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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 meditation and retelling comes from Luke 5:4-10, John 21:3-8.

I guess I just didn't know what to do with myself. Too much had happened—both the worst and the best. My Master's horrific death, my own failure to stand by Him in His hour of need, and then—He rose again! He returned to us. He was the Messiah. We had been witness to the event that all of the Law and the Prophets, all of human history had been pointing to.

Now what?

The only clue Jesus gave to us of what to do next was to go into Galilee, and He would meet us there. He wasn't with us all the time now, not since He rose again. Things were different, though He never told us what He was doing when He was not with us.

I felt like my brain was always spinning since then, never arriving at its destination. I wanted something familiar, something I could do with my hands that would anchor me in the present. I was a fisherman by trade, though I hadn't actually fished commercially in the last three and a half years since Jesus came into my life. We were here in Galilee now, but Jesus gave us no other specifics. We didn't know when or where He would meet us, beyond somewhere in Galilee.

"I'm going fishing," I announced to James, John, Nathaniel, Thomas, Matthew, and Bartholomew who were with me. It was nighttime, but we always used to fish at night. That was when it was coolest.

I was surprised at the suddenness of their reply: "We are going with you," they all agreed. Evidently I wasn't the only one who longed for some occupation to pass the time.

As we prepared our nets and set out to the Sea of Galilee, I couldn't help remembering the last time I had done this very thing. James and John were my partners then, and the three of us had fished all night in the Lake of Gennesaret, and caught nothing. We were exhausted, and washing our nets until the next time when a great multitude suddenly converged upon the shore. They all seemed to be centered upon one man, a young rabbi. I had never seen him before, but as soon as I saw him—his purposeful stride, the authority with which he carried himself—I couldn't look away. I forgot all about my nets. I thought at the time that the crowds must all have seen what I saw, and that was why they followed him.

But then I noticed that the man was looking at me, too. He strode right up to me, and gestured at one of our two boats on shore.

"Will you put out a bit from the land with me? You see how the crowd presses all around me."

"Yes!" I stammered, forgetting my fatigue. I rushed to obey, dragging my half-cleaned nets behind me and stuffing them into the boat. James and John remained on shore with the crowd, but did not leave. They too seemed to have forgotten their exhaustion in their eagerness to see whatever it was that the crowd expected to see.

It was just Jesus and me in the boat on the lake that day. He sat down and began to teach the crowds from the boat. I sat behind him, and with his every word, my soul burned within me. It was a sensation I had never experienced before, but I have many times since: that sense that I was hearing truth spoken in mysteries, falling from the lips of a man of exceeding greatness. I was a Jew, and I had always worshipped Jehovah in theory. But never before had I been stirred in such a way that worship was wrung from me as the only possible response, like water from a cloth.

When the rabbi dismissed the crowds, and they reluctantly began to disperse, it was already in the heat of the day. He looked at me and said, "Launch out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch."

It was such an unexpected thing to say that I balked for a minute. Why? I wondered. What did that have to do with anything?

"Master, we have toiled all night and caught nothing," I began, but then caught myself. I did not wish to argue with this man, of all people. If he wanted me to let down my net, I'd do it out of respect, even though it would mean extra work for me. "Nevertheless, at Your word I will let down the net," I told him. I paddled a little way back out to the lake, though not to the deepest part. I had several nets, but I let down only the one—this was only a gesture, after all. I knew there were no fish to be had in the lake today—

"What is this?" I cried out in shock, as the net grew taut in my hands. I thought at first I had snagged it on something, but that could not be; the lake was much too deep. I managed to tug just enough for the shiny slippery silver bodies to break the surface of the water, wriggling and writhing all over each other. I gasped, and felt rather than heard the ripping of the rope down below the surface.

"James! John!" I shouted back to shore, and just glanced up to see that they were still there, awaiting my return. They had apparently seen enough of what was going on, and both of them jumped into the other boat and paddled out to where we were, along with two of our other partners.

"Steady, steady!" called John, as he held the side of his boat against ours. He threw a rope across to climb into my boat, so that he could help me pull in the catch. It was all I could do to hold on to the edges of my net, but I certainly could not haul it onto the boat by myself. Finally I glanced at Jesus. He stood watching us, and I could swear he was silently laughing, his eyes crinkled with amusement. I glanced back down at the water. Before my very eyes, more fish jostled each other to swim into my net! I looked back at Jesus. Now he was laughing outright.

"Ready, heave!" John cried to me, recalling my attention to the ever growing problem at hand. "The net is breaking!"

"I know, that's why I signaled you!" I returned. It was all we could do to lift the top of the catch out of the water and just let the fish spill onto the bottom of our boat in a great pile; I knew yet more had managed to escape underneath where the nets had ripped. Meanwhile, James and our other partners had taken the hint and let down their nets—plural this time—and were even now drawing their enormous catch on board.

"We're sinking!" John gasped to me as the fish continued to spill into the boat.

"So are we!" James cried back from the other boat beside us.

John and I watched as fish we hadn't even caught in our nets jumped out of the water and into our boat. Our jaws dropped. I turned to Jesus, who had tears in his eyes now, he was laughing so hard.

I released my end of the net entirely, and sank to my knees before Jesus' feet as best I could, amid all the fish. "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" I gasped.

Jesus still grinned, but his expression softened as he looked down at me. I had the impression that he was pleased I had understood that this was his doing, even though it could not have been more obvious. "

"Do not be afraid," he said to me. "From now on you will catch men."

When we got back to shore that day, salvaging our boats and some of our nets with the most enormous catch of fish we'd ever had before or since, James, John and I left everything and followed Jesus. We'd never looked back.

Three and a half years later, so much had changed that I scarcely remembered the man I was then. Tonight, as that first night before Jesus showed up, we had caught not a single fish. I watched as the sunrise streaked pink and red across the sky, and gritted my teeth against the ache in my chest.

I missed him.

He had risen, but He wasn't here with us now. Everything had changed. He had risen, but now what? Where did we go from here? What did the rest of our lives look like? He had risen, but I had still denied Him when He needed me most.

"Children!" called a voice from the shore. We all turned to see a stranger, hands cupped around his mouth to amplify the sound. "Have you any food?"

"Children?" Bartholomew muttered. "That fellow can't be any older than we are."

James answered for all of us. "No! We've fished all night but caught nothing."

The stranger shouted back, "Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some."

We all blinked at this strange instruction. Nathaniel grumbled, "As if that would make any difference." Yet my heart burned within me. I didn't consciously think of it at the time, but it was the same sensation I had had when on the road to Emmaus with Cleopas and the stranger. The same I had as I listened to Jesus preach that first time.

"Do it," James, John and I all said at once. We exchanged a look with one another and took over the net. That was when I realized that they, too, were remembering the same thing I was.

It was as if we were right back there, three and a half years ago: the moment we slipped the net on the right side of the boat, the rope grew taut, and fish fought each other to swim in.

"Heave!" John cried, and we tried—but there were too many. We could not even lift the nets back into the boat between the three of us. John's face split into a wide grin as he turned to look on the shore. The stranger had set a fire on the beach and was tending to it.

"It is the Lord!" he cried.

Of course it was—I had known this already. But at John's declaration, I couldn't wait even to get the boat back to shore. I had removed my outer garment as we worked, so now I put it on again and jumped into the sea, swimming to Him as fast as my arms and legs could carry me.

Behind me, the other disciples steered the ship to shore, dragging the net in the water behind them. I reached the land only moments before they did, for we had not been far out to sea.

The stranger looked up, first at me, and then at the others, then at me again. I fell to my knees before Him, amazed once again that He looked so different now, though His features had not changed.

"Lord," I managed, dripping from head to toe.

He smiled back at me, and I saw that He already had fish and bread cooking over the coals. He glanced over my shoulder, and I followed His eyes to the other disciples, who were now attempting to drag the catch of fish from the water to the shore.

"Bring some of the fish which you have just caught," Jesus said.

I took the Lord's hint and ran to help. Remarkably, this time the net was not broken. When we laid the fish out on the sand, Bartholomew, the quickest of us with numbers, informed us that we had caught one hundred and fifty three.

"Come and eat breakfast," Jesus called to us.

We took six of the fish, one for each of us plus the fish Jesus had already prepared. We cleaned and roasted them over the fire Jesus had set, largely in silence. I saw all of the other disciples sneaking surreptitious glances at Jesus as if to assure themselves that He was the Lord. He endured this patiently and without comment. When the fish had cooked, He took the bread, blessed and broke it, and did the same with the fish. We ate in silence as well: a silence that was not so much awkward as it was thick, at least for me. I so desperately wanted to make things right.

When we finished breakfast, Jesus turned to me. "Simon, son of Jonah, do you love me more than these?"

A lump sprang to my throat. The word He used for love wasagape. Do I agape—perfectly, selflessly love—Him more than anything else, as I had once so boldly declared? More than anything I wanted to proclaim that I did, but my actions belied this. "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you." But I used the word phileoin place ofagape. The word meant familial affection. Far less lofty than agape.

Jesus' eyes bore into mine. "Feed my lambs," He replied. Silence fell again. I tried to swallow down the lump in my throat. Jesus said again, "Simon, son of Jonah, do youagapeme?"

I felt the other disciples shift around us uncomfortably, but I did not care that they were witnesses. This was between me and the Lord. I had to compose myself before I managed to answer again, "Yes, Lord, you know that Iphileoyou."

"Tend my sheep," Jesus replied. Another stretch of silence. Then He ventured once more, "Simon, son of Jonah, do youphileome?"

I bit my lip to keep the tears at bay. I flashed back to the night of His trial, to my three denials that I even knew the man who was dearest to me in the world. He asked me three times to affirm Him now, to erase those denials. But He'd downgraded the word love now fromagapetophileo, the word I insisted upon using. The Lord knew how badly I wanted to use the wordagape—the word that meant I would do anything for Him, even die for Him, as He had for me. But I had made that declaration once before, and broken it hours later. I knew better now. I knew my own weakness.

"Lord, you know all things," I whispered. "You know that Iphileoyou."

Jesus did not speak for such a long moment that I finally looked up and met His eyes. He gazed at me so tenderly, like a father to his newborn child. No wonder He had called us children. "Feed my sheep," He said. "Most assuredly, I say to you, when you were younger, you girded yourself and walked where you wished; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish."

I swallowed, understanding what He meant. I would indeed die for Him one day. Had He given me such a prophecy at any other time, it would have seemed almost like a curse. But right now, it was the purest blessing He could have pronounced. He was telling me I would get another chance, and the next time, I would pass the test: the very thing I wanted most in the world. Briefly, I let the Lord's pure love, His agape, His acceptance wash over me, to cleanse and restore me.

No sooner did I bask in this, though, it was marred by a stab of jealousy as I glanced at John, sitting very close to Jesus. I'd always been just a bit jealous of John's closeness to the Lord. I think we all had. Before I could stop myself, I pointed at John and said, "But Lord, what about this man?"

Jesus raised his eyebrows at me, and John looked taken aback. I immediately regretted that I'd said it out loud.

"If I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?" was Jesus' gentle rebuke. "Youfollow me."

I bowed my head, and turned to look at the enormous catch of fish strewn on shore. He had performed the same miracle when I first met Him, and now again at the end—for I knew this was the end. His remaining time on earth was very short. The first time He had said, "From now on, you will catch men," and I had left everything to follow Him. Now, after His resurrection, when all of us wondered what our purpose could possibly be, this side of the cross—His answer was the same.

Tend my sheep. Feed my lambs. Go and catch men.

I had fished all night with all my worldly equipment and skill and partners, and caught nothing. Yet everything changed when I went whereHedirected, and fished whereHe commanded, with the powerHeprovided. I could not fail.

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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 and retelling is from 1 Sam 14:1-23.

This is such a crazy story, and to me, it so perfectly illustrates why Jonathan and David became such good friends. In boldness, they were pretty much the same person.

Jonathan had taken down a garrison of Philistines once before (1 Sam 13:3) before this episode ever occurred, which may well have been what gave him the confidence to propose the idea of two of them attacking an entire garrison, with one sword between them. God never told him to do this—it was his own idea, but it was based upon Jonathan's understanding that Israel had a covenant with God, and the Philistines didn't (we know this by the fact that he referred to them as "uncircumcised," the same way that David referred to Goliath). He did include a caveat, at least: if the Philistines said this, it meant God had given them into the hands of Israel. If they said that, it meant he hadn't, and they should come back another day. But even that, he made up. He just assumed that God would honor the "fleece" he chose. And sure enough, God did!

Why was there only one sword between them, anyway? According to 1 Samuel 13:22, there were only two swords in all of Israel, belonging to the king (Saul) and the crown prince (Jonathan). The Philistines had so oppressed Israel that they had disarmed them, expecting that this would keep this in subjection. No wonder the rest of the Israelites were hiding in caves, even though there were hundreds of them. Not only were the Philistines in a better tactical position, but they had weapons and the Israelites did not. Only Jonathan did not see this as a problem. Like Caleb and Joshua when they saw the giants in the Promised Land, Jonathan was undeterred by what he saw in the natural. When Jonathan and his armor bearer (who didn't even get a name) moved forward in faith, all they had to do was kill about twenty men. Then, just as in the case of Gideon and the Midianites, God sent fear among the Philistines and they destroyed themselves! Then the Israelites, seeing that their enemy was on the run, decided to join the fight. But it took the faith of Jonathan and his armor bearer to set the whole thing in motion.

"Why exactly are we hiding in this cave?" I wanted to know. I asked the question of my armor bearer, who had been with me since my earliest days as a soldier. He was my servant, but I considered him a dear friend too. Certainly, I respected him far more than I did the majority of my father's soldiers, six hundred of whom just cowered here in the pomegranate cave at Migron, at my father King Saul's apparent direction. "The Philistines are right there. Why don't we just go slaughter them?"

My armor bearer shrugged, as mystified as I was. Yes, the Philistines were large—giants, some of them. It was also true that our men had no swords; the Philistines had gotten rid of all blacksmiths, and had required us to come to them to sharpen our tools for farming, so that they might keep us in submission. The only two swords in our company belonged to my father and myself. So what? The Philistines were uncircumcised! They had no covenant to protect them. We, on the other hand, had the Lord on our side. We literally could not lose. I'd proven this by defeating the garrison of Philistines at Geba, and all the Hebrews had heard of it. Had they already forgotten?

I sighed, frustrated. I refused to sit here and do nothing for another moment. "I have one of the two swords, have I not?" I muttered aloud, and then gestured at my armor bearer. "Well. You do."

My armor bearer nodded as a slow smile of anticipation crept across his face. "I do indeed!"

I snuck a surreptitious glance at my father, who was in council with several of his cowardly advisors, and did not notice us. Then I looked at my armor bearer and whispered, "Come, let us go over to the Philistine garrison on the other side. It may be that the Lord will work for us, for nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, by many or by few."

The armor bearer grinned back at me, eyes bright. "Do all that is in your heart. Do as you wish, Behold, I am with you heart and soul!"

I loved this guy. I nodded and whispered, "Behold, we will cross over to the men, and we all show ourselves to them. If they say to us, 'Wait until we come to you,' then we will stand still in our place, and we will not go up to them. But if they say, 'Come up to us,' then we will go up, for the Lord has given them into our hand. And this shall be the sign to us."

I added the caveat, just in case the Lord wanted to stop us for some reason. He hadn't chosen the sign, it was true, but I knew He directed the steps of His faithful ones, and I knew the covenant promised victory to the Israelites. I only wanted to test whether or not this was the way in which He meant for it to occur.

Together, we crept out of the cave, between two rocky crags named Bozez and Seneh. The Philistines spied us approaching from a distance, and we saw their attention turn to us. Once we were in shouting range, they taunted, "Look, Hebrews are coming out of the holes where they have hidden themselves!" They beckoned us, and cried out, "Come up to us, and we will show you a thing!"

I turned to my armor bearer and we shared a fierce grin. That was exactly what I'd been hoping they'd say. "Come up after me, for the Lord has given them into the hand of Israel!" I declared.

I had to climb up using my hands and feet to where the Philistine garrison waited. My armor bearer came after me, sword in its hilt at his side. When I finally reached the top of the rocky crag, something (Someone?) knocked the men down before me as if they had been hit by a great gust of wind. My armor bearer did not waste it: as soon as he crested the hill, he slashed them down right and left, twenty men in all. As this happened, panic spread throughout the camp and the garrison. The men began to flee, and the stampede seemed to make the mountain itself quake.

I turned around, and behind us I finally saw my father and his six hundred men emerge from their cave. But before they ever reached the scene of the battle, it was already half over: there was such confusion in the Philistine garrison that they struck and killed one another. Some of my fellow Israelites were among the Philistines, and they turned upon their fellows. Israelites who had been hiding in the hill country of Ephraim saw and came to join the fight.

In the end, the Philistines fled beyond Beth-aven, and the Lord gave us victory. As I knew very well He would. He had promised He would, and He is not a man, that He should lie!

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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 meditation comes from the story of Hannah's miraculous conception of Samuel, from 1 Samuel 1-2.This is the text of my retelling:

I had come to hate the yearly trek to Shiloh. Which was terrible! We were going to sacrifice and worship the Lord, and I knew it was wrong to do anything but rejoice—that was what the Lord called us to do, after all. And yet it was the worst time of the year for me.

The rest of the year, I could avoid my husband Elkanah's other wife Peninnah and her children. At home her family and I lived in different tents, and I managed to fix my daily routine such that I almost never interacted with her at all. I did this because Peninnah was horrible to me at every opportunity. Even if she hadn't been horrible, seeing her was like an arrow in my heart, as it seemed she was perpetually pregnant or nursing. She now had six children--and I none. As if that weren't enough, she took every opportunity to taunt me for my barrenness. Elkanah tried to tell me this was because she was jealous of his love for me, and seemed to expect this would comfort me. It didn't. I valued my husband's love greatly, but it in no way compensated me for the children I lacked, and I was not compassionate enough to empathize with my rival's motives. My own pain was too acute.

During the yearly trek to Shiloh, though, we all traveled together as a family—Elkanah, his two wives, and Peninnah's children. I couldn't get away from her. After Elkanah's sacrifice, when it came time to eat the sacrificial meat, he distributed portions to his wives and children. As if to compensate me for my barrenness, he gave me a double portion. He meant well, but even this wrung tears from my eyes. Peninnah taunted me even about this: what a sorry exchange this was, how glad she was that she had children rather than extra meat. I shoved my plate away and ran out of the tent so that I might cry alone, my appetite spoiled.

Elkanah, a gentle man, followed me into the night and put his arms around me. "Hannah, why do you weep?" he asked me softly, though of course he knew the answer. And I could not reply to him anyway. "And why do you not eat? And why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?"

I let him hold me, but there was no satisfactory reply to this. The answer was a decided no, but he would not understand this, and would be hurt by it. After all, he had no need of more sons—he had them already, by Peninnah. Also, he was not only mine. I would always, always have to share him, not only with her but also with her children. I felt like an interloper on a family tableau, the one person who did not belong.

After a reasonable amount of time had elapsed such that Elkanah would not feel slighted, I tightened and then released my embrace.

"Give me leave to visit the Temple," I murmured, wiping the tears from my eyes.

Elkanah looked slightly puzzled, but nodded. "Of course, if you wish to seek the Lord alone."

I nodded and hurried off, scarcely noticing Eli the priest sitting beside the doorpost of the Temple as I entered. The Temple was otherwise empty, as the sacrifices had taken place earlier that day, and all the priests, like my husband, had taken their portions back to their families to feast and celebrate. This was precisely what I wanted—to be alone. When I reached the Court of Women, the Outer Court, I fell to my knees and released all the tears I had held back throughout the day and the journey. Between sobs, I poured out my heart in my spirit--and though my lips moved, my voice remained silent.

"O Lord of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head." I meant by this last addition that he would be a Nazirite, holy and set apart to the Lord. It was desperation that made me say all this. Once it was out of my mouth, it occurred to me that I was attempting to bargain with God. Was that okay? I knew the scriptures reasonably well, as my husband was a priest, but the only example I could think of where anyone said to God, 'if you do this for me, I'll do that for you' was the Judge Jephthah, who said that if God helped him win the battle against the Ammonites, he would sacrifice the first thing that greeted him when he returned home from battle. It turned out to be his daughter. Not exactly an example I wished to follow, and yet—that's what desperation does. A few years ago, I would never have made such a vow as to part with my firstborn son, not for anything in the world. Now I would do it with all my heart, if the Lord would only listen and remember me…

I did not see Eli the priest approach as I prayed on my knees until he spoke. His tone and his words were harsh.

"How long will you go on being drunk?" he demanded, and when I looked up at him I saw the scowl on his face. "Put your wine away from you."

"No, my lord," I gasped, understanding that he thought I had overindulged at the feast. "I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord. Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation."

The priest's face softened, and he rested a hand on my shoulder as he answered, "Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant your petition that you have made to him."

I bowed my head, closing my eyes against the answering flood of tears that threatened yet again—only this time they were tears of gratitude. The High Priest himself had just blessed me! Scriptural precedent or not, that meant I had my petition of the Lord!

"Let your servant find favor in your eyes," I managed, as I stood and dried my eyes, beaming at the priest. Then I hurried back to our tent, suddenly ravenous. I had a double portion of sacrificial meat still waiting for me, and I could stand anything now, even the taunts from Peninnah. I was as good as pregnant!

Peninnah's children and she had finished their portions when I returned to eat alone. But Peninnah watched my radiant face closely, frowning.

"What got into you?" she sneered, but I could see that she was troubled by my uplifted mood.

I simply smiled at her, and said, "The Lord is good and gracious!"

She blinked, put off by this response. She rose and left the table without saying a word.

The next morning, we rose, worshiped at the Temple one last time, and returned to our home at Ramah. Elkanah hardly left my side on the return journey, which nettled Peninnah. When we arrived home, he shared my bed. I was not surprised, both because of his concern for me and also because of Eli's prophecy.

I suspected right then, but I knew for certain within a month that I was with child. I knew before his birth that he would be a son, because that had been my petition of the Lord. Elkanah suggested family names, but I said no—he should be called Samuel, "because I had asked for him from the Lord."

The following year, when the time came for the family sacrifice, I begged Elkanah's leave to remain behind with Samuel. He was only three months old and still nursing; much too young to leave at the Temple with Eli. At first Elkanah did not understand why I could not travel with Samuel and return home with him again, until I explained, "I made a vow to the Lord, and I intend to keep it when the time comes. As soon as the child is weaned, I will bring him, so that he may appear in the presence of the Lord and dwell there forever." What I did not tell him was that I didn't want to make a habit of going to the Temple with Samuel and then returning home with him again. That would make it so much easier for me to tell myself, 'I'll leave him with Eli next year,' and when next year came, to say the same again. I did not want to tempt myself not to keep my vow to the Lord.

Five years later, Samuel was fully weaned, and the time had come. I made the yearly journey once again to the Temple to worship, and reminded myself that this was a time for joy and not for mourning. The Lord had granted my request! Yet my heart ached at the idea of leaving behind my only son forever. Samuel was a serious, reserved child, well suited for service to the Lord—and yet still, he was so young. Would he be frightened? Of course he would be frightened to be left among strangers. Was I doing the right thing? Perhaps I should take him home again and return again next year, when he was a bit older—

"Why are you sad, Mama?" Samuel had crept into our traveling tent beside me. I had explained to him already that he would remain in the house of the Lord, while his father and I would return home to Ramah without him. He had not seemed disturbed by this, but I had assumed that was because he didn't really understand what I'd said.

I looked at my little boy, so peaceful and trusting, and my anguish began to ebb away. "Do you understand that you will remain at Shiloh, while I and your father and all that you know will return home to Ramah?" I asked him.

He nodded. "Yes. You told me so already."

"And you are not afraid?"

He blinked at me, frowned, and shook his head. "I will be with the Lord, will I not?"

"Yes, my darling. You will dwell with the Lord forever."

"Then why would I be afraid?"

A little sob of gratitude rose up in my throat, but I swallowed it down, and hugged my son close. It was as if the Lord himself had whispered, peace to my soul.

When we arrived at Shiloh, Elkanah and I brought Samuel to the Temple, along with a three-year-old bull, an ephah of flour, and a skin of wine as a sacrifice. Elkanah slaughtered the bull, and when he had finished offering the sacrifice, together we brought Samuel to Eli. Samuel, fearless little man he was, stepped forward to meet Eli boldly. Eli looked down at the boy quizzically, and then up at me.

"Oh, my lord!" I said, "As you live, my lord, I am the woman who was standing here in your presence, praying to the Lord. For this child I prayed, and the Lord has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord. As long as he lives, he is lent to the Lord."

Samuel looked at me. "Is the Lord in this place, Mama?"

"Yes, my darling." I stifled the sob that rose in my throat, and tucked his hair behind his ear.

And then, as if he knew exactly what to do, Samuel fell to his knees, and raised his little hands in worship. Eli's face lit with delight, and something moved me to kneel beside him. The words that came to my lips were not my words—they flowed far too well, as if I were reading something written long ago. I spoke aloud, in the presence of the high priest.

"My heart exults in the Lord; my horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth derides my enemies, because I rejoice in your salvation." I thought of Peninnah's face as I said these words, and felt a fierce swell of satisfaction. She did not taunt me anymore. "There is none holy like the Lord: for there is none besides you; there is no rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly, let not arrogance come from your mouth; for the Lord is a God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty are broken, but the feeble bind on strength." I had a sense that I was now prophesying, speaking of something broader than just of Peninnah and myself. Was the Lord reminding me of His goodness, to give me strength to leave Samuel behind? "Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, but those who were hungry have ceased to hunger. The barren has borne seven, but she who has many children is forlorn." Oh, let that be a prophesy for me! I thought. "The Lord kills and brings to life; he brings down to Sheol and raises up. The Lord makes poor and makes rich; he brings low and he exalts. He raises up the poor from the dust; he lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes and inherit a seat of honor. For the pillars of the earth are the Lord's, and on them he has set the world. He will guard the feet of his faithful ones, but the wicked shall be cut off in darkness, for not by might shall a man prevail. The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken to pieces; against them he will thunder in heaven. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth; he will give strength to his king and exalt the horn of his anointed." Now I knew I was prophesying, for Israel had no king—our King was the Lord. We had only judges. Who was to be the king? I looked at Samuel, and wondered—would he be one of the judges? Or would he have anything to do with future kings of Israel?

When my psalm had finished, Elkanah put an arm around my shoulders and led me from the Temple, leaving Samuel behind. We had discussed that it would be best to go quickly, and not look back.

I was surprised, pleasantly so, that a balm of peace spread over my soul as I went. Though now ostensibly all was as it was before, and I was effectively childless, Peninnah never taunted me again. In my secret moments of sorrow, I clung to the prophesy that had sprung from my own lips: "the barren has borne seven." I knew seven was a number of perfection and completion and perhaps not literal, but surely one was not a number of perfection and completion, was it?

Yet for the next few years, when we returned for the sacrifice and I brought Samuel a new and slightly larger little robe I had made for him, he remained my only son. He was happy and at peace each time I saw him, and this was consolation to me.

And yet.

When Samuel was seven, before we left, Eli the priest approached us, placing a hand on each of our shoulders. With a fond look at Samuel, he said to Elkanah, "May the Lord give you children by this woman for the petition she asked of the Lord."

Oh, what a joy those words were! Spoken by the high priest, just as the first blessing had been, I knew they carried with them the same seeds of promise.

In the succeeding years, as Elkanah and I returned for the yearly sacrifice, I introduced Samuel to his brothers and sisters: five of them in all, six including him. As many as Peninnah had.

And yet, each year as Samuel grew strong in the presence of the Lord, I became more certain that he would be the greatest of them all. The hand of the Lord was upon his life, and he had been born for a purpose. My vow had been no coincidence. I watched eagerly for glimmers of what he was to become.

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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 meditation and retelling comes from Judges 6-7.

In Judges 6, Israel was overrun with the neighboring Midianites. These were the descendants of Abraham's second wife, Keturah (Genesis 25:1-2), after Sarah passed away.

Gideon must have been a young man, since he was still living in his father's household—though many of the Israelites were dwelling in caves at the time to hide from the Midianites, so it's unclear to me whether he too was living in a cave. In the retelling, I assumed so.The story opens with Gideon threshing wheat in a winepress to hide from the Midianites. Winepresses were dug out of the ground, and threshing is the removal of the kernel of grain from its stalk. This can be done by beating it by hand, or using animals to tread over the grain. Once the kernel has been separated, it is separated from the chaff (the part you don't eat) by throwing it up in the air and letting the wind blow it away. If Gideon had done this above ground, the Midianites would come and steal what little he had. So this opening scene is rather pitiful. A winepress is also used elsewhere in scripture to symbolize God's wrath and judgment (Isaiah 63:3-6, Lamentations 1:15, Joel 3:12-13), which makes sense: the Israelites are in this predicament of servitude in the first place because they have disobeyed the Lord, and they're on the wrong side of the covenant (Deuteronomy 28). God told them exactly what would happen if they disobeyed Him and ran after other gods.

But God is merciful, and every time Israel disobeys Him and suffers the consequences, they cry out to Him for deliverance. Gideon is God's answer to their prayers, only he doesn't know it yet. He doesn't much want to be God's answer, either: he's very much a reluctant hero, which makes me wonder if he was just the best God had to choose from among the Israelites of that time. He's certainly no David.

It's interesting to me that before God delivers the Israelites, the first thing He has Gideon do is destroy the idol to Baal. It's like He's reminding the people, You want me to help you? Remember the First Commandment? Remember why you're in this situation in the first place? A covenant is a covenant, and they've disobeyed their side of it. God is just, and He's not going to simply ignore the fact that the Israelites are in violation. He needs to get them back on the right side of the covenant before He can fulfill His end of the bargain. Praise God, Jesus did this for us, and now we are always on the right side of the covenant—Jesus became a curse for us and so redeemed us forever from the curse of the law (Galatians 3:13).

Gideon wasn't thrilled about pulling down Baal's altar; he knew that the worthless men of Israel would come against him and might even threaten to kill him for it. So he does it at night, when no one is awake to see it. It doesn't matter—by the next morning, somehow everyone knows it was him anyway, and they come knocking at his family home/cave and demanding of his father Joash that he give up Gideon so they can kill him for it. Even though Joash had worshipped Baal too, he surprisingly defends Gideon with words that echo the wisdom of Gamaliel in the New Testament: when Peter and John are standing trial before the Sanhedrin, Gamaliel advises the Pharisees to let them go on the grounds that if what they are teaching is not from God, it will dissipate anyway. But if it is from God, they will only find themselves fighting against God (Acts 5:38-39). Similarly, Joash tells the people who want to kill his son, if Baal is a god, he can contend with Gideon himself! They accept this logic, give Gideon a new name (Jerubbaal, meaning 'let Baal contend,') and go away.Now that God has His people back on the right side of the covenant, He sends Gideon into battle against the Midianites. Gideon then asks for his infamous fleece sign, to verify to him that he indeed heard God speak: that in the morning, the fleece will be wet and all the ground dry. Gideon knows he heard God; the request implies that he's struggling to believe what He said. This becomes especially true when Gideon gets his request, and then thinks, What if that was coincidence? So he asks again, and this time reverses the request. This time, he wants the fleece dry and the ground wet! Meanwhile, all the armies of Israel are assembling to fight. I wonder what he planned to do if his fleece sign didn't work as he expected! Tell them all to go home, I guess? I'm kind of amazed at how patient the Lord was with Gideon through all this. Perhaps that is because Gideon has never seen a miracle before (as he says at the beginning of Judges 6)—he's only heard the stories of his ancestors. It's not like the Israelites coming out of Egypt who saw God's power literally every day. One of God's principles is, "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked" (Luke 12:48). Paul even says in 1 Timothy 1:13, "Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief."

So God grants Gideon his two fleece signs. Then Gideon presumably is feeling pretty confident with his 32,000 fighting men, even though the Midianites are described as "numberless." Then God told him, no. He knew that if Gideon took that many men into battle, being a faithless people for the most part (that's how they got in this predicament in the first place), they would forget God and glorify themselves for the victory (Deuteronomy 8:17). God didn't want them to be able to boast (1 Corinthians 1:26-29); He wanted to make sure they knew this was all Him. So He whittled the army down to three hundred.

Now, Gideon freaks out again. Can't say I really blame him. God realizes He needs to give Gideon yet another sign, but this time God makes it up: He tells Gideon to take his servant and go down to the Midianite camp (which is kind of funny in itself: you're afraid to go with your army of 300, so how about you go to the enemy camp alone! That sounds less nerve-wracking.) We're told over and over again that the Midianites are numberless, like locusts, so how does Gideon know where to go? God takes care of that part. He takes Gideon right where he needs to go, and then gives one of the Midianites a dream, and his buddy the interpretation of the dream: that Gideon is going to defeat them all! God presumably could have given that dream to one of the Israelites, but then it could have been written off as wishful thinking. Not so when the same dream and interpretation comes out of the mouths of Gideon's enemies, and God supernaturally leads Gideon right where he needs to go to hear it.

Now, at last, Gideon is ready. There's nothing in the story to indicate that God gave him a battle strategy—it seems that Gideon came up with the trumpets, pitchers, and lanterns idea on his own. But it makes sense: obviously 300 swords against a numberless army isn't going to work! Gideon separates his army into three groups of one hundred, and sends each group to a different quadrant of the Midianite army. It was at night, which was key to the deception: the Midianites could not actually see how few of them there were. All they heard was smashing of pitchers, blowing of trumpets, and shouts all around them, and they saw lanterns that looked like they were surrounded. We can also gather, by the dream and its interpretation, that God had already struck fear into the hearts of the Midianites—so this was no more than what they expected. Panicked people don't behave rationally, so they assumed that Gideon's army was already upon them, and they started fighting each other! They defeated themselves by the power of deception. Then, as in many other disproportionate battles in scripture, the other Israelites who had been sent home saw the Midianites as they fled and joined in the battle.

After the battle, Gideon was honored as the next Judge of Israel for 40 years. Unfortunately, he did not end well. Despite God's amazing deliverance, once they had peace, Gideon led the people into worshipping other gods. It must have broken the Lord's heart: no matter how spectacular His deliverance, no matter how He provided for his people, once they were no longer in crisis they continually forgot Him. All He wanted was their love and worship! But Israel knew only God's deeds; they did not know His ways (Psalm 103:7). They missed His Father heart for them. God's kindness was always meant to lead us to repentance (Romans 2:4).

This retelling is, of course, through Gideon's eyes.

My father Joash used to tell me that I was born old. I'd never truly been a carefree child. I was serious, responsible, and prone to worry. This had only intensified in the last seven years, spanning my late childhood and early adulthood. Israel had been oppressed for those long years by the Midianites—ironically also descendants of Abraham, though by his second wife Keturah, rather than by our Princess of a Multitude, Sarah. The blood we shared created no kinship between us, however: the innumerable Midianites had decimated our land. Any food we planted and harvested, they took for themselves. Any animals they confiscated. They had reduced us to hiding in mountain caves and strongholds, pitiful and starving. Many of us died of starvation, though the rains were plentiful and the land bountiful: it did not matter. Ours was a manmade famine.

I, for one, was furious—but not just with the Midianites. I was also furious with my fellow Israelites, who persisted in their worship of Baal. I knew enough of the scriptures to strongly suspect that our oppression had been permitted by the Lord, because we were on the wrong side of the Mosaic covenant. We had forsaken Him, so He forsook us. Yet even in our oppression, the Israelites continued to worship false gods! I could not comprehend how they failed to make the connection, particularly after a prophet came to us and told us that our oppression was due to our disobedience. Were the old stories so distant to them that they regarded them as nothing more than fairy tales? Did they not remember Moses and the plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, Joshua and the battle of Jericho?

If I were completely honest, I was also angry with the Lord. We were His chosen people, yet we were reduced to this! I knew it was unfair of me to feel this way. The Lord had told us clearly in the Torah what would happen if we did not follow after Him wholeheartedly. We had not upheld our end of the covenant. Our misery was no more than we deserved. He had not broken His word. Yet here I was, skulking in caves and threshing wheat in a winepress so that the Midianites would not see and confiscate what little I had to live on. It was pathetic.

I wiped the sweat from my brow when I'd come to a stopping place, and climbed out of the winepress. Nearby was a terebinth tree, one of the few living things that still survived in Israel. Presumably that was because the tree produced nothing edible. I startled to see a man sitting beneath the tree, watching me. My heart went to my throat: at first I assumed he was one of the Midianites. But they did not travel alone: they swooped down en masse like a swarm of locusts. The man sat patiently, his robes new and clean, the lines of his face smooth and unconcerned.

"The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor!" was his surprising greeting.

My mind did quick math. The man's robes were too clean, almost glowing. He face seemed radiant with an inner glory. These things combined with his strange greeting, as if he knew me and had been waiting for me, told me this was no ordinary man. I might have thought his epithet for me was sarcastic, but there was no sarcasm in his tone. Rather, the words had almost the effect of a spell. I felt emboldened by them.

Something about the man's countenance invited confidence, too. So, in response to his greeting, I spilled out all my pent up emotions. "Please, sir, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us, saying, 'Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?' But now the Lord has forsaken us and given us into the hand of Midian."

The man listened to my outburst, unperturbed. Then he said with ringing authority, "Go in this might of yours and save Israel from the hand of Midian; do not I send you?"

I blinked, inspecting the man once again. Was it possible? I had thought perhaps this might be an angel. But could it be the Lord Homself? Hope, fear, and doubt mingled in my breast as I said, "Please, Lord," I tested him with this title, "how can I save Israel? Behold, my clan is the weakest in Manasseh, and I am the least in my father's house." This was true: I was the youngest of my father's sons, and the weakest in physical might. Of all the men of Israel that the Lord might have picked as his champion, I seemed the unlikeliest choice.

The man answered, "But I will be with you, and you shall strike the Midianites as one man."

I took this in for a moment, uncertain. Finally I said, "If now I have found favor in your eyes, then show me a sign that it is you who speak with me." He knew what I meant. In the old stories, when people spoke to the Lord or to angels, they always knew it. This man was not so remarkable as all that. At least, I still felt like there was room for doubt. "Please do not depart from here until I come to you and bring out my present and set it before you."

He inclined his head. "I will stay till you return."

I went into the cave that served as my family home, where we hid our stores of food and our flocks. I prepared a young goat, and placed the meat in a basket and the broth in a pot. As these were cooking, I took an ephah of flour to prepare unleavened cakes. Then I took all of it back to the terebinth tree and presented them to the man.

"Take the meat and the unleavened cakes and put them on this rock," he said, indicating a large flat stone, "and pour the broth over them."

I obeyed and stepped back. Then the man took the staff he carried, and reached out its tip to touch the offering. Fire sprang up from the rock, and consumed the meal, The the man vanished, right before my eyes.

I gasped, suddenly trembling all over. "Alas, O Lord God! For now I have seen the angel of the Lord face to face!"

A word came to my spirit then. I knew it was not of myself, because it felt Other and carried with it a balm to my soul. "Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die."

I needed to do something. I needed to respond to this great thing that had happened. My ancestors all seemed to respond in the same way, by building an altar and naming it according to their experience of the Lord in that place, so I did the same. I assembled stones to build an altar, placing the flat one that had just served as the platter for my offering at its pinnacle, now scorched by the angel's fire. I named the altar The Lord is Peace, for the word He had spoken to my soul.

I spent the rest of that day ruminating on what the angel had said to me, though. Save Israel from the hand of Midian? How was I supposed to do that? Where should I even begin?

In the night, the Lord answered me… sort of. "Take your father's bull, and the second bull seven years old, and pull down the altar of Baal that your father has, and cut down the Asherah that is beside it and build an altar to the Lord your God on the top of the stronghold here, with stones laid in due order. Then take the second bull and offer it as a burnt offering with the wood of the Asherah that you shall cut down."

This made sense, I thought. The reason why Israel had been oppressed was because of our disobedience. So the very first step would be to turn their hearts back to the Lord; then they would be on the right side of the covenant, and then the Lord would be just in routing our enemies. But even this lesser command caused me to tremble in fear of the men of Israel who worshipped Baal and Asherah, not to mention of my own family. They would take it as a great offense if I were to do this thing. They would no doubt even seek my life for it. Of course, I had to obey a direct command from the Lord, though. He'd spoken to me in the night for a reason, though, surely? Perhaps he meant for me to do the deed in the cover of darkness, so that no one would know it was me?

I approached ten of my servants that night, and shook them awake. "The Lord has commanded me to tear down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah pole, and rebuild the altar of the Lord," I explained when I had assembled them together. "Then we are to offer a bull as a sacrifice for the many sins of Israel, and use the Asherah pole for wood." I saw my own trepidation reflected in their faces, though to a lesser degree—after all, I would be held responsible for the act if anyone found out who had done it, not they. But they did as I commanded. We worked until the darkest part of the early hours, and retired to our beds before dawn. I couldn't sleep, though. I lay awake, heart pounding, waiting for someone to discover the deed and demand my blood in payment.

Sure enough, by morning, the men of Israel had seen, had inquired, and had determined that I was responsible.

"Bring out your son, that he may die!" I heard angry voices demand of my father Joash. "For he has broken down the altar of Baal and cut down the Asherah beside it!" Many clamors of agreement echoed the sentiment. I was seized with fear, and hid in the interior of the cave, imagining what it might be like to die by stoning. Somewhere in the back of my mind, as I cowered, the angel's words came back to me.

Mighty man of valor, indeed.

"Will you contend for Baal?" my father's surprising answer echoed back to me. "Or will you save him? Whoever contends for him shall be put to death by morning. If he is a god, let him contend for himself, because his altar has been broken down."

I was stunned. Then, I felt a rush of gratitude toward my father. I had half expected him to hand me over to the mob, rather than defend me. After all, he too had worshipped Baal! Yet here he was, threatening those who came against me with death! Grumbles of the men reached my ears, and I heard the term "Jerubbaal" used to refer to myself, as in "let Baal contend against him." But they said this as they left our household, obeying the demand of my father. When they had gone, I emerged from the depths of the cave, afraid to meet my father's eyes and see his disapproval. But he surprised me yet again. He nodded when he saw me, a look of respect on his face.

"You did what I should have done long ago, son," he said. "It took great courage, and reminded us all of Whom we truly serve. I am proud of you."

I blinked, unable to reply due to the lump in my throat. Instead I nodded back, and my father clapped me on the shoulder.

I pondered his words, replaying them over and over again in my mind, along with the angel's greeting. The Lord is with you, O mighty man of valor!

What was true? Who was I: Gideon who hid in a cave and in a winepress, Gideon who obeyed the word of the Lord only by night and in cover of darkness, and then quailed in fear of discovery? Or Gideon, mighty man of valor, pride of his father?

Who did I want to be?

In the following days, the Midianites and the Amalekites joined forces and crossed the Jordan, camping on our land in the Valley of Jezreel. Already a change had begun in me after the incident with the altar and the words from my father. Until then, fear had prevailed. Now, a righteous anger from the Lord took its place, consuming all fear, and all at once, I grew bold. What would a mighty man of valor do? I thought. The Lord had told me to go up against the Midianites, had he not? I needed an army for this, did I not? So I sounded my trumpet, and sent out messengers to the nearby tribes to join me in fighting against our enemies. Nevermind that these were the very men who sought to kill me for dismantling their altar not long ago. They would come, because the Lord willed it.

Alas. Once the messengers had been sent, the boldness of the Lord left me, and my old friend Fear returned. I replayed my encounter with the angel who had burned up my offering with fire and vanished before my eyes. I rehearsed his words to me, trying to beat back the fear and recapture the boldness that I had felt just hours before.

It was no use. The fear was winning. I felt a little sick to my stomach that night, as I thought of the sea of the Midianite and Amalekite armies. No matter how many of the Israelites responded to my call—thousands, perhaps—we would still be hideously outnumbered. And I had never even seen battle before. What did I know of commanding an army, or the strategy of war? Images of my own slow death played on repeat in my mind, gored by a Midianite sword… I just wanted to be sure the Lord hadn't changed His mind about me, or that I hadn't somehow misunderstood.

"O Lord," I murmured, "If you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said, behold, I am laying a fleece of wool on the threshing floor. If there is dew on the fleece alone, and it is dry on all the ground, then I shall know that you will save Israel by my hand, as you have said."

When I arose the next morning, the fleece was not just damp; it was so wet, I wrung out enough dew to fill a bowl with water. The surrounding ground was dry.

But, what if I hadn't made my test hard enough? Perhaps the dew fell in the night, collected in the fleece and was trapped in its fibers, but there was enough time for it to evaporate from the rest of the ground! I should have done it the other way around, I thought; this sign could have just been coincidence.

I thought about this all day, as the men of Israel began to arrive in companies and camped all around, awaiting my orders. I now had two signs, I reminded myself: the angel, and the fleece filled with dew. But what if the angel had been… something else? I had no idea what else, since I'd never seen any creature conjure fire or vanish like that before, but he'd sure looked like an ordinary man. Perhaps my eyes had played tricks on me, or perhaps he was a magician, like those in the household of Pharaoh in the days of Moses. As for the fleece: I'd really almost explained that away. I felt convinced now that the same would happen every night, if I laid out the same fleece, because that was just the way of things.

So I prayed that night, as the armies assembled around me, "O Lord, let not your anger burn against me; let me speak just once more. Please let it be dry on the fleece only, and on all the ground let there be dew."

When I awoke the next morning, I was almost afraid to set my feet upon the fleece. If it were damp, what would I tell all the assembled men, after my bold proclamations? And I was sure it would be damp…

But no. It was bone dry, while the surrounding ground was slick with moisture. I closed my eyes in a prayer of thanks. I had not assembled my armies in vain. The Lord was with me. The Lord would deliver us by my hand. I was a mighty man of valor. I chanted these words in my mind, that I might come to believe them. Mighty man of valor. Mighty man of valor.

That morning, I assembled all those with me, 33,000 men in all, and we marched to camp beside the spring called Harod. The camp of the Midianites was north of us, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. When we arrived, I sought the Lord for battle strategy.

I wished I hadn't.

"The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, 'My own hand has saved me.' Now therefore proclaim in the ears of the people, saying, 'Whoever is fearful and trembling, let him return home and hurry away from Mount Gilead.'"

Can I be one of those? I thought but did not say, though of course the Lord knew I was thinking it. But, I was on the hook now. The Lord had given me all my requested signs; how could I not obey? So I made the announcement to the men of Israel, and 22,000 of my troops responded and went home, much to my dismay. I had only 10,000 men left.

The Lord spoke to me again. "The people are still too many."

Are you kidding me? I thought. I was already in a panic over ten thousand, versus an army without number.

The Lord went on, "Take them down to the water, and I will test them for you there, and anyone of whom I say to you, 'This one shall go with you,' shall go with you, and anyone of whom I say to you, 'This one shall not go with you,' shall not go."

I did as the Lord commanded, taking my remaining meager ten thousand men down to the spring. Each of them naturally approached the water for a drink. The Lord spoke to me and said, "Everyone who laps the water with his tongue, as a dog laps, you shall set by himself. Likewise, everyone who kneels down to drink."

I thought I knew where this was going, and I didn't like it one bit. But I did as the Lord commanded. Of course, the vast majority knelt down to drink and cupped the water in their hands, or else placed their faces directly in the water. Lapping was highly inefficient, so of the ten thousand, only three hundred men chose it. I was surprised it was even that many.

I knew what the Lord would tell me even before the word came.

"With the 300 men who lapped I will save you and give the Midianites into your hand, and let all the others go every man to his home."

My voice was hoarse, and it might have squeaked once or twice when I made this announcement to the men. I wondered what the result might be if I asked those remaining 300 now which of them was afraid.

The Lord spoke to me again as night fell, with the numberless camp of Midian below us in the valley.

"Arise, go down against the camp, for I have given it into your hand. But if you are afraid to go down, go down to the camp with Purah your servant, and you shall hear what they say, and afterward your hands shall be strengthened to go down against the camp."

I almost laughed at the irony.If I'm afraid to go with my meager army, go by myself instead, into the enemy camps. Obviously. But, one thing I was good at, after seven years of occupation: I knew how to hide. I'd been doing it for most of my adult life.

What I did not know, and didn't realize I didn't know until I was already in the valley, was that I had no idea where I was going. There were hundreds of thousands of Midianites and Amalekites. Upon whom, exactly, was I supposed to eavesdrop?

I did not have to wonder long. On the periphery of the enemy camp, hidden in shadow, the first two men I came upon talked by a fire. One of them related a dream from the night before to his comrade.

"Behold, I dreamed a dream, and behold, a cake of barley bread tumbled into the camp of Midian and came to the tent and struck it so that it fell and turned it upside down, so that the tent lay flat. It was a very odd dream, to be sure, and it felt different than most usual dreams, is if it were both prophetic and symbolic in some way. What do you suppose it could mean?"

The comrade shook his head and replied with trepidation, "This is no other than the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel; God has given into his hand Midian and all the camp!"

I almost laughed aloud at the ridiculousness of this conversation. The Lord had given a dream to my enemy, and led me straight where I needed to go in order to hear both dream and interpretation from men who should not even know my name, let alone be inclined to predict their own defeat at my hands! How many signs did I need? I had the angel; I had the fleece, twice; and now, this. At long last, I felt what the angel had first pronounced me to be: a mighty man of valor.

Purah and I snuck back up to the Israelite camps. When we arrived, I announced to the men, "Arise, for the Lord has given the host of Midian into your hand!" The battle strategy was suddenly obvious to me, as well. How else could three hundred men come against a vast and numberless army, but by trickery and deception?

I divided the three hundred men in three groups of about one hundred each, distributing trumpets, jars, and torches among them.

"Look at me, and do likewise," I commanded. "When I come to the outskirts of the camp, do as I do. When I blow the trumpet, I and all who are with me, then blow the trumpets also on every side of all the camp and shout, "For the Lord and for Gideon!"

I and my company of a hundred men gave enough time for the other two companies to get in place around the opposite sides of the Midianite camp. About the middle watch of the night, my company approached the edge of camp. Then I raised the trumpet to my lips, closed my eyes in a silent prayer to the Lord, and blew.

All around me there was a sudden cacophony of trumpets, followed by the shattering of jars, the blaze of torches, and the shouts of a hundred voices, "A sword for the Lord and for Gideon!" Surrounding the Midianite army, the other two companies did the same. The effect in the blackness, I had to admit, was impressive: the noise and the torches made our meager three hundred men seem like a vast army.

The effect was immediate. The Midianites cried out, roused from sleep and caught unawares. Some of them ran. Many of them grabbed their swords, supposing us to be inside their camp, and began to cut one another down. Those who escaped the swords of their fellows fled until morning and long into the day, to Beth-shittah and even as far as the border of Abel-meholah.

As the Midianites fled, men who had abandoned my army at the direction of the Lord came out from their homes and pursued them with us, from the tribes of Naphtali, Asher, and Manasseh. I sent messengers to Ephraim as well, so that they too might help us force the Midianites and Amalekites even as far as the Jordan River.

And so the word of the Lord came true, just as it did in the stories of old: three hundred men routed an army without number, fighting not with swords, but with trumpets, jars, and torches. My only accomplishment in the matter was that I finally believed the Lord, and did as He commanded. I promised myself that if ever I had the chance, I would believe Him much more readily the next time. Before, I had only the stories of my ancestors. Now, I had my own victories as well, which I determined to pass down to my children, and to my children's children, that they might know and call upon the name of the Lord. He is Jehovah Sabaoth, the Lord of Hosts, who fights or me. He is El Shaddai, who destroys my enemies. He is Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord my victory and deliverance. And He is the same, yesterday, today, and forever.

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When David was anointed king, he was between 14 and 17 according to scholars. By this time, he's thirty years old, and he's been on the run in Israel with his 600 Mighty Men that whole time. At last, in Chapter 27, David says he will "one day die at Saul's hand." That's definitely not what God said: God said he would be king. But after 13-16 years of running, I can certainly understand that his hope deferred made his heart sick (Proverbs 13:12). He takes his Mighty Men and leaves Israel altogether, to go and dwell in the land of the Philistines. It's not clear, but I suspect this wasn't God's will for him, based on what happens next.

David doesn't go to just in any Philistine territory, either: he's in Gath, Goliath's hometown! King Achish of Gath recognizes him as the hero of whom the Israelites sang, "Saul has killed his thousands, and David his tens thousands." Yet for some reason, Achish trusts David implicitly, giving him and his Mighty Men their own city of Ziklag. From there, David takes his men on raids against the Amalekites and other surrounding enemies of Israel, carrying out God's instruction to take the territory, as King Saul should have been doing. Yet whenever Achish asks him where he's been, David tells him he was raiding the Negeb, part of Israel. So he lies, basically. This further convinces Achish that David is his man: the Israelites will never take him back now!

Two things happen as a result of this: first, David makes a lot of enemies among the surrounding nations, who want retribution for his raids and plunder against them. They also know the location of his home base of Ziklag. The second is that, when the Philistines march into battle against Israel, Achish wants David by his side. According to the text, David wants to go, too. Scripture almost never records a person's motives or thoughts, though; only their actions and words. Knowing what we know of David, it seems extremely unlikely that he meant what he said. The other Philistine leaders refused to let David go into battle with them, though, lest he turn on them from within their own ranks. I'm sure they were right, and David would have done just that. There's no way the anointed king would have slaughtered his own people!

So David and his men are sent back to Ziklag, which they had left unprotected, expecting to go to war. When they arrive, they find it in flames. The Amalekites took their opportunity for revenge, and ravaged the city.

Imagine how David and his men felt as they approached the city from a distance, and saw the smoke trailing up into the sky. When they carried out raids against their enemies, they left no survivors. Surely the men would have therefore assumed their families had all been slaughtered! No wonder the Mighty Men, who had been following David for over a decade and had little to show for it, turned on him at last. They spoke of stoning David, blaming him for their devastating loss—and maybe it was his fault! After all, were they supposed to be living among the Philistines? Were they supposed to have gone off to war with Achish, considering David earned their place there through deceit? I'm sure all these thoughts went through David's head too. Had he irrevocably stepped outside the will of the Lord? Was there no going back?

David's response to this crisis is truly incredible. He's been on the run for 13-16 years, clinging to a promise that seems utterly impossible. He made some poor choices, with seemingly devastating consequences. Now, he's lost everything, and the only men loyal to him have turned against him. But instead of despairing, he "encourages himself in the Lord." There was no one else to encourage him; they all wanted to kill hiM! He had to do it himself. To dramatize this part, I put David's own Psalm 61 in his mouth, since that apparently was written about Ziklag, and he may well have penned it during those moments.

Next, he calls for the ephod: a garment worn by the priest, also used to receive direction from the Lord. He then asked the Lord if he should take his men and pursue the Amalekites. The ephod could only give him a yes/no answer, and yet the scripture says that God told him, "pursue; you will recover all." This must have been a word spoken directly to David's spirit. I'd imagine it also occurred to David as he spoke to the Lord that there were no bodies at Ziklag, so they must have taken their families captive, rather than slaughtered them! Why? Presumably this was God's favor and protection, since David and his men showed no such mercy to their enemies.

David manages to convince four hundred of his six hundred men, so lately intent upon stoning him, to accompany him in his raid. Two hundred were too exhausted to go on. David didn't know where the Amalekites had gone, but God provided direction in the form of one of their abandoned Egyptian slaves. They found him wandering in the desert, where he likely would have died of starvation if not for David and his men's kindness. In return, the man agrees to lead them to the Amalekites' camp. The men catch them unawares, reveling and rejoicing in their spoils. David and his four hundred men beat them for twenty-four hours straight until four hundred of the Amalekites escape and flee—the same number of men that David started with!This alone tells us David's men were vastly outnumbered, yet it doesn't matter. God is with them. And just as God promised, they recovered all: wives, children, livestock, wealth. They even gathered some of the spoils that the Amalekites had taken from other raids, and David sent some of it to Israelite leaders as a gift, to reestablish the contacts he had lost during his time living with the Philistines.

Meanwhile, during the battle against the Philistines, both King Saul and his son Jonathan are killed. David doesn't learn this until three days afterwards, when a messenger comes to tell him—carrying Saul's crown.

The moment has come at long, long last. David is crowned king first of Judah (Saul's other son Ishbosheth initially succeeds Saul in Israel). Then a few years later, David reunites the entire kingdom. In a period of just a few days, he goes from losing everything, on the verge of losing his life to the men sworn to protect and follow him, to being crowned king.

God can take an utterly impossible situation and turn it around in a moment.

This is the text of my retelling:

My soul weariness at times threatened to turn my heart bitter. But that, I could not allow.

It had been sixteen years since the day Samuel the prophet had anointed me king. I was a fourteen-year old dreamer then. Now at thirty, I felt as disillusioned as a man twice my age. I could scarcely remember the boy I once was. For most of those years, I had been on the run from King Saul, who ironically was so dear to me that I could not raise my hand against him. For one thing, he still held the position of the Lord's anointed until the Lord saw fit to remove him, and that alone would have been enough to stay my hand. For another, he had been my father-in-law. Well did I recall the days when I had dreamt of his daughter Michal as the beautiful princess I had never yet seen. As a reward for defeating Goliath, she had become my bride. What a triumph my wedding day had been! One of the pinnacles of my young life, a symbol to me of all that the Lord had promised.

It had been years since I had even seen Michal. By now, I was sure she had been given away to another man.

Saul was also dear to me for the sake of his son, Jonathan. I loved Jonathan far more than any of my brothers by blood. Whatever souls are made of, his and mine were the same. I also owed him my life. Though Jonathan was next in line for the throne, he knew his father sought to kill me, and aided in my escape. He knew of the Lord's calling on my life, and told me that he planned to give me his throne. He would be content to be second in command, he said! What a friend. Yet it had been many years since I had seen Jonathan, either. I wondered if we would even still recognize one another.

It wasn't as if the Lord had completely abandoned me in all these years of running and hiding. He had given me my Mighty Men—my own personal army, six hundred in all. True, they were made up of the misfits and former criminals of Israel, the men who were poorly esteemed and therefore had no love for King Saul. They had followed me wherever I went all these years, and so far had nothing to show for their pains.

Finally in exhaustion and discouragement, I'd just gotten tired of never having a place to lay my head. If I stayed in one place in Israel, I feared that Saul would at last find and kill me. That wasn't what Samuel had prophesied, but what if there were different kinds of prophesies—those that would be, and those that may be? What if my choices made a difference in whether or not the word came to pass?

I could not hope to ask Samuel about this, as word had reached me that he had died. And the truth was, I'd reached the end of my endurance, emotionally. I could not flee anymore within the borders of Israel. So, about a year and four months ago, I'd crossed Israel's borders into Philistine country, and presented myself before Achish, king of Gath. The irony did not escape me: this was Goliath's home country, the great warrior I had killed in my youth. King Achish was enormous, like all of the Philistines, but not as large as their champion had been. I shall never forget the confusion on Achish's face when I presented myself to him, and he did the math, sizing me up.

"Saul has struck down his thousands, and David his tens thousands," Achish had murmured to himself. This was the song the young women of Israel had sung in praise of me all those years ago: one of the inciting causes of Saul's jealousy of me. The song had been sung far and wide, and apparently had even reached Gath. I bowed my head in acknowledgement.

"Yes my lord, that was me."

"But you are so small!" he exclaimed, and I had the impression he had not meant to say it aloud. I laughed, and then he laughed. Suddenly we were friends.

"You would be surprised what this 'small' man can do with a sword, my lord. Not to mention a sling. You know that story, I trust."

"I see now why you needed the sling! You would not have been able to reach Goliath with a sword!" It was an exaggeration, but I let the king enjoy his mirth at my expense. I needed him in a good mood.

When he had finished, I said, "Be that as it may, you have heard the stories. I offer my sword to my lord to fight against his enemies, both mine and those of my six hundred fighting men with me."

Achish shook his head, confused, but remarkably unsuspicious. "Why should Israel's great hero offer his sword to me?"

I was prepared for this question. I had expected it, and I had the best possible answer. I sighed. "Because King Saul has been trying to kill me for the last fifteen years, and I am tired of fleeing from him in Israel. I do not think he will continue to seek me here, in the land of his enemies."

"Kill you! One of his best warriors?" Achish exclaimed. "Why should he do such a foolish thing?"

"Jealousy makes a man do strange things, my lord."

"Ah," Achish's expression cleared with understanding. "The song."

I let him think that was all. I did not tell him I had been anointed king in his stead all those years ago. That was a secret that would not serve me well in the country of Israel's enemies.

Achish not only allowed me to remain within the Philistine borders, but gave to me and to my men the country town called Ziklag. It was the first home base I and my men had known in over a decade. From there, we went out on raids against Israel's enemies in neighboring territories, doing what the Lord had told King Saul to do: taking the land back from the Geshurites, the Girzites, and the Amalekites. We brought the spoils back with us to Ziklag. Whenever Achish asked what we had been doing, I would always tell him we had raided the Negeb. Why this convinced the king of my loyalty to him, why he never asked any questions, I never knew. Perhaps the Lord gave me favor in his eyes.

Unfortunately, Achish's trust in me ran so deep that he called upon me and my men to fight with him against Israel. I had suspected that day might come eventually, but it meant the end of our respite. Achish, who had accidentally become a friend of sorts, would know my true loyalties when I and my men began to fight against him for Israel, from among his own ranks. Where would we go then? Having carried out raids against enemies in surrounding nations, we could hardly seek refuge there. Achish would become my enemy. Saul was still trying to kill me, so returning to Israel was less than ideal. But what choice did I have?

My men assembled with the Philistine army at Aphek at dusk, to march upon the Israelite army in Jezreel come daybreak. My heart ached with homesickness as we approached. I wondered if any of the soldiers I had known in my youth would be among them. I wondered if Jonathan would be there. Of course he would; he was a man of valor, and would never be content to sit home while the armies of Israel went to war. He would be on the front lines. I would fight by his side, if I could. I only hoped I would not be called upon to kill my friend Achish.

The Philistine commanders stared at my men and me with narrowed eyes. I saw them approach Achish, and I knew what they were saying. "What are these Hebrews doing here?" Achish would defend me, as I knew from his posture that he was doing even as I watched from a distance. "I have found no fault in him to this day!" he would be saying. The commanders' response looked angry. "He shall not go down with us to battle, lest in the battle he become an adversary to us!" This I imagined, for this was the truth. Shortly, Achish withdrew from his commanders and approached me, his posture telling me what he had to say before I heard his words.

"As the Lord lives, you have been honest, and to me it seems right that you should march out and in with me in the campaign. For I have found nothing wrong in you from the day of your coming to me to this day. Nevertheless, the lords do not approve of you. So go back now; and go peaceably, that you may not displease the lords of the Philistines."

A great weight lifted from my heart, though it mingled with sadness that my vision of fighting for Israel again, side by side with Jonathan, would not come true. Channeling these mixed emotions, I replied, "But what have I done? What have you found in your servant from the day I entered your service until now, that I may not go and fight against the enemies of my lord the king?"

Achish replied to me, "I know that you are as blameless in my sight as an angel of God. Nevertheless, the commanders of the Philistines have said, 'He shall not go up with us to the battle.' Now then rise early in the morning with the servants of your lord who came with you, and start early in the morning, and depart as soon as you have light."

I told my men the will of the king, to the general relief of all. They did not mind betraying Achish in battle, but they had not cared for the prospect of losing Ziklag. Nor did I. I roused the men and we set off back to Ziklag again at first light, before the battle between Israel and the Philistines began. My heart broke as we left, and I wrestled with sadness and despair and anger on the three days' journey from Jezreel back to Ziklag. When would I be allowed to return to my homeland, the nation I loved more than my own life's blood, the nation I had been anointed to rule? I was now thirty years old, and I had been anointed at fourteen! How much longer? Had I somehow already missed my opportunity? When I came to the land of the Philistines, even though I had remained loyal to Israel throughout, had I stepped irrevocably outside the will of the Lord? Would He not tell me? Would He say nothing?

I was still in this dark mood when we came to Ziklag, longing to pour out my heart to Abigail, my wise and clever wife who always seemed to know what to say and do. But as soon as the city came into view, I stopped abruptly. So did all six hundred of my men.

The smoke of the city's remains trailed up to the sky.

I fell to my knees and let out a wail of grief. All around me, my men did the same, shouting and weeping. Some ran on ahead to inspect the decimated city close up, but we found exactly what we knew we'd find: there was nothing, and no one left.

"You did this," snarled one of my men at last, extending a shaking finger at me, cold fury in his eyes. Then he raised his voice to his fellows. "This is David's doing! He led the raids against the Amalekites, and this is their retribution! He left our city and our wives and our children defenseless while we went off to fight a duplicitous war! This is what we get in return for years of loyalty to him! Let's kill him! Stone him, it's no more than he deserves!"

I recoiled in shock, but could not muster the strength to reply. I hid my face, despair threatening to crush me from the inside. The mighty man's declaration met with grumbles of agreement, but without any real animosity behind them. They did not hate me, I knew; not truly. They were bitter in soul at the loss of their wives and their children, and wanted someone to blame. No doubt, I was to blame: I was the one who made all the decisions that had led us to this place. Perhaps I did deserve to die. Perhaps it would be better if I died; then all my struggles in this miserable world would be over.

No. The word rose up on the inside of me unbidden, like a beacon of hope. It did not come from me, but it stopped my destructive thoughts in their downward spiral. No. The Lord was good. His promises still stood, no matter how impossible things looked. I would encourage myself in the Lord; I would not allow myself to despair.

"Hear my cry, O God," I whispered, "listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call to you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings! For you, O God, have heard my vows; you have given me the heritage of those who fear your name. Prolong the life of the king; may his years endure to all generations! May he be enthroned forever before God; appoint steadfast love and faithfulness to watch over him! So will I ever sing praises to your name, as I perform my vows day after day."

I felt steadier when I had finished praying. Then, suddenly, it occurred to me how strange it was that there were no bodies. That meant the Amalekites had taken our wives and children alive. Why had they done so? In our raids against our enemies, we had left no survivors. All was not lost; those we loved yet lived, though among our enemies, and surely our livestock and wealth too had been plundered, but not destroyed!

I knew what I had to do next. I called to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, and said, "Bring me the ephod." He brought me the garment worn by the priest, used in both worship and in seeking the will of the Lord. I sought direction now. Beneath the breastplate, I removed Urim and Thummim, flat stones with markings upon them. Then I prayed to the Lord, "Shall I pursue after this band? Shall I overtake them?" The stones themselves were capable of only yes or no answers. They now said yes, but I heard in my spirit, "Pursue, for you shall surely overtake and shall surely rescue." I closed my eyes. Relief flooded me, as if the raid were already complete. This mourning would not last. It would be turned to joy!

I stood and announced to my men, "The Lord has told me to pursue the Amalekites. We shall overtake them and rescue our families!" I announced. "Come, we have no time to lose!"

The reception of this announcement was mixed. Some received it with immediate relief, as I had. Some cursed me for my optimism. Some merely watched me with hopelessness and exhaustion. But at last I persuaded all six hundred of them to arm themselves once again, and follow me.

It became apparent, though, that two hundred of my company were too exhausted to participate in the raid, heartsick as well as weary. I know from too much experience that the former can be far worse than the latter. A crushed spirit who can bear? Quite frankly, I did not want their negativity in our company anyway, as the mood was infectious. I was more than happy to leave them behind at the brook Besor. The four hundred remaining men and I rode on in the general direction of where the raiding band of Amalekites was likely to be. Truth be told, I did not know exactly where I was going, and hoped the Lord would give me a sign.

It came, in a surprising form: a dark-skinned, weak, and half starved man, wandering alone in open country. He was some distance away from us, but I called my men to halt, and to bring him to me. I had compassion on him, and before we spoke, I ordered him to be given bread and water from our stores. When he ate this hungrily, I encouraged the men to find him something more: a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins.

When he had eaten and was satisfied, his eyes brightened and his whole countenance changed. At last, I asked him, "To whom do you belong? And where are you from?"

The man answered, "I am a young man of Egypt, servant to an Amalekite, and my master left me behind because I fell sick three days ago. We had made a raid against the Negeb of the Cherethites and against that which belongs to Judah and against the Negeb of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire."

There was a murmuring ripple through my men at this information. My heart leapt within me with fierce joy: this mistreated man was the Lord's provision for us!

"Will you take me down to this band?" I asked him.

A brief look of trepidation flitted across the man's features, but then it cleared. Had we not already proven ourselves kinder than the master he left? "Swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will take you down to this band."

"Do this for us, and after that your life shall be your own," I swore. "We shall even send you on your way with a portion of the spoils."

So the servant led us where we needed to go, right to the heart of the Amalekite camp. We found them unawares, eating and drinking and dancing in celebration of their great spoils from the Philistines and from Judah. No doubt they expected no one to pursue them, as the battle between the Philistines and Israel still raged on. Had we not been sent away by Achish, we too would still have been at war.

Alas for them! My men, revived and incensed at the sight, attacked and struck down the Amalekites from twilight that day until the evening of the next. Of the entire company of them, only four hundred escaped on mounted camels—the same number of my entire avenging army.

When the fighting was done, I sought among the women and children we had rescued for my two wives, Abigail and Ahinoam. All around us, my exhausted and filthy men reunited with their families with shouts and tears. Best of all, not a single thing was missing that the Amalekites had taken, whether small or great, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that had been taken. We recovered all. We even took flocks and herds that had not belonged to us, driving them before us on our return journey to the brook Besor where we left the other two hundred men. Some of the four hundred who had come with me grumbled and begrudged their brothers their portion of the spoils, but I rebuked them for this.

"The Lord has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike." I was in a generous mood, and besides, I did not wish to alienate one third of my men, nor to encourage favoritism. We were a family, and we would act like one.

When we returned to our burned and ruined city, I sent portions of the spoil to the elders of Judah, saying, "Here is a present for you from the spoil of the enemies of the Lord." It was a way for me to reestablish contact with the men of my country, from whom I had been estranged during the long years of my flight. Some of the spoil had originally been theirs, too, according to the Egyptian servant, whom we had also sent away a wealthy man.

In the following two days, the men set about rebuilding Ziklag, though I did not join them. I knew in my heart that I would not be here long enough, though I did not know why.

On the third day after our return, I had my answer. I saw a messenger running toward me, his clothes torn and dirty. I froze, as if my heart had turned to stone. He carried with him a crown and an armlet.

He carried a crown.

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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 1 Kings 19. This is the test for the retelling:

I wasn't even winded, despite running all the way from Mount Carmel to the city of Jezreel. I was, however, soaked to the bone. This was just as well, as it washed away all the blood from my skin and clothes. I didn't think anything would ever fully remove the stains, though.

It still stormed when I took shelter from the driving rain against the wall of the fortress shielded from the direction of the wind. I shook from adrenaline, too. It had been quite a day. Three and a half years ago, I'd prophesied a draught over Israel for their disobedience to the Lord, which would last until I said it was over. I'd spent most of those three years in hiding, since I knew that King Ahab and Queen Jezebel would love to kill me as the source of their troubles—though at the same time, I knew they wouldn't dare, since if they killed me then theoretically the draught might last forever. But today, I'd gathered together eight hundred and fifty false prophets on top of Mount Carmel, not to mention all the people of Israel as witnesses. I'd proven that the God of Israel was the one true God. Well, He proved it, with fire from heaven; I just cooperated, I guess. The Israelites were convinced. They cried out that He was the One True God—took them long enough to figure that out—and together they apprehended the false prophets. Then I slaughtered every last one of them with the sword in the Kishon Valley.

Eight hundred and fifty men. I'd never killed anyone in my life before—but that was the penalty for being a false prophet in Israel, according to Deuteronomy. No one else was going to carry it out; Ahab was evil, and I was the only prophet of the Lord left. So it was all up to me. I wondered if I would ever purge those gory images from my imagination.

That wasn't even the end of the day. Ahab had stood as a witness to all of this, and then I'd prophesied the end of the draught. I wouldn't have done this on my own, since I knew the draught was the only reason Ahab hadn't attempted to kill me yet. But the Lord told me the draught needed to end, yet He was cooperating with my original word to Ahab that it would end only at my word. So, I did as I was told. Then I prayed seven times before I saw the manifestation of clouds in the heavens. Only then did I tell Ahab he'd better beat it to Jezreel lest the rain stop him—and I ran 17 miles ahead of his chariot, all the way here. I'd still been buzzing with the adrenaline of slaughtering a virtual army of false prophets, I supposed, and needed a way to burn it off. Neither of us arrived ahead of the rain, but I did get here before he did.

But, there he is now. I looked up to see the drawbridge lower, admitting the king's chariot to the interior of the fortress. The charioteer saw me and fixed me with a glare before they vanished from view. He would tell his master that he had seen me, surely.

Why had I come to Jezreel exactly? This suddenly seemed like a terrible idea.

The fortress was elevated over the valley so that the water ran down in rivulets, but I saw the water accumulating in every reservoir down below, soaking into the parched earth. A figure approached on the same road from which Ahab had just come, riding on the back of a donkey: my servant, whom I had left behind on Carmel. He had seen the direction in which I'd gone and rode after me. I raised my hand to wave at him, but was distracted by the approach of a third person. He was a servant of the king, dressed in the livery of the fortress. He approached me directly, knowing exactly where to find me from the charioteer, no doubt. He gave me a slight incline of his head, which was more acknowledgement than bow, and said, "From my Lady the Queen." Then he handed me a very small scroll, and retreated back to the fortress again.

I protected the scroll with one hand from the driving rain, and unrolled it with the other to read. It said, "Ahab has informed me of your violence against my prophets. So may the gods do to me and more also, if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow."

The first thought I had upon reading this was not in words; it was the image of blood to my ankles from earlier that day, surrounded by slashed corpses. In my mind's eye, the face of one of the corpses was mine.

The draught is over, I thought, and my heart seized in fear. There's nothing to stop her now!

I don't know why at the time, it didn't occur to me that if she could have killed me, she would have sent a soldier with a sword, rather than a servant with a note. All of Israel had seen my triumph on Mount Carmel and were behind me now, at least for the time being—crowds, I knew, were fickle. Still, Jezebel couldn't balk public opinion so soon afterwards and have me murdered without suffering for it herself. But I was not thinking clearly; all I could see was the vivid image of my bloody corpse.

So I ran. I ran right past my servant, close enough to hear him say, "Aw, really? I just got here!" but too fast for him to catch up.

I ran more than five times as far as I'd done earlier that day, because I just didn't feel like I could get far enough away from Jezebel and her threat—or perhaps more accurately, from the picture in my mind. It was with me all the time.

It was the middle of the night when I arrived in Beersheba. The clop-clop of hooves behind me from my servant's much-abused donkey presently approached when I stopped running.

"Let's find a place here for the night," my servant said, sounding exhausted. And he's just been riding the whole way, I thought. "Any of the men of Israel will be honored to offer hospitality to the great prophet Elijah!"

But I envisioned my host sending a message to Jezebel as I slept. "The one you seek is here."

"No!" I said at once. "No, you stay here. I will go on."

"Master, you've run almost through the night! Will you run yet more?"

I didn't even bother to reply, so anxious was I to be gone from here. Gone from any prying eyes of the city, sheltered in the wilderness where no one would know to find me.

I ran until I'd left the city of Beersheba. By then, my fatigue superseded my anxiety. I slowed to a walk, and went on like this until the sun rose, peaked, and set again. I hadn't slept in two days, and I hadn't seen another soul since Beersheba. At last, I sat down under a broom tree.

"It is enough," I whispered to the Lord. "Now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers." I was just done. I didn't want to do this anymore. I didn't want to stand boldly alone before a murderous and adulterous generation, proclaiming and enforcing the word of the Lord. My fathers before me had done exactly that—and been killed for their pains. If they had been so treated, why would I be any different? Of course I was no better than they were. Why should the Lord protect me if he did not protect them? If I wielded the power, and could cow my enemies into submission, then sure—but the power was never mine to begin with. It was His, to use as He saw fit. Or not.

I lay down beneath the tree, and closed my eyes, briefly aware that after two days of running in terror, I was famished. But I was equally exhausted. I slipped into unconsciousness.

A gentle hand shook my shoulder when the moon was high in the sky. I blinked up into a radiantly glowing face.

"Arise and eat," the angel said, gesturing just above my head. I followed his gesture, and saw a small arrangement of hot stones with a cake sizzling on top, and a jar of water beside them. My stomach rumbled at the sight of them. I sat up, ate and drank, and felt strangely satisfied for such a small meal. Then I lay down again, slipping back into sleep.

When dawn broke, I was already almost conscious when I felt the hand on my shoulder again. I looked up again into the bright face of the angel, who gestured to the same spot and the same meal. "Arise and eat, for the journey is too great for you," he said again.

I did as he bid me, and then rose to my feet again. They throbbed in protest of their recent abuse, but I did feel new strength from the heavenly meal. Also, I had slept myself into some measure of purpose: I now knew where I was going, not just what I was running from. I traveled on for the next forty days, finding shelter each night where I could. I did not see the angel again, but I did not need to. Somehow those two cakes and jugs of water sustained me until I arrived at my destination: Mount Sinai, also called Mount Horeb. The Mount of God. The place where Moses had received the Ten Commandments. The place where He had beheld the face of the Lord.

I can't necessarily explain why I needed to be there, in that place. The Lord had spoken to me plenty of times before, and I did not need to be in any special location to hear Him. But I hadn't heard from Him at all since Mount Carmel--if one counted fire from heaven at my request as a conversation. He'd surely sent the angel, but the angel had said nothing other than "arise and eat." I needed Him to talk to me. I didn't even care what He said, as long as it wasn't yet another task to complete that would put my life on the line before my enemies. Though knowing Him, it might be. Still, I needed to be near Him.

When I at last arrived at Mount Sinai, it was nighttime. I took refuge in a cave a little way up the mountain, and lay down for the night. But before I could drift off to sleep, at last I heard the word of the Lord again.

"What are you doing here, Elijah?"

A lump sprang to my throat. I didn't think or censor my words; I just spewed forth what I felt. "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away!" I was breathing hard when I finished this outburst.

The Lord said, "Go out and stand on the mount before the Lord."

So I did. I arose and wrapped my cloak around my shoulders against the chill of the night, venturing out of the cave and on to the face of the mountain. Once I was no longer sheltered by the cave, a violent wind whipped my cloak almost out of my hands. On instinct, I leaned toward the mountain to grasp on to the boulders as I could, but the wind was so strong that even chunks of the boulders dislodged and flew out into the whirling night. Terrified, I dropped to a crouch, raising my arms over my head to protect it from falling boulders.

Abruptly the wind stopped. But then the ground beneath me began to tremble and crack. I thought the mountain would shake me right off its face, and send me hurtling to my death down below—or else the earth might split and swallow me whole.

Then the earthquake stopped, as lightning fell from the sky. At once, it seemed as if the vegetation on the entire mountain was ablaze—all around me, right next to me. In a second I would be consumed. I got to my feet and ran back to the cave. There, at least, there was nothing to burn.

The fire vanished as quickly as it had come. All was still. I trembled from head to foot, too terrified to think, let alone move. It was as if the Lord used demonstrations of His power to shake me out of my tantrum, to get my attention.

Well. He had it.

But then I heard the sound of a low, gentle whisper. It was like the sound of a parent calming a fussy child. My galloping heartbeat slowed, and I felt compelled to venture out of the cave. I wanted to see the Lord face to face, so very much—but I feared that for a sinful man to behold such holiness would mean instant death. So I wrapped my cloak around my head, and groped my way back to the entrance to the cave. The voice that came next was right in front of me, and crystal clear despite the folds of fabric over my ears.

"What are you doing here, Elijah?"

It was the same question as before, so the same answer overflowed from my bitter, exhausted heart. It should have occurred to me that the Lord asked me the same question because I gave the wrong answer the first time, but alas, it did not. My words came muffled through the folds of my cloak. "I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away."

The Lord did not reply to my complaint, at least not at first. What He said was, "Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus. And when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael to be king over Syria. And Jehu the son of Nimshi you shall anoint to be king over Israel, and Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah you shall anoint to be prophet in your place. And the one who escapes from the sword of Hazael shall Jehu put to death, and the one who escapes from the sword of Jehu shall Elisha put to death. Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him."

The first two commands, I must admit, washed over me and made very little impression. They involved yet more danger, one in the land of Israel's enemies, and the other back in Israel, which was also currently a land of my personal enemies (or at least they were until Carmel, and likely would be again by the time I returned). But I perked up when the Lord commanded me to anoint my replacement. My replacement! He was letting me off the hook! Finally! A wave of relief and gratitude passed over me.

And then—seven thousand? Vaguely I registered surprise at the number. I had known, intellectually, that my complaint that I was the only prophet of the Lord left was false, as Obadiah had told me he had hidden a hundred others in caves and fed them. I felt justified in my complaint nevertheless, because though those hundred might technically exist, they were in hiding. They were not out boldly proclaiming the word of the Lord as I was, and risking the sword, as I was. Still, I had thought at best, there were only those hundred others. But seven thousand? Wow.

Not that it mattered. Only one thing mattered to me right now: I was free!

I knew the moment the Lord departed from me, even though I could not see Him. I uncovered my face, walked back to the cave, and lay down, fast asleep within minutes.

By the time I awoke, the sun was already high in the sky, indicating late morning. I set out on my way back, but I did not go to the wilderness of Damascus, as the Lord commanded. Nor did I anoint a new king in Ahab's place in Israel. I went straight to where I knew I would find Elisha son of Shaphat. No need for me to anoint the two new kings; Elisha could do that, couldn't he? Wasn't that the whole point of a replacement?

I found Elisha in his fields, plowing with twelve yoke of oxen. He stood by the twelfth, so engaged in his work that he did not see me approach. As I did so, I unfastened my cloak from around my neck, a symbol of the mantle of my position. When I passed by him, I cast my cloak upon him and kept right on walking, not even slowing down. He would have questions, probably, but I didn't care. The Lord wanted me to anoint him; the Lord could tell him whatever else he needed to know.

Elisha abandoned his oxen in the fields at once and ran after me, carrying my cloak with him. "Elijah!" he cried, knowing exactly who I was and what the cloak meant. "Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you!"

I glanced over my shoulder and shrugged. I'd slowed my pace, but even now I did not stop. "Go back again, for what have I done to you?" It didn't matter to me whether Elisha accepted the job or not. I'd done what the Lord told me to do; now it was His problem. Still, it was a bit surprising that Elisha was so ready for this new calling. I'd expected a little more resistance than this, quite frankly. God had presumably been preparing him for his new role in advance. He probably has no idea what he's in for, either, I thought cynically.

Elisha slaughtered the oxen he'd been using to plow when I came upon him, and threw a great feast for his servants and family: a celebration of his new calling, and a symbol of the end of his old life. He begged me to remain for the feast, and I did so—after all, the last meal I'd eaten was the cake and water given me by the angel more than forty days before. Beef might not have been the best way to break a forty-day fast, but I didn't care. I, too, felt like celebrating.

It was the best meal I ever had. It tasted like sweet, sweet freedom.

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Today's podcast comes from this blog post, Hydrogen Sulfide SIBO. 

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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 podcast is a meditation on and a retelling of 1 Kings 18. I read the text with some discussion first, and then read my retelling (below).

I was still in the home of the widow of Zarephath and her son, who now adored me and followed me around like a shadow, when the word of the Lord came to me again.

"Go," He said, "show yourself to Ahab, and I will send rain upon the earth."

It had been three and a half years since I had originally prophesied the draught to Ahab. The famine had been severe even when I came to the widow two and a half years ago. People were dying of starvation. Still, I wasn't thrilled about returning to Ahab, for I knew that as soon as the draught ended, he would try to kill me. Probably he would have done so already, had he been able to find me.

I said my goodbyes to the widow and her son, and the little boy clung to me despite my prickly animal hair garments. I'd been his father figure for the last two and a half years, and I would never see them again, more than likely. A lump rose to my throat as I hugged him goodbye. I was less emotional than I might have been, though, had I not been so distracted by the prospect of what awaited me.

One hundred miles I traversed from Zarephath back to Israel. This trip was less bitter than my original journey had been, because I carried water with me from the widow's well. I also must have followed a slightly different path, because after I had reentered Israel's borders, I came upon a spring of water in a valley. The jar I had brought with me from Phoenecia was long since dry, and I gratefully refilled it.

When I straightened again, I saw a man I recognized from Ahab's court coming toward me. He seemed hesitant at first, and then ran and fell on his face before me.

"Is that you, my lord Elijah?"

I knew him as Obadiah, who was in charge of Ahab's household. Yet I also knew that he feared the Lord. He must have kept that from the king and queen, or he would surely be dead now.

"It is I," I replied. "Go, tell your lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here.'"

A shadow of terror passed over Obadiah's face. "H-how have I sinned," he replied, "that you would give your servant into the hand of Ahab, to kill me? As the Lord your God lives, there is no nation or kingdom where my lord has not sent to seek you. And when they would say, 'He is not here,' he would take an oath of the kingdom or nation, that they had not found you."

Huh, I thought. No wonder the Lord sent me all the way to Zarephath.

Obadiah went on, "And now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here.' And as soon as I have gone from you, the Spirit of the Lord will carry you I know not where. And so, when I come and tell Ahab and he cannot find you, he will kill me, although I your servant have feared the Lord from my youth. Has it not been told my lord what I did when Jezebel killed the prophets of the Lord, how I hid a hundred men of the Lord's prophets by fifties in a cave and fed them with bread and water?"

I started at this—I had not known. I was impressed, too: for Obadiah to do such a thing right under Ahab's nose!

Obadiah finished, "And now you say, 'Go, tell your lord, 'Behold, Elijah is here,' and he will kill me!"

I promised him, "As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom I stand, I will surely show myself to him today." To emphasize my point, I sat down, indicating that I would wait right there.

Obadiah grimaced. "As you say, my lord."

Obadiah must have believed me enough to tell Ahab where to find me, but not enough to return with him when he came. Presently, Ahab crested the hill alone before the valley where I sat. When he was still a long way off, he cried out to me, "Is that you, you troubler of Israel?"

I balked a little. I knew he blamed me, but really! I called back, "I have not troubled Israel, but you have, and your father's house, because you have abandoned the commandments of the Lord and followed the Baals!" He approached me, and I stood up to look him in the eye. "Now therefore send and gather all Israel to me at Mount Carmel, and the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Asherah, who eat at Jezebel's table."

Ahab narrowed his eyes at me, understanding my implied challenge. Mount Carmel was where the altar of the Lord had been during the time of the Judges, before Jezebel's prophets had thrown it down. He knew I meant for this to be a showdown. No doubt in his mind, it would end with my public execution. I suspected that was the reason for the malevolent glint in his eyes as he hissed, "Agreed. I shall assemble them all there at sunrise tomorrow. In the meantime," he took a step closer, until we were nose to nose, "you will come with me. I'm not letting you out of my sight again."

I grinned back at him, lifting my chin a bit to show that he did not intimidate me in the least. "I am a man of my word, Ahab. I told you I would be there, and I will be there. But do not attempt to arrest me now. It's just you and me here, and if it came to a struggle—we both know who would win."

Ahab blinked, gritted his teeth, and took a step back, fixing me with a gaze of purest hatred. My threat rang true: though Ahab and I were evenly matched in terms of size and strength, I had the Lord on my side, as the three and a half year draught clearly proved. The king was a coward at heart. I knew he would back down.

"Sunrise," he snarled.

"Sunrise," I agreed.

Then he was gone.

I climbed to the summit of Mount Carmel the next morning when streaks of pink stretched across the morning sky, and found that I was almost the last to arrive. Hundreds, if not thousands of Israelites had camped out on Ahab's orders--awaiting my bloodshed, probably. Obadiah was there among Ahab's servants. He caught my eye and gave me the tiniest nod of encouragement. My servant was already on top of Carmel as well, waiting for me. Behind the prophets, I saw that some of Ahab's servants had brought animals for sacrifice. Good.

The dull roar of chatter died down as soon as I made my appearance. "How long will you go limping between two different opinions?" I cried out to the people. "If the Lord is God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him." I stopped, waiting for a reply. They gave none, but hung on my every word. "I, even I only, am left a prophet of the Lord, but Baal's prophets are 450 men," I went on. I knew this wasn't strictly true because of what Obadiah had told me, but it still was, for practical purposes. I was the only prophet no longer in hiding. "Let two bulls be given to us, and let them choose one bull for themselves and cut it in pieces and lay it on the wood, but put no fire to it. And I will prepare the other bull and lay it on the wood and put no fire to it. And you call upon the name of your god, and I will call upon the name of the Lord, and the God who answers by fire, he is God."

I didn't know whether or not the people would understand my reference. As it was written in the Chronicles, when Solomon built and consecrated the Temple, the Lord answered with fire from heaven, consuming the sacrifices. Whether they caught the reference or not, though, a murmuring ripple passed through the crowd.

"That sounds fair," I heard several of the braver voices say, and, "It is well spoken."

I turned to the prophets next, and cried out, still in my stage voice, "Choose for yourselves one bull and prepare it first, for you are many, and call upon the name of your god, but put no fire to it."

One of Ahab's servants came forward with the largest and finest bull they had brought, and the crowd of prophets swarmed around it. The bellows of the bull abruptly ceased, and many of the prophets took part in preparing its remains for the sacrifice. They laid it upon the wood on their altar, and formed a ring around it. The people hushed, and then the prophets raised their voices as one.

"O Baal, answer us!" they cried out. "O Baal, burn up this offering we have prepared for you! O Baal, answer with fire!"

The cacophony of supplications grew louder. They danced, they leapt, they raised their arms to heaven. But nothing happened. Hours passed. Their shouts grew hoarse. Their dancing turned to limping. The people grew restless. Many of them stopped watching altogether, unpacking the food they had brought with them and chatting amongst themselves. I smirked.

"Cry aloud," I taunted the false prophets, "for he is a god. Either he is musing, or perhaps he is relieving himself! Or he is on a journey. Or perhaps he is asleep, and must be awakened!"

The prophets cried out all the more at this, unsheathing their swords and lances and drawing their own blood, as was their custom. When there was still no reply, they cut themselves all the more, until they were too weak to dance or shout, covered in their own blood.

Enough of this, I thought, getting to my feet. I grew bored myself, and I'd made my point. It was clear nothing was going to happen, and most of the people had now finished their lunch.

"Come near to me," I called out to the people of Israel, who had scattered. "Gather around." I waited until they had obeyed, though most of them still looked as if they didn't expect much. With my servant's help, I began to repair the twelve stones of the altar of the Lord from antiquity. A few of the men of Israel, when they saw what I was doing, reluctantly moved to help me. When we had finished, I dug a deep trench all around the altar. The men who had been helping me looked at me quizzically, but I did not bother to explain. Two of them took over.

"Deeper," I commanded when they looked to me for direction. I, meanwhile, assembled the wood, and slaughtered the bull given me for my sacrifice.

"Is this deep enough?" one of the men digging the trench asked me. It was about enough for one seah of seed. I shook my head.

"Double it," I commanded. The three men exchanged a look, but did not argue and set again to work.

Meanwhile, my servant and I cut the bull's carcass in pieces, laying it upon the wood. When the men had finished digging, next I commanded them, "Fill four jars with water and pour it on the burnt offering and on the wood." I glanced at Ahab when I said this, whose expression deepened into a scowl. Water was a precious commodity these days. I didn't care. The men did what I asked, filling jars down at the Kishon Brook at the base of the mountain and returning again to douse the offering. Then I commanded, "Do it a second time." They hesitated slightly, glancing at each other and at Ahab, whose arms were crossed tightly across his chest with disapproval. But he did not contradict me, so they obeyed. "Do it a third time," I told them when they'd finished.

I had everyone's attention now. With the third drenching, the people now understood the purpose of my trench: the water saturated the offering, the wood, the altar, and filled up the trench too. It was yet another taunt against the false prophets, without words. Doesn't matter how hard you make this, it told them. The Lord can handle it. I glanced at Obadiah, whose lips twitched, trying not to smile at my audacity.

My heart pounded in my chest with anticipation. I was not afraid, though; I knew full well that the Lord was about to do something spectacular. I raised my hands to the sky. "O Lord, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel," I declared in a booming voice, "let it be known this day that you are God in Israel, and that I am your servant, and that I have done all these things at your word. Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back!"

The answering bolt of lightning seemed to rent the heavens in two. I was momentarily both blind and deaf with the sound and the flash of it. When the dust cleared, there was nothing left at all: the offering, wood, stones, water, and indeed a huge chunk of the ground beneath the altar had been vaporized, leaving a crater behind.

There was a moment of terrified silence, and then to a man, the people of Israel fell on their faces and cried out, "The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God!"

I looked to the prophets of Baal. They were frozen, shaking in terror. I turned back to the people on their faces, and commanded, "Seize the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape!"

My words galvanized everyone at once. The prophets began to flee down the mountainside, while the people pursued them. I met them all down at the Kishon, and drew my sword. I had not known why I had brought it, until this moment. The Lord had commanded the death of the false prophets in Deuteronomy, lest his people be led astray by them. And who was there now to carry out the word of the Lord but me?

So, at the Kishon Brook, I slaughtered every last one of them. The men of Israel apprehended the prophets, each of them awaiting my sword of vengeance.

I cannot explain how I did it. I'd never killed anyone before, yet suddenly I killed eight hundred and fifty men in a single day. A part of me was utterly horrified even as it was happening. Ahab watched, but did not intervene—not that he could have, if he'd wanted to. The hearts of the people were with me now.

When I'd finished, I was as soaked in blood as if I'd bathed in it. I turned to Ahab, who seemed transfixed in utter disbelief. I stalked toward him, trembling all over with left over adrenaline, and pointed at his carriage. Then I declared, "Go up, eat and drink, for there is a sound of the rushing of rain."

The sky was blue and cloudless, but Ahab's eyes widened. He had not eaten throughout the ordeal, though I did not doubt that he had brought a feast with him from the fortress. Without a word, he moved toward his carriage with his servants—including Obadiah, I noted. He tried to catch my eye, but I turned away.

I threaded my way through the crowd of amazed onlookers, and gestured to my servant to follow me. Together, we climbed back to the top of Mount Carmel, and the men of Israel, their wives and children, dispersed to their homes.

When I reached the summit, I sat down beside the crater that had once been the altar of the Lord, and put my face between my knees. I did not want to look at the sky, to behold its cloudlessness. I needed to see with my spirit, rather than with my eyes. My servant said nothing, probably too shellshocked at everything we had witnessed that day to question my strange behavior.

With my head hidden and my voice muffled, I told my servant, "Go up now, look toward the sea. Then return and tell me what you see." He went, and as he was gone, I prayed, Lord, bring rain. You commanded me to bring rain. Fulfill your word now.

I heard my servant's footsteps return. "There is nothing," he declared.

"Go again," I told him. Again, the footsteps receded, and I prayed, Lord, bring rain. Fulfill your word.

Seven times we did this. Never once did I look up to the sky. The seventh time, the servant returned, and told me, "Behold, a little cloud like a man's hand is rising from the sea."

I lifted my head from between my knees, and smiled. Then I pointed at the base of the mountain where Ahab still feasted with his servants. "Go, say to Ahab, 'Prepare your chariot an go down, lest the rain stop you.'"

My servant did as he was told. As he went, I watched as the heavens grew black with clouds. The wind kicked up, and Ahab climbed into his chariot down below and made for Jezreel. I stood too, and began my descent from Carmel. As I did so, the first drops of water began to fall from the sky.

As I drew level with my servant who waited for me at the foot of the mountain, something came over me—the hand of the Lord? The desire to burn off the excess buzz of energy from the day I'd just had? Regardless, I felt the sudden need to run. I tucked my garment in my waistband, and flew like the wind just as the heavens opened and the downpour began.

"Where are you—?" I heard my servant begin to ask, but the rest of his question was lost in the sound of rushing rain. Behind me, I thought I heard him swear in frustration.

Ahab had quite the head start, and he was in a chariot while I was on foot, yet I outstripped him in moments. Why was I running to Jezreel, anyway? I had no idea. But where else would I go? I had only just come from Zarephath, in Phoenicia, and I was now essentially homeless. The Lord had not yet told me where to go next, nor what to do.

For now, though, I was fully in the moment. My muscles burned with the joy of exertion, and the water washed away the blood of the false prophets, making me clean again. It was the most glorious bath I'd ever had.

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Today's podcast is an interview with Dr Kyrin Dunston.

Leading by example, OBGYN Dr. Kyrin Dunston lost a life-changing 100 lbs. and healed herself from chronic disease by addressing the root causes of her overweight and dysfunction.  She left OBGYN practice in 2011 to pursue helping women heal with this revolutionary type of natural medicine after becoming fellowship trained in Anti-Aging, Metabolic and Functional Medicine. She is the author of "Cracking the Bikini Code:  6 Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss Success", the host of "Her Brilliant Health Radio Podcast" and The Menopause Boss Youtube series, and she coaches private clients in her Menopause Boss Jumpstart virtual coaching program.

Dr. Kyrin has been featured in numerous podcasts and summits and on NBC, CBS, Fox, Reader's Digest, The Huffington Post, First for Woman & Best Self Magazines. She has been invited to give a TED talk in June of 2020.

Dr Kyrin offers a 20 min guided Meditation for Brilliant Hormone Balance. Click here!

For more on Dr Kyrin, please go to kyrindunstonmd.com

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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 meditation and retelling comes from 1 Kings 17.Download the latest episode of Christian Natural Health!The podcast also includes a discussion. This is the text of the retelling:

I’m not sure if anyone really chooses to be a prophet of the Lord. He chooses us, and then puts his words inside us so powerfully that we cannot help but proclaim them. Even so, if anyone ever sought the job, I probably did. I’d always been in love with the scriptures, pouring over them by the hour.

The first time the word of the Lord came to me, it wasn’t audible or words directly to me in my spirit, the way it would come to be in later years; it was through the scriptures. Ahab was the wicked king of Israel, and I was reading in Deuteronomy when I came across these words:

Take heed to yourselves, that your heart be not deceived, and ye turn aside, and serve other gods, and worship them; And then the LORD'S wrath be kindled against you, and he shut up the heaven, that there be no rain, and that the land yield not her fruit; and lest ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.

The words seemed to leap off the scroll to me like a proclamation directly from the Lord. I realized,this is us! We, Israel, under the leadership of King Ahab and especially his wicked Queen Jezebel, are whoring after other gods. Therefore, the Lord commanded a draught!

I’d never before met King Ahab, but I had a word for him now. So I clothed myself in a garment of hair and tied a leather belt around my waist in deliberate contrast to his ostentatious finery, and went to seek an audience with the king. I would have expected this to be a much more difficult task than it turned out to be: I presented myself to the king's fortress, and a servant led me straight to him, in his throne room. I took this as another proof that my mission was from the Lord. Even as the king eyed my unusual garments with disdain, I opened my mouth boldly.

“You have disobeyed the Lord your God and led Israel to worship other gods. Therefore, as the Lord, the God of Israel lives, before whom I stand, there shall be neither dew nor rain these years, except by my word.”

The proclamation simply tumbled out of my mouth, almost to my surprise. The scripture I had read in Deuteronomy had said nothing about dew, and certainly nothing about rain dependent upon my word. Yet, there it was, out in the open, and I couldn’t take it back.

King Ahab gave a short, snide laugh. “Is that so? And who areyou?”

I drew myself up to my full height. “I am Elijah the Tishbite, prophet of the Lord!”

And then I fled.

Jezebel sought to kill all true prophets of the Lord, and so I knew to identify myself as one of them in the king’s very throne room was taking my life in my hands. Nevertheless, none stopped me, which I took as yet another proof of the Lord in my mission.

As I ran, the word of the Lord came to me again, this time as an impression in my spirit: “Depart from here and turn eastward and hide yourself by the brook Cherith, which is east of the Jordan. You shall drink from the brook, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there.”

Strange, but ok. I did as the Lord commanded, and went on foot until I came to the place in the wilderness by the brook where the Lord had indicated.

I constructed myself a small shelter by the brook, and lived there all alone for I know not how long: months? Years, perhaps? My only companions were the ravens whom God had instructed to sustain me. I drank from the brook, and ate the bread and meat the ravens brought me morning and evening. Now I understood why the skins on my back had been necessary: they kept me warm, and protected against the volatile elements.

But after a time, due to the draught, the brook began to dry up too. I watched as day after day, the gushing water reduced lower and lower, until it was nothing but a trickle. I confess, I did start to get anxious, waiting for the Lord to speak again. What was I to do next?

One day I awoke and found that the brook was nothing more than mud. Only then did the word of the Lord come to my spirit again.

“Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” With the word, behold, the Lord also gave me a vision of a starving woman, her cheeks sunken and her eyes hollow, gathering sticks. I briefly wondered at why the Lord sent me to her, rather than to a widow in Israel. I might have assumed it was to protect me from Ahab’s wrath, except that I would have to travel a good hundred miles through Israel to get to Zarephath. I didn’t know whether the fellow Israelites I met along the way would turn me over to Ahab, but they’d all have good reason to hate me, as Ahab had surely spread far and wide that the draught was my doing. Not only that, but Zarephath was in Phoenicia, Jezebel’s homeland. The people there worshipped Baal! But so do the Israelites now, I supposed. That was the whole reason for the draught in the first place.

So I set off, according to the word of the Lord. I traveled by night and slept as best I could during the daytime, so as to avoid being seen. As the days went by, it became harder and harder to do much of anything, due to my thirst. One hundred miles on foot without water! Toward the end, my desperation to arrive drove me onward. The widow would have food and water, never mind how she looked in my vision. The Lord had said she would.

When at long last, I arrived at the gate of the city, that widow was the first woman I saw, exactly as the Lord had shown her to me. I approached her, so parched I could barely speak. But I managed.

“Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink!” I called to her.

The woman raised those hollow eyes to me with no expression, stooping to drop the sticks she had gathered thus far into a pile. She nodded, and went, presumably to get me what I asked for. Emboldened, I added, “And bring me a morsel of bread in your hand as well!”

The woman stopped, and turned back to me very slowly. Her eyes were no longer hollow, but probing. “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” Her voice hitched at this last phrase. And yet, as she watched me, I detected in her face the faintest glimmer of hope. Even though she identified Him as the Lord my God, not hers, He had told me He had spoken to her already. She knew He would be sending her someone to sustain. But apparently it was up to me to make that possible.

“Do not fear,” I told her, “go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’”

He didn’t say any of this to me before I said it to her, but I recognized from my experience with Ahab and the draught that, as the Lord’s prophet, my word was His word—provided I was acting in accordance with what He had either already said to me, or what He had said in His scriptures. It seemed to me that He had sent me to sustain this widow just as much as she to sustain me.

When she heard my words, the woman’s lips parted in a small o, and her whole face softened. She hurried away quickly, and I had the impression she did it so that I might not see her weep. I wondered how long ago the Lord had spoken to her and said that He would send help? How long had she been waiting to see that promise fulfilled?

Just as I had remained at the brook for what I now learned was nearly a year, I remained with the widow and her son indefinitely as well, a guest in the upper chamber of her home. I watched as she made bread each day, wondering at the fact that the Lord did not supernaturally refill her flour or her oil when it dwindled to almost nothing. Each day she used it, and it looked as if it were the last. But the next day, each of the jars had just as much in them as they had had the day before. We never saw the miracle take place, and yet it happened, day after day. I thought, and told her, the story of the children of Israel in the wilderness after they had left Egypt. They had not even the jars of flour or of oil, and so the Lord had dropped manna from heaven every morning—but only enough for that day. If they gathered extra, it would putrefy. The lesson was clear: He wanted them to learn to depend upon Him daily. So it was with the ravens at the brook. So it was with us now.

Then after some time, the widow’s son fell ill. It was a swift illness, and in a very short time, the boy died. In her grief, the widow blamed me.

“What have you against me, O man of God?” she lashed out, weeping and cradling her son’s lifeless body. "You have come to me to bring my sin to remembrance and to cause the death of my son!”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think the Lord intended to do either, but then, why did such things happen at all? I crossed to the woman and reached my arms out. “Give me your son,” I said, and she did not resist as I scooped the boy up into my arms. Then I carried him up to the upper chamber of the house, where I resided. I stretched the boy out upon my own bed, and cried out to the Lord.

“O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I sojourn, by killing her son?”

No reply, but in my spirit I felt an answering spark of hope. I had the strange inclination that I should stretch myself out upon the boy: shoulder to shoulder, arm to arm, leg to leg, face to face. He was not yet cold, but he was horribly pale. As I did this, I cried out, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again!”

Could I do this? I thought. It was certainly unprecedented. Nobody had ever been raised from the dead before, at least not in recorded scripture. Surely if they had been, such a miracle would have been written down!

Nothing happened. I stood up again, paced, and returned to stretch myself out upon the boy a second time. I called out to the Lord a second time. When I lay upon the body of the boy a third time, he gasped against my weight. I leapt up again, peering at him anxiously. The boy’s eyelids fluttered, and he blinked up at me.

I almost cried with relief, but instead I started to laugh. “Thank you, Lord,” I managed to choke out. “Thank you, Lord!”

I scooped the boy up into my arms again, and this time he held on to my neck as I carried him down to his mother, who paced and wrung her hands. She spun when she heard me coming, and a hand flew to her mouth when she saw her son looking at her.

“See, your son lives,” I said to her, beaming.

The widow ran to us, and the boy stretched out his arms from my neck to hers as she scooped him into her arms, sobbing for joy. After she had smothered the boy in kisses, she gasped out to me, “Now I know that you are a man of God, and that the word of the Lord in your mouth is truth!”

I left mother and son to their post-mortem reunion, and walked outside to ponder what I had just learned.

Did the Lord cause the death of that boy? If He had, then He would not have permitted me to revive him, lest He work against Himself. But if He had not caused it, then who—or what—did? What power could there be in the world strong enough to work against the will of the Lord?

The Lord gave me no direct answers that day, but a story came to my remembrance as I pondered the question. It was the oldest story in the Pentateuch, the story of Adam and Eve in the garden. There was no death in all creation, until Adam ate the fruit. Death was not the Lord’s original intention, but it came about as part of the curse, along with knowledge of good and evil. The curse became far more explicit under the law of Moses: by it, I had learned of the punishment of draught and famine for worshipping other gods. But the Lord made it quite clear in Deuteronomy that “I set before you death and life… choose life.” Life was still His perfect will; not death. The death of that boy had not been a punishment for disobedience, or else He would not have allowed me to raise him.

But if it was not God’s will for the boy to die, why did he die?

I felt like I was missing an enormous part of the equation. Something fundamental about my understanding of the world was missing. Nor did the Lord bother to explain, I suspected because I wouldn’t have understood His answer anyway.

Whether or not I could comprehend all the heavenly causes for calamity here on earth, though, one thing I walked away with: the Lord is good. All the time.

Today's podcast comes from this blog post, COVID-19 Naturopathic Strategies.

I also reference this blog post by Dr Mariah Mosley on How Fear Affects Your Immune System. 

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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

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 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?

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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 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. 

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