Post by Henley Wilson on Aug 21, 2011 12:48:24 GMT -5
Breaking from the Darkness
Darkness can cover the eyes of a person and leave them blinded to the world. I myself had fallen victim to the tricks of the darkness. I saw only the illusions of joy I found in the delight of my own selfishness and guilty desires. Until the day when the mask of darkness was ripped from my face and I found that the world I had been living in was not as I had imagined. What lies before me is revealed to be a complete alternate to what I had seen through my deceived eyes. The beautiful green of the earth was revealed to be a cataclysm of dirt and cracking stone with ragged edges covered by a small amount of sand. The ground looked so hot that steam was actually rising from its brink. The refreshing air that I had been breathing now suffocated me as it tore through lungs like sharpened daggers. The radiant sky that I had envisioned was now dark and covered mist of red and deluded clouds that shaded the land in a look a gloom and despair. This was not the world that I had been living in, or was it? Perhaps instead it was the world that I had created by my giving into the temptations of this life. This desolate wasteland of destruction left nothing but barren desert surrounding me in all directions.
Now that I could see what I had really been amongst I made a decision to turn back and try to go back from whence I came, back to the beginning. I turned around to take a first step back on this path that I had carved out. As soon as my foot touched the ground there was a scorching pain that went into my foot and through my leg. I picked my foot up to see that the skin on the bottom of my foot had been burnt and ripped. What was going to happen to me? Is this what I had to endure to make it back to where I had come from? What was I to do? I decided that I would just have to go forward. I made a sprint back and instantly I was engulfed in searing pain as smoke arose from the ground. I could feel the fire burning my feet and legs. I kept running until the pain became more than my own body could bear. My legs gave out and I fell to the ground. All the burning heat I had felt on my feet was now everywhere on my body and I had no way of escaping it. I could hear the sound of my skin ripping and tearing. I could smell the burning of my own flesh as the flames burnt every part of my body leaving me to just lie in twisting and painful agony. It seemed like it would never end. The only hope that came to my mind was for me to get up and keep going forward. So I did. I forced myself up and ran as hard as my body would allow until I eventually would collapse again and again. This cycle repeats itself for what feels like an eternity until I’m too exhausted to continue. I lay there face down in the dirt letting the flames engulf me. At this point I don’t struggle, I don’t see a point. The pain itself has come in such great waves one right after the other that it is almost as if I don’t feel them anymore. I have gone numb. My body is broken and tired, my clothes are ripped apart, my spirit is lost to the darkness that brought me here. I just lie there and wait for my body to give out and for all this to be over. I lie there and I wait to die.
The sweet relief that I pray for does not come. I laid there for what seemed like days with my face in the dirt waiting for the end. I raise my head to look at this tortuous desert. It seems like I had run a pretty far distance but I still saw nothing. No indication that I had made any progress, no sign that I was any closer to getting out of this place. I felt myself breaking down. I began to cry with the thought of being stuck here. Was there nothing that I could do? How was I supposed to get myself out of this all by myself, all alone? Was there no one who could help me? At the very moment that the question crossed my mind I felt myself open up and I felt as if someone was watching me. Who could be here? Who would help me? This I did not know but I gather all the life I had left in my body. I did the only thing I could at that point; I started to scream. Not in the depths pain and suffering like I had done before, but instead I was screaming for help. I had come to realize that this land of devastation was not something that I could overcome on my own. I reached my hands up to the blackened sky and called out for help until I thought my lungs were going to explode. Then suddenly I saw a flash of bright light appear from beyond the horizon. The light blinds me with a gleam of pure majesty that I had never experienced in this lifetime. Draining me of all my resistance, I felt myself begin to float and rise from the ground and go up into the air. It almost feels like I am being carried and I can hear the flapping of wings. I fade into this light and fade out of my own consciousness.
I awoke slowly and find that I am no longer in the land of desolation and pain but rather I now lay on the hillside of a mount. I look around to see not the horrible scenery that I had now grown accustomed to, instead I saw a green pasture with beautiful flowers scattered everywhere and the sounds of wildlife far off in the distance. Then I notice the bright shining gleam of the cloud covered sky and the sun shining through over the crest of the mount. I began to climb to the top of the mount. I didn’t expect what I found when I reached the peak. I came up to the edge and saw a lonely tree resting on the ground at the top. I walked closer to get a better look at the tree, to find that this tree is covered, not by leaves or fruit, but instead the tree was soaked in blood. Three steel pikes had been driven deep into three spots on the tree and a circling patch of thorns rested at the top. Across the two branches of the tree rest a cloth made from the wool of a lamb, it is also seeped in blood. Surely the slaughter of this lamb is what produced all this blood. From the tree to the steep of the mount there is a trail made by the blood. I venture to see where the trail leads to. I take a few steps over into the ridge of the mount to see that beyond it is a canyon. At the base of the canyon is hollowed out place where a stone has been rolled away and overturned and the inside is emptied and abandoned. I glance back behind me to see the tree again. I go back and take the cloth from the limbs. I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sadness over the thoughts of this lamb’s slaughter, an innocent and pure creature being torn apart and killed. What could be the reason? I take the cloth and wrap it around myself.
Then something happens, in an instant my tattered and burnt clothing are replaced by a white pure veil. The scraps, cuts and burns that had been on my body are gone. I’m consumed by a feeling of rest and peace inside my soul. I examine the veil more closely and I find there is a crest of truth that lay over my heart and an insignia of an eternal promise that rest on my back. I suddenly understand what made this sacrifice so significant. I fall to my knees under the weighing pressure of this new light that I have found. Tears flow down my face. Not like before, these tears are not out of pain and suffering, these tears come from the overflowing feeling of love in my heart. I look to the sky to be met by a gentle rain that washes everything away. My scars of the past are gone along with my fears and sorrows because I know that I will never again be blinded by the darkness. I’ve been risen up from the dirt and I kneel here eternally in the light of the everlasting and loving son.
Darkness can cover the eyes of a person and leave them blinded to the world. I myself had fallen victim to the tricks of the darkness. I saw only the illusions of joy I found in the delight of my own selfishness and guilty desires. Until the day when the mask of darkness was ripped from my face and I found that the world I had been living in was not as I had imagined. What lies before me is revealed to be a complete alternate to what I had seen through my deceived eyes. The beautiful green of the earth was revealed to be a cataclysm of dirt and cracking stone with ragged edges covered by a small amount of sand. The ground looked so hot that steam was actually rising from its brink. The refreshing air that I had been breathing now suffocated me as it tore through lungs like sharpened daggers. The radiant sky that I had envisioned was now dark and covered mist of red and deluded clouds that shaded the land in a look a gloom and despair. This was not the world that I had been living in, or was it? Perhaps instead it was the world that I had created by my giving into the temptations of this life. This desolate wasteland of destruction left nothing but barren desert surrounding me in all directions.
Now that I could see what I had really been amongst I made a decision to turn back and try to go back from whence I came, back to the beginning. I turned around to take a first step back on this path that I had carved out. As soon as my foot touched the ground there was a scorching pain that went into my foot and through my leg. I picked my foot up to see that the skin on the bottom of my foot had been burnt and ripped. What was going to happen to me? Is this what I had to endure to make it back to where I had come from? What was I to do? I decided that I would just have to go forward. I made a sprint back and instantly I was engulfed in searing pain as smoke arose from the ground. I could feel the fire burning my feet and legs. I kept running until the pain became more than my own body could bear. My legs gave out and I fell to the ground. All the burning heat I had felt on my feet was now everywhere on my body and I had no way of escaping it. I could hear the sound of my skin ripping and tearing. I could smell the burning of my own flesh as the flames burnt every part of my body leaving me to just lie in twisting and painful agony. It seemed like it would never end. The only hope that came to my mind was for me to get up and keep going forward. So I did. I forced myself up and ran as hard as my body would allow until I eventually would collapse again and again. This cycle repeats itself for what feels like an eternity until I’m too exhausted to continue. I lay there face down in the dirt letting the flames engulf me. At this point I don’t struggle, I don’t see a point. The pain itself has come in such great waves one right after the other that it is almost as if I don’t feel them anymore. I have gone numb. My body is broken and tired, my clothes are ripped apart, my spirit is lost to the darkness that brought me here. I just lie there and wait for my body to give out and for all this to be over. I lie there and I wait to die.
The sweet relief that I pray for does not come. I laid there for what seemed like days with my face in the dirt waiting for the end. I raise my head to look at this tortuous desert. It seems like I had run a pretty far distance but I still saw nothing. No indication that I had made any progress, no sign that I was any closer to getting out of this place. I felt myself breaking down. I began to cry with the thought of being stuck here. Was there nothing that I could do? How was I supposed to get myself out of this all by myself, all alone? Was there no one who could help me? At the very moment that the question crossed my mind I felt myself open up and I felt as if someone was watching me. Who could be here? Who would help me? This I did not know but I gather all the life I had left in my body. I did the only thing I could at that point; I started to scream. Not in the depths pain and suffering like I had done before, but instead I was screaming for help. I had come to realize that this land of devastation was not something that I could overcome on my own. I reached my hands up to the blackened sky and called out for help until I thought my lungs were going to explode. Then suddenly I saw a flash of bright light appear from beyond the horizon. The light blinds me with a gleam of pure majesty that I had never experienced in this lifetime. Draining me of all my resistance, I felt myself begin to float and rise from the ground and go up into the air. It almost feels like I am being carried and I can hear the flapping of wings. I fade into this light and fade out of my own consciousness.
I awoke slowly and find that I am no longer in the land of desolation and pain but rather I now lay on the hillside of a mount. I look around to see not the horrible scenery that I had now grown accustomed to, instead I saw a green pasture with beautiful flowers scattered everywhere and the sounds of wildlife far off in the distance. Then I notice the bright shining gleam of the cloud covered sky and the sun shining through over the crest of the mount. I began to climb to the top of the mount. I didn’t expect what I found when I reached the peak. I came up to the edge and saw a lonely tree resting on the ground at the top. I walked closer to get a better look at the tree, to find that this tree is covered, not by leaves or fruit, but instead the tree was soaked in blood. Three steel pikes had been driven deep into three spots on the tree and a circling patch of thorns rested at the top. Across the two branches of the tree rest a cloth made from the wool of a lamb, it is also seeped in blood. Surely the slaughter of this lamb is what produced all this blood. From the tree to the steep of the mount there is a trail made by the blood. I venture to see where the trail leads to. I take a few steps over into the ridge of the mount to see that beyond it is a canyon. At the base of the canyon is hollowed out place where a stone has been rolled away and overturned and the inside is emptied and abandoned. I glance back behind me to see the tree again. I go back and take the cloth from the limbs. I can’t help but feel an overwhelming sadness over the thoughts of this lamb’s slaughter, an innocent and pure creature being torn apart and killed. What could be the reason? I take the cloth and wrap it around myself.
Then something happens, in an instant my tattered and burnt clothing are replaced by a white pure veil. The scraps, cuts and burns that had been on my body are gone. I’m consumed by a feeling of rest and peace inside my soul. I examine the veil more closely and I find there is a crest of truth that lay over my heart and an insignia of an eternal promise that rest on my back. I suddenly understand what made this sacrifice so significant. I fall to my knees under the weighing pressure of this new light that I have found. Tears flow down my face. Not like before, these tears are not out of pain and suffering, these tears come from the overflowing feeling of love in my heart. I look to the sky to be met by a gentle rain that washes everything away. My scars of the past are gone along with my fears and sorrows because I know that I will never again be blinded by the darkness. I’ve been risen up from the dirt and I kneel here eternally in the light of the everlasting and loving son.