagine he heard rumors about this young man—much younger than the teachers of the law, only early thirties—who was stirring up the leaders. They all hated him, but the people flocked to him wherever he went, because not only did he teach with authority unlike the Pharisees and Sadducees, but he backed up what he said with power! Typically he heals ALL the sick, the lame, the maimed, the blind, and the dumb who come to him! Can you imagine?The paralytic heard all this, and it stirred a spark of hope in him. Can it be true? Well it has to be, doesn’t it? He’d heard the story from so many different people. Can ALL those people be wrong?Clearly he can’t travel anywhere, but he just happens to live in Capernaum, the headquarters for most of Jesus’ ministry. So he had only to wait until Jesus came back. The problem is, because this is the headquarters for his ministry, EVERYBODY flocks to him. Even though his friends volunteer to take him to Jesus, they can’t even get close. It would be one thing if the paralytic could push through the crowd himself, but he can’t ask his friends to do all that for him. His heart sinks. His healing is right there, inside that house, and he can’t even get there…But wait! His friends confer amongst themselves. They’re going to… what? Seriously? One of them turns to him and says, pointing at the roof and a length of rope he’s procured, “You okay with that?”The paralytic blinks. “Y-yes!” he stammers. “Let’s do it!” Hope returns. He’s wondering what on earth they plan to do when they get to the roof, but he’s distracted by the discomfort and occasional pain of the uneven hoisting process. One leg gets trapped, one shoulder yanked, the mat swings and hits the side of the house, smashing his ear into his head. At one point the mat tips and nearly drops him all the way back to the ground! But they succeed in the end. And then he sees—“You’re cutting a hole in the roof?” the paralytic laughs. His friend looks up at him mischievously and says, “Today’s your day, my friend. YOU are GETTING to see Jesus.”They saw. And saw. Chunks of the ceiling surely rain down on the crowd beneath during the process, so they have to know exactly what’s happening long before they see the culprits. They have to pull away sections at a time, so before the hole is big enough to lower him, the paralytic can look down and see the crowd with white dust in their hair, the scowling home owner, and… Jesus. He’s smiling! He actually looks amused! The paralytic meets his eyes, and can’t look away, until his friends have to position him for the descent.“Okay, ready?” One friend, the ringleader, cries to the others. “One, two, three!”With coordinated efforts, they lower him down in a much more synchronized fashion than that by which they’d raised him to the roof in the first place. Within seconds, the paralytic is looking up into the face of Jesus. He’d know him anywhere, even though he’s never seen him before and didn’t previously know what he looked like. Objectively he looks like a normal man, but there is something about him. How can the paralytic know all this at first glance? But he does. It’s peace, confidence, authority, power… something he can’t quite put his finger on. But it’s compelling. Jesus looks up to the friends on the roof and smiles at them too—beaming his approval. At last, he looks at the paralytic, and speaks.“Take heart, my son; your sins are forgiven.”So many things about that statement ought to seem strange, but don’t. “Son,” first of all — this man speaks as if he’s one of the elders, but he can’t be much older than the paralytic’s own age. Second, his sins are forgiven? The paralytic hears the ripples of unrest among the crowd nearest him, who heard this. Jesus spoke the words with such quiet confidence, that the paralytic has no doubt he’s able to remit sins. But if that’s true, then doesn’t that make him…“…blasphemy!” he overhears in whispers from some of the teachers of the law and the scribes nearest him.Jesus turns to them, and his previously approving and cheerful expression turns to stone. “Why do you think evil in your hearts?” he demands of the scribes. The paralytic’s heart races at the confrontation. “For which is easier, to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say ‘Rise and walk’?” He lets this question hang in the air, as if waiting for an answer. Nobody does answer, though—he seems to speak in riddles. Jesus goes on, still in a booming tone to the crowd, “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins—“ he turns back to the paralytic, “Rise, pick up your bed and go home.”It takes a moment for the paralytic to register this. But when he does, there's no hesitation: this was what he was waiting for. He’d expected more of a demonstration than this: a touch of healing, perhaps. But he has no doubt that this man’s word carries all the authority he needs. He leaps up to his feet, and as he does so, his bones and joints straighten out and become strong! The gasps ripple throughout the crowd, and a few—not the scribes and teachers—start to clap and cheer. Then he realizes that the cheers are coming from his friends on the roof—they had expected this all along. One sticks his fingers in his mouth and whistles. But the paralytic hardly notices. Tears stream down his face, and he laughs and cries for joy. He wants to hug Jesus, but that seems wildly inappropriate—especially since Jesus's attention is now focused on the scribes and teachers. He stares them down like a challenge. So instead, the paralytic—former paralytic!—does as he was bid: he picks up the mat upon which he’d lay for decades, tucks it under his now strong and well-formed arm, holds his head up high, and marches right through the thick crowds that had blocked his entrance. They part for him in astonishment, and even fear. Most of them had known him all his life. They knew what kind of miracle had just taken place.What’s more, before he’d done it, Jesus had forgiven his sins. They all knew what this meant. He was proclaiming himself to be God.As for the former paralytic, he doesn't doubt it for a second.