Ravi Zacharias

Excerpt used with permission of Multnomah Books © 2008

PROLOGUE

Richard: Subra—look out! That car is coming straight at us!

Subramaniam: Relax, my friend. This is how people here drive all the time.

Richard: Ooooh! Here comes another one—watch out! Is that guy drunk or something?

Subra: Just hang on. We will be there shortly.

Richard: I thought this was a divided highway… Where did all these cars come from all of a sudden? There are more coming!

Subra: It is a divided highway. I’m sure that guy is just dropping off workers who live on this side of the village. To drive another several kilometers to turn around is a waste of money and time. You see, in England they drive on the left, in America on the right. But here in India we drive in the shade…or wherever else is convenient.

Richard: I don’t believe it! I simply don’t believe it! This could kill a fellow…

Subra: [Laughing] Now you know why we don’t need a Disneyland in India. Driving provides all the scary rides we could ever want. What were we talking about a few minutes ago anyway?

Richard: Uh…let me unclench my fists first. You were telling me about your background. It’s hard to pray and listen at the same time, but I’ll try. Please carry on with what you were saying…

Subra: Ah yes, now I remember. It was the hardest thing I ever did, Richard—to question what was so deeply ingrained in my family’s faith. Everything in my family was built around our faith. On the most important day of my childhood, it was hard to see my mother absent from the ceremony.

Richard: The most important day of your childhood? I think in such Western terms that I hesitate to even ask what you mean. What day are you talking about? You certainly don’t mean the day you were

born.

Subra: Well almost, but not quite. Let me explain…

As you know, society in India is built on the caste system. There are four main castes: Brahmans (priests); Kshatriyas (warriors); Vaisyas (merchants); and Sudras (servants). Beyond these four castes is actually a fifth, the Panchamas, the outcasts.

I was born in the south of India into the highest caste, the Brahmans. But until the defining day I am referring to, I was considered the lowest caste, a Sudra. On this day—a day that is as auspicious as auspicious can be—an initiation ceremony called the Upanayana was performed with the investiture of the sacred thread. It was only at this point that I formally became a Brahman.

Richard: Sacred thread? Why would a piece of string be considered sacred?

Subra: Hmm. This might be tougher than I thought. Let me back up for a moment. How much do you really want to know?

Richard: Well, everything, Subra. How am I ever going to understand Hinduism unless we go deeper?

Subra: Ah, wisely spoken.

You see, Richard, it’s like this: every Brahman longs for a son. We believe that unless there is a son to perform the annual ceremonies in honor of our ancestors, all six previous generations will fall into infernal misery, or hell. That’s what I had always been taught anyway.

So when I was born, my father was very happy. But my mother, like every Hindu woman who gives birth, was considered defiled.

On the eleventh day after my birth, a time of purification began for my mother. She was allowed to bathe for the first time since I was born, and at a formal ceremony I was given a name.

It is a very important ceremony. In it, an object is brought to the ceremony that symbolizes the boy’s future. In my case, it was a silver plate holding some palm leaves. This was to suggest that my life was to be devoted to sacred studies. My mother couldn’t even attend the ceremony because she was considered unclean for another thirty days.

I had been considered impure also until this eleventh day. And it was not until this ceremony that my father could hold or touch me for the first time.

Richard: You know, I’m fascinated by custom and ceremony. Sometimes I think that we in the West have lost out by having so little ceremony and custom in our culture. At the same time, these customs create a lot of questions. But that’s an aside.

You didn’t have a name until you were eleven days old? What did they call you until then? And your mother wasn’t even present at your naming? That seems quite chauvinistic…

Subra: Please, Richard. Let me finish before you jump to conclusions. Few things are ever as straightforward as they first appear.

According to tradition, my name was actually chosen by my aunt, my father’s eldest sister. It had to include the name of a god, and the first letter needed to belong to the constellation under which I was born. The ceremony itself was performed by a priest who had the power to change my name if he felt the astrological charts indicated that he should do so.

Richard: Wow! That’s quite a process.

Subra: Indeed—it’s quite a ceremony. Relatives brought me gifts and sweets, and we had a big celebration.

Richard: Does every family follow that?

Subra: The devout do. Anyway, the ceremony was to commemorate my first birth. Then I had my second birth. Or actually…let me correct that. Really it was considered my first and second birth in this incarnation…

Richard: First and second birth in this incarnation? This conversation is beginning to sound a bit like a Hindu version of the American “Who’s on First?” comedy routine. Hey, there’s a shop up ahead. Let’s stop and have a cup of coffee, Subra.

Subra: Sounds good. [Slowing car down] Would you like American coffee, Richard, South Indian coffee, or masala tea?

Richard: Mmm, it’s hard to decide. You’ve spoiled me here on my visit to your country, Subra. Coffee and tea back home lack imagination unless you’re willing to pay three dollars for something foreign sounding. You know what sounds good is some chai tea—would they have that here?

Subra: Funny you should ask, Richard.

Chai tea is really only a term marketers have chosen to make tea sound fancy. Chai is actually the Hindi word for “tea.” So saying chai tea is like saying tea tea.

Richard: Oh. Well, maybe we should have some masala chai then…I love the spicy taste. And, oh… Let’s have some of that…what do you call that dessert we had awhile back? Pukey?

Subra: [Laughing] Not pukey, Richard! But close. It’s called barfi ! Remember? I can’t tell you exactly why it is named as it is, but it’s delicious—delicately made with milk, sugar, saffron, pistachios, and silver paper.

Richard: Sorry, I tried to remember it by making a word association. Barfi it is, but why don’t they change the name? Barfi just doesn’t sound appetizing.

Subra: You’re right. But think about it, my friend. I could list all the American food that does not sound appetizing to an Indian—hot dogs, chicken fingers, hush puppies.

Richard: Okay, I get your point. Let’s just keep this conversation to names and customs. So back to the second birth of your first incarnation…

Subra: Yes, the second birth of the… You know, Richard, this really is very good pukey… Ah, now you’ve got me saying it! Honestly! So we come to my second birth, called Upanayana, which is really the thread investiture ceremony. It is a very sacred ritual, even more so

than the naming ceremony. Indeed, no Brahman can get married without this installation.

Richard: Upanayana, is it? An American would have a hard time even pronouncing that word.

Subra: It’s not easy for a twelve-year-old Indian boy either.

You see, the night before the ceremony, total silence is in effect. The young boy has to be absolutely, totally silent. Have you ever tried to be completely silent for any length of time?

Richard: Not really. But come to think of it, total silence sounds like a good thing for some of the kids I know…

Subra: It was very hard for me. I could not utter a sound.

In the morning my parents took me to a special booth prepared for the occasion. A sacrificial fire was burning on an altar. I was completely clean-shaven—totally bald—which is never fun for a young boy. Then I was bathed. Then they gave me some sweet food to eat—I liked that part just fine—rice, clarified butter (we call it ghee), sugar, milk, and fruit.

Richard: Hmm, butter, sugar, milk—a real cholesterol booster shot.

Subra: It is considered food in its very purest form. My mother ate with me, which is an important point to note because this was the last time I would ever eat with her.

Richard: You mean she died shortly after?

Subra: No, no, no—nothing like that. In my strict orthodox upbringing, I was considered a man from this point on. As such, I would only eat with the men of the family, separate from all women, even my mother.

After we ate, the formal ceremony commenced. A teacher who conducted the ceremony called on the nine planets to be witnesses then questioned me as to my desire to become an initiate.

Once the teacher was satisfied with my answers, he entrusted me to the gods of water, herbs, sky, and earth. Then he prayed to all the gods and demons to protect me from every kind of evil. He then commanded me to walk as a Brahman from then on. That was now my new identity.

Richard: That ceremony sounds amazing! It’s almost like an Indian version of a bar mitzvah, when a Jewish boy officially becomes a “son of the commandment.”

Subra: Yes, it is, isn’t it?

The climax of my ceremony involved a liturgical spell, or prayer, that was whispered by the priest to my father, who whispered it into my right ear. This prayer was so sacred that my right ear, into which it was breathed, was now considered sacred. And whenever I repeated that prayer, I was cleansed from sin. No woman and no low-caste person were ever to hear it. I repeated this mantra to myself every day. I was instructed to do so for the rest of my life.

Richard: So do you still?

Subra: Do I what?

Richard: Do you repeat your mantra every day?

Subra: Oh, Richard… It’s a long story. Yes, I did. For quite some time anyway. But I don’t anymore. But I am ahead of myself in the story. Look, we are finished with our tea. Let’s get back in the car and keep driving. We are almost at Mathura, the holy city. Sometimes I think all of this is too complicated to understand…

Richard: I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how emotional a subject this is to you.

Subra: It is. It has always been, Richard. Hinduism used to be my life. The memories and emotional attachments of Indian family life are very strong. It’s what keeps us together. It’s part of our rich heritage…

[The two fall silent for some time as the car hurtles down the road.]

Subra: Ah…here we are at last in Mathura, Richard. Let me just pay a few rupees to this fellow to keep an eye on the car while we are gone. If we don’t, I fear the hubcaps will be gone by the time we return.

Richard: Stolen hubcaps here? Even in a sacred city—the birthplace of Krishna?

Subra: Yes, and then down the road they will be sold back to us by the fellow’s father. Indians are born capitalists!

Richard: Sounds to me like exploitation. That seems to happen quite a bit in any religious city. Have you ever seen all the haggling that goes on in Rome or Jerusalem?

Subra: Never been there myself. Mathura was always held out to me as the place to be. “Mathura, Mathura, fair Mathura.” Mathura, the birthplace of Krishna, so it is believed.

Before Mathura was regarded as Krishna’s birthplace, it was sacred to the Buddhists also. It was actually a Buddhist monastic center at one time, comprised of twenty Buddhist monasteries and about three thousand monks who resided here. But as Buddhism declined in India, Mathura became a sacred spot to the Hindus.

Richard: You don’t see many traces of Buddhism here today?

Subra: Funny you should ask. Courtesy of an Afghan warlord, most all of the Buddhist and Hindu shrines were leveled sometime around AD 1018. Within the next few centuries, the city was determined to be Krishna’s birthplace, and then the Muslim Mughal Aurangzeb flattened the Hindu temple that had been built here and put up a mosque in its place.

So over the actual birthplace, there is now a mosque. A parcel of ground protruding from the barrier of the mosque is now revered as the spot of Krishna’s birth. It is a situation a little similar to the mosque that exists on the site of the temple in Jerusalem—the only place the Jews have to worship is at the Western Wall of the temple.

And like Jerusalem, this has not been a place of peace. Even now, we will be searched as we enter the main temple. And by the way, there are over five thousand temples in this small city.

Richard: Human nature is the same everywhere, isn’t it? Who are these women here chanting?

Subra: This is a worship center for widows. There are about two thousand widows who come here every day to chant “Hare Ram, Hare Krishna” for four hours each morning and four hours each evening. In exchange, they are given a cup of rice at noon with some lentils and two rupees, which is about five cents, and a cup of rice and lentils at dinner. If they also chant in the evening, they are paid five rupees. Four times a year they are given a change of clothes.

Richard: Sounds like quite a life. Where do these widows live?

Subra: They have a threadbare existence, Richard. But that’s considered their karmic debt being paid. You know about karma, yes? It’s the belief that all of one’s actions in life, both good and bad, determine one’s next rebirth after death. It’s too much to go into in depth right now.

Richard: Yes, I’ve heard of karma before. Hey…what the…? Stop that!

Subra: Watch out, Richard! I warned you not to pull out your sunglasses!

Richard: Holy cow! That monkey just snatched the sunglasses right off my face. Oh, I’m sorry…maybe I shouldn’t have said “holy cow.”

Subra: Well, I suppose this is the right place to say those words. Here’s my handkerchief—the monkey scratched you.

Richard: Any chance of getting my sunglasses back?

Subra: I doubt it. Your glasses are probably on the roof of the temple now. The monkey is looking at his reflection in the lenses. You just have to be careful here. There are monkeys by the hundreds, cows by the thousands, and, as you see, donkeys as well. They all wander freely.

Richard: Monkeys, cows, donkeys—without religion, there would be no businesses here.

Subra: [Laughing] You might be right about that. By the way, the tastiest barfis in the country are also made here. They are called pedas. It is the same basic recipe but just a little bit sweeter and richer. You can’t eat too many—it’s a sure mouthful on the road to diabetes. But I could think of worse ways to go!

Richard: Hmm, sounds inviting, but I think I’ll pass this time.

Back to what we were talking about. How was your religious thinking shaped, Subra? You seem to know so much about Hinduism from an insider’s point of view.

Subra: Richard, it’s hard to tell the whole story. It cost me so much. As you know, my family does not talk to me anymore, and it has been so painful.

When I was in college, I started to question what I had always believed. I asked simple questions at first: Why? Who said so? Where is it written?

But simple questions have a way of leading to much greater things. Religion is so important in our cultural experience—India is the most religious country in the world. And you don’t easily question what everybody around you believes.

Richard: Religion just seems to be everywhere here.

Subra: Yes. In more ways than you might think. We commonly use many words and expressions that come from our religion, seldom asking where they originated.

For example, the word avatar, which means a divine manifestation, is not even used in the Gita, one of the scriptures of Hinduism. Yet the idea of avatar is fondly believed throughout India because of its implications.

An avatar is a bodily manifestation of a higher being, even the supreme being, on planet Earth. The term is primarily used for incarnations of Vishnu, the preserver god, but it’s also used of highly influential teachers in other religions, including Jesus and Mohammed. Oh! I can say so much.

Richard: The Gita? I know I’ve heard of that before. What is it exactly, and how does it differ from the Vedas?

Subra: The Bhagavad Gita, or “Song of God,” is the most sacred book of the Hindus. It’s a long narrative poem, about seven hundred verses, that tells the story of a discussion between Krishna and the warrior Arjuna, who is about to fight his cousins. The flow of the Gita revolves around man’s duty, which if carried out will bring nothing but sorrow. But the poem also offers hope through the way of devotion.

The Vedas, or wisdom books, are the oldest scriptures we possess—they contain everything from teachings to ceremonial instructions in detail. The Vedas are actually a collection of four books. Each book has three parts: mantras, hymns of praise to the gods; Brahmanas, a guide for practicing rituals; and the Upanishads, the most important part, which deals with teaching on religious truth and doctrines.

In a different category to them are the Epics—two major tales of India. The principal one is the Mahabharata, which contains the famed Ramayana, and the Gita. Technically, these are not considered to be on the same philosophical plane as the Vedas, but practically, they are the books most loved by Hindus. It all sounds confusing at first. The Hindu scriptures are voluminous indeed.

Here, let’s sit down awhile in the shade and look at the temple.

Richard: Sounds complicated. I don’t know how you ever keep all the scriptures straight. Hey, did you see that?

Subra: What?

Richard: When that cow wandered into the temple, the pilgrim over there touched it and then touched his own forehead and his heart.

Subra: That practice comes right out of the Gita. From early times, the Hindus have revered cows because of their alleged great power. There’s also a verse in the Atharva Veda that identifies the cow with the entire visible universe:

Worship, O Cow, to thy tail-hair, and to thy hooves, and to thy form!… The Cow is Heaven, the Cow is Earth, the Cow is Vishnu, Lord of Life.

Anyhow, let me continue with my story. When I started to question what I had been taught, I decided to leave home. I had no money and no place to go, so I wandered for days and weeks, finally ending up in front of a cave.

I couldn’t see anything inside the cave—it was all dark and shadowy—but as I began to walk into the cave I could feel a presence there. I walked farther and farther. Some time later I was shocked to stumble upon an emaciated swami, a mystic clad in a saffron robe,

sitting in silence.

The swami had taken a vow of silence and had been there a long time. There was just enough light to see that his eyes were shut. He was reflecting. Seeing him there turned my heart toward the ultimate questions as nothing else had.

Richard: How did the swami survive inside the cave?

Subra: Barely. Every now and then the villagers who lived nearby brought him meager rations.

I stayed with the swami for several weeks, and we developed a close relationship. I kept his living quarters clean and spent many hours with him just sitting and meditating.

Finally, for my sake, he wrote a few brief words, telling me that I must leave him and that I would find the answers I was seeking elsewhere. I was devastated, but he was leaving to go on a trip himself, so I couldn’t stay with him.

Weeks later I returned to the cave, still seeking spiritual illumination, and I heard a voice in the night—but it wasn’t the swami’s voice this time.

The voice was clear and calm, breathtaking and true. It said simply, “Follow me.” I heard it, Richard. I really heard it.

I didn’t know exactly where to go after that, but somehow I knew that the same voice that spoke to me there in the cave would guide me along my way.

I left the cave and met a man walking down the road who shared with me the strange and beautiful story of a babe born in a straw manger. The babe was the incarnation of the true God and had come to connect us to the true Supreme Being.

It was the first time I had ever heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. I had always been taught that there is no such thing as sin against a holy God. I always thought that acts of wrongdoing were mainly a result of ignorance and that these evils could be overcome by following the guidelines of one’s caste and way of salvation.

But there on the road I saw my sin as a real act of rebellion against a perfect and holy God. And, surprisingly, I discovered who it was I was searching for—the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. My life…has never been the same.

Richard: And your family?

Subra: They would have nothing to do with me after that. Neither would my community.

Richard: I’m so sorry for you.

Subra: Converting to another belief system is never easy—even when you convert to the truth. With my new faith, I had a deep and lasting joy I had never known before, but I was also troubled for my family and country—so many who had grown up believing exactly as I had believed.

I sometimes imagined what it would be like for Jesus to simply sit down with Krishna so they could hash it all out between them. Others would hear of the conversation and decide for themselves where truth lay.

It wouldn’t be that far-fetched, you know. What I heard in the cave was a real voice. If Jesus has a voice, perhaps the historic Krishna has a voice also.

Perhaps if I leaned hard enough—you know, leaned into the curtain behind time—I could hear what Jesus and Krishna would say to each other.

Can you imagine that, Richard—Jesus and Krishna talking? What would each say to the other?

The image of these two great figures deep in conversation stayed with me for some time. I could not shake the picture no matter how hard I tried.

So one day I gave in. I sat down in a cow pasture and leaned in.

Richard: You “leaned in”?

Subra: As I sat in the pasture and closed my eyes, it was like a new world became visible to me. Suddenly I could see things I had never seen before.

In the distance I saw a few saffron robes hanging from a tree and two figures standing in shadows talking. It was noon, already very hot and humid for the day—one of those steamy days you encounter only in India.

As I strained to glimpse the men’s faces, their identities became apparent. It was Jesus, clothed in a white robe, with sandaled feet and scars on his hands; and Krishna, the youthful prince with his ever-present flute. Can you see them, Richard, in your own mind’s eye?

Let me tell you in detail about the conversation. Listen! I strained to hear what was being said…

Today’s Wild Card author is:

Rebeca Seitz

“I mean it, Harry,” Kendra Sinclair let a bit of her fright and frustration leak into her tone.

Harry’s chuckle mocked. “You know you don’t. Come on, everybody has to eat.”

“Like I said, I’ve already eaten.” And I don’t need this kind of complication right now, even if I want it.

“Dessert, then, Kendra. You don’t want to end the day without dessert, do you?”

Yes, she did. No, she didn’t. Well, yeah, she did. She should. The sigh was out before she could stop it.

“I heard that. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

“But—”

“See you soon.”

Kendra slammed the phone down and stared at it, waiting for it to jump up and bite her. It might as well have, for all the craziness it had brought her life in the past two months.

Okay, six months.

But there was that two month lull, so really, four months altogether.

“Imparticular man,” she muttered, pacing away from the phone and back. Her purple toenails gave a nice contrast as her feet sank into plush carpet the color of a pure snow drift. “Kendra Sinclair, you are not a conniving woman. What has gotten into you?”

She plopped down into the overstuffed couch the saleslady had called “polar bear” and pulled Miss Kitty onto her lap. Stroking the cat’s fur, she stared across the room. Tufts of fur fell onto the sofa, blending into the fabric there.

“Where’s Oprah when you need her?”

The cat purred its approval of Kendra’s long fingernails and sank down further into its mistress’s lap.

“Probably on some beach with Stedman, laughing at the rest of us who haven’t gotten it all figured out just yet. Right, Miss Kitty?”

The motoring purr increased in volume and Kendra smiled.

The phone rang and she jerked so hard, Miss Kitty toppled to the floor.

“Oh, sorry!” Kendra tossed the apology to Miss Kitty and jerked up the handset. “Hello?”

“Hey, how’s Stars Hill’s finest lady tonight?” Darin’s smooth voice hummed over the line and Kendra’s heart did a double take, frantically downshifting from the previous call. She straightened on the couch, then felt stupid when she realized he couldn’t possibly see how out of sorts she was through the phone line.

“Oh, I’m good. Good. Yeah, really good. How are you?”

“Wow, that’s three goods in the first five seconds. Something wrong?”

She propped her elbow on the arm of the couch and rested her jaw in her palm. Other women lowered their gazes and offered demure smiles when they were out of control. But Kendra? She stammered and fell all over herself with streams of words. “No, no, nothing’s wrong. Just sitting here talking to Miss Kitty.”

“Lucky cat.”

Kendra chuckled, feeling her heart rate settle back into the normal range even while her skin heated at the sound. “Tell her that. I knocked her off my lap when the phone rang.

“And she hasn’t clawed your eyes out yet?””

“Declawed, remember?.”

“Oh, right. Anyway, I know it’s last minute but I was wondering if you’d had dinner yet.”

“Oh, um, no. Well, yes, but that was a couple of hours ago. I mean, not that I need to eat anymore today. Gotta watch my waistline and all–”

His chuckle stopped her mid-sentence. “I’ll be over there in about fifteen minutes. See you soon.”

She heard the click of the phone and stared at it. Not five minutes ago a different man had said the same words. Her silk caftan swirled as she jumped up and fled to the bedroom, praying the first caller hadn’t been serious and was just leading her on.

Which her heart of hearts knew wouldn’t be out of character for him at all.

Today’s Wild Card author is:

Megan DiMaria

Jerry looks at me as if my head has sprouted petunias. “Linda, the half-and-half isn’t cold.”

I regard him through bleary eyes and swallow a yawn. His silhouette appears soft and gauzy, framed by the daylight pouring through the kitchen window, glowing like a Thomas Kinkade painting. I should have given myself an extra dose of eyedrops when I got up this morning. Ever since my LASIK surgery, I’ve applied a thick, Vaseline-like ointment to my dry eyes at night before dropping into bed. “What?”

He’s standing in the middle of the kitchen, the questionable carton of half-and-half in one hand and a mug of steaming coffee in the other. His plaid robe hangs partway open, the belt loosely tied over wrinkled pajamas. A look of perplexity transforms his intelligent features into a caricature of a hapless sad sack. But truly nothing could be further from the truth. My husband is a PhD chemist. So who is this clueless schmo standing before me?

Jerry raises the hand holding the half-and-half. “Warm.”

“Is the refrigerator broken?” I launch from my seat and open the door of our five-year-old GE side-by-side fridge that I just had to have and, by the way, got at a fabulous discount at the scratch-and-dent sale at Sears.

The interior of the appliance is dark, the first clue that something is amiss. And come to think of it, the refrigerator’s typical hum of electrical activity was absent from my morning symphony of appliances that serenades me while the coffee brews and the microwave heats my favorite tall latte mug.

I peer inside. Oh, rats. Condensation coats the exterior of a large jar of dill pickles on the top shelf. I put my hand on a glass casserole dish to confirm my diagnosis. “It’s not working.”

My dear husband is still rooted to the floor. Some people are dependent on that caffeine jolt to get them going in the morning, and he’s their poster boy.

“Pour some half-and-half in your coffee, Jer. It’s probably okay.”

He follows my instructions and takes a seat at the table. “Well, I don’t think I could stomach warm milk with my shredded wheat.”

I open the freezer door and root around until I find the Sara Lee pound cake I was saving for the weekend. This cake would have been so delicious with some fresh strawberries and whipped cream. I console myself with the knowledge that I really don’t need the extra calories; I’m fluffy enough. That’s the loving word the Revere family uses to refer to those dreaded unwanted pounds. As in, “Don’t you love to hug Grandma? She’s so fluffy.”

“This will have to do for breakfast. Can you run down to the basement and get the picnic cooler? Maybe we can salvage some of the frozen meat.”

Jerry takes a deep swig of his legal stimulant and disappears into the basement. While I pour my tea and set the table, I hear him muttering amid the noise of boxes being shifted across the cement floor.

“What’s Dad doing?” Emma stands at the top of the basement stairs, her ear cocked to the sounds coming from below. At fifteen she’s still my little girl on some days, but on others I see the lovely young woman who’s emerging from within.

I fill her in on the morning’s tragedy.

She flips a strand of light brown hair behind her shoulder and saunters to the table. “Whatever.”

Okay, so today I see that snotty teenage brat who’s hijacked my little darling. Obviously she doesn’t feel my pain and is clueless about the cost or inconvenience of a busted refrigerator. Ah, the bliss of youthful ignorance.

Em picks up the knife and slices a piece of cake. “No juice?”

“Help yourself.”

She pushes to her feet, grabs a glass, and opens the freezer to retrieve three measly ice cubes.

Just as Jerry’s emerging from the basement with the dusty cooler, our son, Nick, joins us, wearing a pair of green sweatpants and a faded T-shirt. His eyelids are at half-mast, and he has a bad case of bed head. Emma’s only too happy to give him our news.

I begin to load the picnic cooler with frozen meat and toss the few anorexic ice cubes left in the freezer on top of our chicken breasts, pork tenderloin, ground beef, and frozen vegetables. “Well, this won’t do the trick.” Too bad it’s springtime. Otherwise I could toss my food in the snow.

No one responds to my comment, so I turn to my college-age son. “Nicky, would you please run to the store and get a bag of ice?”

He grimaces, but he’s maturing nicely and agrees to drive the few blocks to the store to run my errand. Emma plops herself down in front of the computer, no doubt relieved for once that she doesn’t have her driver’s license yet.

I paw through our junk drawer in the kitchen for the stack of business cards to find a repairman. Mechanic. Insurance agent. Day spa. Where did that come from? My nerves begin to dance like a cat on hot pavement. I don’t have time for this. “Jer, who should I call?”

My honey squeezes my shoulder. Ah, marital solidarity. He walks toward the desk that sits between the kitchen and family room. “Em, may I use the computer?”

She glares at him but silently gives up her seat. In a moment, Jerry has the telephone number of the Sears repairmen. He passes the scrap of paper to me. “Here ya go.”

Great. So much for marital solidarity.

I dial the number, navigate the menu, and plead my case to the dispatch associate. “Two o’clock? Um, okay. Thanks. Someone will be here to let him in.” I disconnect the call and secure the handset back on the base. “Jer? What’s your schedule today?”

He grunts out a reply with his back toward me while he pours another mug of coffee.

“What?”

He turns and takes a careful sip of the hot liquid. “Sorry. Faculty meeting. No can do.”

Anxiety builds in my chest. Swell. As usual, I’m the one who has to make the appointment and alter my schedule to accommodate this fiasco.

I’m loading the breakfast plates into the dishwasher when Nick walks in bearing a twenty-pound bag of ice. He opens the back door, then drops the bag onto the brick patio.

“Nick?”

He retrieves the bag of crushed ice and beams his killer grin—the one that made my sensibilities melt nearly twenty-six years ago when his father favored me with the same endearing smile at a gas station off the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

I have to confess it’s as though Jer saw my heart soar toward the heavens in that moment and caught it in his hand. And that’s where it’s been ever since. I had run out of gas, and he was fueling his 1973 Volkswagen Karmann Ghia. Both Jerry and his cute little red car were about the best thing I’d seen in forever. He offered to drive me and my gallon of gasoline to my stranded car, and the rest of the story, as they say, is history.

The grandfather clock chimes from the living room, reminding me that I’m behind schedule. Being late for work at Dream Photography is a major transgression. My stomach knots to think that not only will I be late, but I’ll have to leave early too. A hive of angry bees bounces off the inside of my skull, clamoring to escape, and a deep sigh drains from the bottom of my lungs.

“Mom?” Nick lays his hand on my shoulder. He is so like his father, bless him. “Chill. It’s only a refrigerator.”

He makes me smile in spite of my poor attitude. “I know. It’s just that I’ll have to leave work early, and—”

“What time is the repairman coming?”

Praise God—we must have done something right to deserve this child. “Two o’clock. Will you be home from school?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry. I need to buy a book for my history class.”

Are you kidding me? My hands ball and land on my hips. “Can’t you buy the book another day?”

“I really need to get going on my term paper. It’s due in three weeks.”

My anxiety level rises again. “Won’t the bookstore be open tomorrow?”

Nick rolls his eyes. “I won’t have time to stand in that line at the bookstore tomorrow.” He pours the ice cubes onto the meat, ending our discussion.

I toss the lid on the cooler and scurry upstairs to get ready for work. So what’s our new family slogan? Every man for himself?

***

I walk into the organized chaos that is Dream Photography—one of the best-known portrait studios in metro Denver. The ringing telephone provides nerve-jarring background noise for the pandemonium playing itself out.

A well-groomed toddler makes serious work of tossing neatly arranged brochures onto the floor, while his mother wipes baby spit from her infant daughter’s dress. Another client is tapping her foot and checking her wristwatch. Add to that the family being escorted to the lobby to schedule their image presentation—aka sales session—by none other than Luke Vidal, my surly boss.

My tardiness is noted by Luke with a raised eyebrow and a brief tic of his head, one that goes unnoticed by our clients but hits pay dirt in my always-too-willing-to-accept-guilt gut. “Linda, can you schedule an image presentation for the Murrays?”

Sure, Luke would have to enlist me to wait on clients before I get the chance to clock in and get my bearings. That must be my punishment for coming in late. I hurry behind the reception desk and smile at the Murray clan—the ones who think Luke is the greatest thing since the invention of the daguerreotype.

Luke pumps the outstretched hand of Andy Murray. “The shoot went well. I think you’ll love the images.” He gives a peppermint-sweet grin to the rest of the family and struts from the beautifully appointed lobby of his home away from home.

I take care of business and trot to the break room to clock in and catch my breath.

My coworker Traci looks up from a pile of five by sevens. “Hey, girl. Where have you been?”

“Don’t ask.”

She puts down a print of a gorgeous bride and waits for the information she knows I’ll spill. I unburden my tale of woe, and she nods and gives me the expected platitudes.

She smiles her Pepsodent grin and pats me on the back. “Isn’t life grand?”

I really love Traci, but sometimes she can lay it on too thick. She passes me the day’s schedule, then exits the room.

I glance at the list of appointments. Rats. I better get moving. The bees have begun to swarm in my brain again.

After grabbing the necessary client files and slipping into a salesroom, I power up my Mac and access the network. Within moments I’ve loaded my client’s images and have chosen an appropriately sentimental song to accompany the slide show. I turn on the projector and dim the lights. Clients go gaga over our well-designed salesrooms—I mean, image presentation rooms. They look more like an elegant home theater than a place of business.

I race back to the lobby, discover that my 9:30 sale has arrived, and paste a smile on my face. “Heidi, Ken, it’s good to see you again. If you don’t remember, my name’s Linda.”

They greet me, and I escort them to the salesroom, chatting them up to break the ice.

The freshly baked cookies placed on the coffee table make my mouth water and hopefully put our well-heeled clients in the mood to take an emotional journey while gazing at the incredible images produced in our high-end studio.

“Can I get anyone a bottle of water before we begin?”

“Yes, I would love some water.” Heidi claims a seat in one of the overstuffed chairs. She looks toward her husband, who is inspecting the frame on one of the portraits that adorn the walls. “Ken?”

“Oh yes. Please.”

I excuse myself and go to the fridge to get some of our private-label water bottles. From the first moment our customers call to schedule their appointment and until they have their portraits delivered, they’re treated like royalty. Fortunately, most of them deserve such treatment.

Heidi and Ken are clients from way back. They’ve been through everything with us, from the old days of film to the current high-tech, all-digital studio we’ve evolved into.

When I return, I distribute the water and start the viewing program. The swell of sentimental music explodes from the speakers in the ceiling, and images of two adorable little girls move across the big screen. They sit in a wicker swing under a towering oak tree in a field of tall, natural grasses. The lighting illuminates the canopy of green branches above them, while they are perfectly shaded from the bright morning sun. The girls are wearing off-white linen dresses and holding lovely vintage rag dolls. The camera changes perspective, and the girls are in the foreground, framed by the leaves from the branch of a nearby tree. In the next scene they’re sitting at a small, white bistro table enjoying a tea party with a rose-patterned porcelain tea set and a teddy bear for a guest.

The music plays on as the girls pose by an antique baby carriage. They both gaze off into the distance, their expressions a paragon of youthful innocence.

I’m so sick of these types of saccharine images, I could puke. But day after day, they provide the all-natural, nitrate-free bacon I bring home to my family.

Heidi sniffs and reaches for the box of tissues that sits on the table. The last image fades from the screen, and the music stops. Heidi grasps for her husband’s hand. He nods and smiles.

I hand a price list to Ken, and we get down to business.

Heidi appears to suffer heart-wrenching torment as we narrow the number of images down from thirty-nine to fifteen. You’d think I’m dishonoring her cute little daughters by deleting some, but unless you’ve got a huge bank account, you can’t buy them all.

She clutches a hand to her heart, and her husband says, “I love that expression on Olyvia’s face.”

I slip into sales mode. “That image is gorgeous, but look at the subjects. Your girls are beautiful.”

They smile in agreement. We continue to weed through the images to find their favorites. I’m getting dizzy from comparing similar poses and going back and forth while Heidi hems and haws about the merits of each picture.

“Ah, can you pull up number twenty-two?”

I maneuver the program to display an image of the girls sitting at the bistro table.

“And can you compare it to number twenty-four?”

Could this woman say please just once? Would it kill her to treat me with a modicum of respect?

She turns to her husband. “What do you think?”

Poor Ken looks as though he’s pulling himself out of a stupor to respond. “Uh, I don’t like the way Trynity’s hand is curled on the table.”

Heidi stands and moves closer to the screen. “Really? I think that’s cute.”

He sighs. “Okay, keep that one.”

“But Olyvia isn’t looking in the right direction.”

“Heidi, sit down so I can see the screen.”

She flashes him a look that could take the merry out of Christmas. Uh-oh. This isn’t good.

I clear my throat and try to maneuver the sale in the right direction. “What if we take Olyvia’s head from image twenty-five and put it on this image?”

They both study the pictures that I put side by side on the screen.

“And, Ken, didn’t you say you love that expression on Olyvia’s face?”

He jerks in my direction, and I don’t know if he’s pleased that I’m asking for his input or annoyed. “What will this cost?”

Oh, so that’s the way we’re going to be, huh, Ken? “Well, there will be an extra art fee to swap out that head, but if you both love the images and you’re purchasing a wall portrait, it’s well worth the charge.”

“How much?” Ken insists.

Heidi shifts in her seat. “Oh, it will be perfect. We could hang it in the dining room across from the china cabinet.”

That Heidi, she’s my kind of gal. Press on, full steam ahead.

“How much will it cost?”

I wave my hand to minimize the bombshell. “Oh, only about fifty dollars.”

If the room were brighter, I’m sure I’d see steam floating from his ears. “Can you show us what that would look like?”

I don’t know why he’s giving me a hard time. He’s bought images with head swaps from us before. “Sure, this is down and dirty, but it will give you an idea.” My artistry is crude at best, but I do a quick swap. “Of course our imaging artists will make it look 100 percent natural. No one will know this isn’t the original image.”

Ken leans back in his chair, a movement I take for acceptance.

I go in for the close. “Now what size portrait were you thinking of?”

Heidi clasps her hands. “Maybe a sixteen by twenty.”

“Okay. What size is the wall it’s going on?”

She looks confused, as if I’m speaking in Mandarin.

I stand and pick up a twenty-by-twenty-four-inch frame that holds a white piece of foam core. “Let’s look at this size, and tell me what you think.” I step into the middle of the room and center the image on the blank canvas.

They respond with the usual sigh of desire.

“You may even want to see the next size up.” No sense in not trying.

“Okay, let’s see . . .”

Cha-ching. Looks like I’m well on my way to exceeding my weekly goal. By the time they’re ready to leave, I can tell Heidi wants nothing more than to go home and hug her little darlings. For the amount of money I collected from their mom and dad, I want to hug the girls too.

If only the rest of my day goes as well. After the refrigerator crisis, I could use a break.

Today’s Wild Card author is:

Richard B. Couser

A Greek friend once taught me a traditional Orthodox prayer
known as “the Jesus Prayer.” It is simple; a single sentence: “Lord
Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.” Th e extended, continuous repetition
of this sentence is said to bring believers into a deeper, even mystical,
communion with God. I don’t know what effect such repetition has
on mind or body to add to the spiritual force that must spring from
absorbing the message of the prayer into one’s soul. Its seven words
contain all that is needed for spiritual life: confessing the Lordship of
Christ, the sin of the believer (without which there would be no need
for mercy), the plea for mercy, and the certainty that the Lord Jesus can
and will provide it to those who ask.

I knew a little, but very little, of such things when I first met Hal. I
had heard it at an early stage of my adult life as a believer of the practice
of “praying the Scriptures”—taking a word, a phrase, or a verse and
focusing meditation and prayer on it until it was absorbed into the soul
like the Jesus prayer. Despite my intellectual knowledge of spiritual
matters, my own life of prayer and meditation had been engaged lightly
and infrequently. I had never experienced the mystical union with God
from such prayer or meditation claimed by saints like Teresa of Avila,
Madame Jeanne Guyon, or John of the Cross.

Even at the “book-learning” level, there were times when my poor
and inconstant study of the Bible became stuck, wheels spinning in the
proverbial rut, at a point that seemed insurmountable. Deuteronomy is
a little-visited book, and it was just there that the mountain of Scripture
was planted in my path, with no way around. A visiting preacher in our
church asked once, only half in jest, if any of us could fi nd Deuteronomy
in our Bibles. Like too many people in the pew, even those who were
biblically literate, I could find Deuteronomy, but I almost never found
myself in it. Th e book is long—and long before Christ. For much of
its length, it seems to bog down in detailed laws that no longer apply,
at least to Christians. It consisted of Moses’ speeches and teachings,
but we had Jesus. It expressed the “old covenant,” but we had the “new
covenant.” It was, in short, too old, too long, too Jewish, and too irrelevant.
What was the point of studying it?

Yet many things about Deuteronomy intrigued me. It was Moses’
end-of-life speeches and teachings, summarizing everything he had
learned from the Lord and taught Israel for forty years. Surely the last
words of such a monumental fi gure in religious and world history were
worthy of attention.

It was also, I could see, a transitional book, marking the end of
Israel’s Exodus from Egypt, when the forty years of desert wandering
were over and the conquest of the Promised Land was about to begin.
Israel was camped on the Plains of Moab, east of the Jordan River, and
Joshua was about to assume leadership. Th e historical books of Joshua
through Second Kings would continue the story of the movement over
the Jordan and the life of God’s people in the land, a story of promise,
failure, and ultimately destruction and exile in Babylon.

And, I read in my study Bible, it was a covenant—a contract or
treaty document expressing the relationship between God and a special
people he had chosen to serve him and to exemplify to the nations
what a righteous nation under God is like.

I knew Deuteronomy to be a book embodying much of the law of ancient
Israel. A literal translation of the Greek title was the “second law”
or repetition of the law, and the title was appropriate. In Deuteronomy,
the laws Moses had given Israel in the three preceding books—Exodus,
Leviticus and Numbers—were sometimes repeated, sometimes summarized,
sometimes abbreviated or expanded. Modern Christians have
little interest in studying Old Testament law. But could the accounts
of people and events in both testaments of the Bible—including the
teachings of Jesus and his controversies with Jewish groups and leaders
of his time—gain meaning from understanding the law contained in
Deuteronomy?

It was also, commentators said, a book of deep theology. One writer
called it “Th e theological colossus that guards the entrance to Old
Testament theology.”1 From beginning to end, it was a document of
teaching and preaching, filled with instruction and understanding
on right living and relationships between people and God, between
people and their community, and between people and other people. It
contained the Ten Commandments. It is the most often quoted Old
Testament book by Jesus and the New Testament writers; it grounded
their understanding of what the universe was all about. If it was that
important to Jesus, perhaps it should be more important to me.
My mind turned over and over its opening phrase: “These are the
words. . . .” Like the beginning of the book of Genesis, or of the Gospels
of Mark, Luke, and John, it held a promise of depth in what followed
that kept one at the beginning, as if peering into a well of pure water
whose shiny surface reflected back the face of the viewer and needed to
be penetrated to taste what lay beneath.

I decided to visit Hal again to explore these thoughts.

“These are the words . . .” (Deut. 1:1).

Anna and I had stopped on a couple of Saturdays but hadn’t found
Hal at home. I took her for a tour of his rose garden, knowing he
would want me to share it with her. Some of the names of the varieties
had stuck with me, but Anna saw color and composition rather than
words, beauty rather than thought. Th e garden, she told me, was a
reflection of the gardener. She told me to call Hal and fi nd a time
to get together with him. She encouraged me to spend as much time
with him as I wanted. She sensed this was important to me and to my
personal spiritual journey. Her own lifelong journey in the Spirit told
her this was the right thing to do, the right time to do it, and the right
person with whom to do it. Hal was happy to oblige my request.

I found Hal in his study on a late summer evening, when the early
chill of fall was in the air. He was sitting in a deep red chair, facing the
hearty fl ames of a fi replace. A soft, dim light fl owed from the floor
lamp over his shoulder. Two others lamps, on a table and a desk against
opposite walls, helped illuminate the room. Th e study walls were floor
to ceiling bookcases on every side, broken only by the entrance door,
two west-facing windows with small panes, and the space where his
desk was set into the bookcases between the windows. Like a condensed
library in an English manor house or an expanded offi ce of a university
professor, bathed in the suff used orange of gentler light, it spoke as the
dwelling of one who lived by words.

Hal invited me to sit in the shallower and harder green chair across
from him. Would he help me study and understand Deuteronomy? I
had purchased some commentaries by various academics and others
about the book, and I was willing to read them—in fact I had already
begun to do so. But I wasn’t getting to the spiritual heart of the book,
so I pressed my case with Hal.

He needed little persuasion. He didn’t have a lot of people to pastor
anymore, he told me. It would be a joy to his heart to share what he
could with me. He asked me to commit to meet with him regularly and
to prepare for the meetings, not just by reading Deuteronomy but by
reading some background on it, studying it so we could talk at more
than a superficial level. When I assured him I would, he reached for his
Bible resting on a nearby table.

“Open your Bible to Deuteronomy and follow me while I read,” he
said.

“Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all the Lord had commanded
him concerning them. . . . Th e Lord our God said to us at Horeb. . . .
Th en, as the Lord our God commanded us. . . . When the Lord heard
what you said, he was angry and solemnly swore. . . . Because of you
the Lord became angry with me also and said. . . . But the Lord said to
me . . .” (1:3, 6, 19, 34, 37, 42).

“You see, Chris, that’s only the first chapter of Deuteronomy, and
already the words you are reading have been given six times as the very
words of God. You are not reading the great American novel. And this
is not a ‘page turner’ to hold you breathless until the next fictional
adventure. Rather, you have come onto holy ground, where the author
of all that is—the only fi nal and ultimate reality—has shared with you
a glimpse of that reality. You are peering into God’s mind more surely
than the scientist who studies the far reaches of the universe through
images from great satellite-mounted telescopes, or one who teases from
DNA molecules the secrets of the chemistry of being. And your author
is about to take you on a journey that will carry you farther and reveal
more to you than journeying to outer space on a rocket ship.

“Contemplate the very term word. Th e acts of creation themselves
occur as spoken word—‘God said’—let there be light, an expanse between
the waters, dry ground, living creatures, man in our image. God
reveals himself to humanity through both word and deed, but the deeds
in turn are remembered and told and retold through the word. Word
is communication, and communication is the essence of the triune
God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. ‘Word’ expresses thought, logic,
rationality, relationship, feeling, and fi nally becomes the expression of
God himself: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and the Word was God.’ It is in this—the living Word—that all
things hold together. Martin Luther wrote, ‘But to hear God is bliss,
even if He were to sound out the same syllable all the time.’2
“In your soul, you have sensed what ‘the words’ really are and are
really about. You’re afraid to see God. You’re afraid to know him.
Th at’s why you’re stuck in your journey. You aren’t the fi rst, but you
have this—few who read these words have any understanding of the
Awesome Presence in which they stand. You have felt the fi re and seen
the cloud. Don’t turn back. Press on!”

It was enough for the evening. I was seized with awe and a dread. I
thanked him for his words and fl ed into the night journey home. Hal
had pried the scales a little bit loose from my eyes. I tried to see into the
dark, beyond the short range of the headlights, all the while keeping
my mind on worldly things enough to stay on the right side of the road
and not be blinded by the oncoming masses of glass and steel.

“Moses spoke to all Israel in the desert east of the Jordan—that is,
in the Arabah—opposite Suph, between Paran and Tophel, Laban,
Hazeroth and Dizahab” (Deut. 1:1). Th e words echoed in my mind.
Many Rabbis believe Moses’ words in Deuteronomy were not all spoken
on the plains of Moab, east of the Jordan. Rather they were accumulated
speeches given in the villages along the route of travel—Suph,
Paran, Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth, and Dihazeb, perhaps supplemented,
summarized, or finalized in Moab. Others believe that the villages
referred to are among the many nameless tells, those ancient mounds
that were cities or villages in millennia past that dot the Middle East,
no longer identifiable by name. Still others try to fi nd modern villages
in the area and transfigure the current name into a variation of the
ancient biblical name and speculate that these mark the boundaries of
the location of Israel in the time of Deuteronomy.

I saw none of these that night. As I drove through the little crossroads
and village squares of the several rural New Hampshire towns that lay
between Hal’s home and mine, I counted off their names as the biblical
towns of Deuteronomy: Barrington Suph, Northwood Paran, Epsom
Tophel, Chichester Laban, Loudon Hazeroth, Concord Dihazeb. I had
seen these villages before, from hills overlooking Cardiff in Wales, and
Monaco in southern France, as well as San Francisco, Los Angeles,
and Albuquerque in this country, and from the windows of a hundred
airplanes fl ying over every part of America and much of Europe. Th ey
were every town, and all of their inhabitants stood on the edge of the
Jordan, on the plains of Moab. Instead of deserts, forests, farms, lakes,
and ponds fi lled in between the villages. It didn’t matter. What lay
around me was as dry as those dusty plains where Moses spoke.

These are the words Moses spoke to all Israel in the desert
east of the Jordan—that is, in the Arabah—opposite Suph,
between Paran and Tophel, Laban, Hazeroth and Dizahab.
(It takes eleven days to go from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea by
the Mount Seir road.)

In the fortieth year, on the fi rst day of the eleventh month,
Moses proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had
commanded him concerning them. Th is was after he
had defeated Sihon king of the Amorites, who reigned in
Heshbon, and at Edrei had defeated Og king of Bashan,
who reigned in Ashtaroth.

East of the Jordan in the territory of Moab, Moses began to
expound this law.
—Deut. 1:1–5

Monday morning came and the workweek swallowed me. Telephone
callers demanding return courtesies, letters to read, letters to write,
reports to digest and act on, projects to move, meetings, people with
questions, people with needs, bills to send, the sweat of my brow by
which to earn my bread. Th e bright fluorescence and busyness of the
office environment could not be more distant from Hal’s warm library. I
was on the phone when the “notification” box flashed on my computer
screen. It was an e-mail from Hal. My heart quickened, remembering
our recent evening together. I clicked on “read” while still talking to
my client.

Chris: God speaks in rhythms as well as in words. Just as
the molecules and atoms and subatomic particles that make
up your being and everything else in the universe are bound
together in a vibrating dance held together by forces that
we give names to and try to measure but don’t really understand,
so does the Scripture cohere in ways we rarely see.

Th e Bible is a whole book, not a series of disconnected texts.
Like all good stories, it has a beginning, a middle, and an
end; protagonists and antagonists; a series of scenes in which
the main character, Adam, strives toward a goal that he is
frustrated in reaching, until he finds the path. It is, of course,
the good story, not a good story. But the music of Scripture
is writ small as well as large. Bars and measures have patterns
within themselves that go together to make up the whole
symphony. Look for God’s patterns in it. Read only the fi rst
fi ve verses of Deuteronomy until you see the pattern. Th en
tell me what it is. When you can see the small rhythms, you
will begin to be able to see the large. Blessings—Hal.

I rushed home that night and plunged into the text after dinner. It
took an hour, but eventually I saw it. Th e text began with Moses speaking
the words, progressed through a description of space (“east of the
Jordan”)—where the words were spoken—then time (“in the fortieth
year”)—when the words were spoken, to the core message, “Moses
proclaimed to the Israelites all that the Lord had commanded him
concerning them.” Th en in perfect rhythm, it reversed order, speaking
to time (“after he had defeated”), then space (“east of the Jordan”), to
where it started (“Moses began to expound this law”). I picked up the
phone and called Hal with my discovery. His voice on the other end of
the phone betrayed his pleasure at my discovery.

“Th e technical term for what you’ve found, Chris, is a chiasm. It’s
a concentric structure of music or text that can operate on any level,
from the few verses you are studying, to the book of Deuteronomy, or
the Bible as a whole. You can see the logic of it in an English translation.
Th e poetry and music only come through fully in the Hebrew.

Th e liturgical churches understand, intuitively at least, something of
this, more than my own evangelical tradition. Truth and goodness are
communicated through beauty. Th e music and poetry of it awaken our
sensitivity to meaning. Th e Holy Spirit is not a hack writer. I think
you’re ready to go on.”

I had a practical question for Hal fi rst. “Why does God insert verse
two in here, Hal? Th e reference to the eleven days it takes to go from
Horeb to Kadesh Barnea seems out of place.”

“Th e point,” Hal said, “is to contrast the ease of God’s way with the
difficulty of man’s. Horeb is Sinai—where the law was given. Kadesh
Barnea was the place they were supposed to jump off for the Promised
Land. You are about to read that part of the story, but the bottom line
is that because of their lack of faith, it took the Israelites thirty-eight
years to make a trip they could have made in eleven days if they had
followed the Lord’s command. His yoke is easy and his burden is light.
Keep reading.”

Th e Lord our God said to us at Horeb, “You have stayed
long enough at this mountain. Break camp and advance
into the hill country of the Amorites; go to all the neighboring
peoples in the Arabah, in the mountains, in the western
foothills, in the Negev and along the coast, to the land of
the Canaanites and to Lebanon, as far as the great river, the
Euphrates. See, I have given you this land. Go in and take
possession of the land that the Lord swore he would give to
your fathers—to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—and to their
descendants after them.”
—Deut. 1:6–8

Hal was in a Socratic mood when we met next. He sat across from
me at a small table in the little coffee shop down the street from my office. Th e business day had not quite begun. To enhance the beginning
of their workday, people drifted in and out, picking up take-out cups
of flavored and specialty coffees. We sipped our own brew with bagels
and strawberry cream cheese, though we didn’t really want to eat but
felt obligated to purchase something to justify occupying the seats.
“Tell me about your education,” Hal began.

I recited my history: public school through the tenth grade, very
ordinary, followed by a couple years at a private preparatory school,
four years of undergraduate education, and three years of law school.
“Why did you spend nineteen years doing all that?” he asked next.
Th e early years were easy; I had, as did all children, to learn basics
that enable one to function in the world. After that, I was more goal oriented,
with the learning gradually becoming more focused on what
would be my life’s work in the law, work I could not have done without
everything that went before.

“How did you feel about education when you graduated from law
school?”

I recalled it well. I had been in school long enough. It was time
to leave school and practice the things I had learned. I was eager to
start my first job—to be a real lawyer, with cases and clients, helping
people, participating in the aff airs of life through my chosen field of
knowledge.

“And what does that have to do with the next three verses you are
studying in Deuteronomy?” Hal brought his brief quiz back to the
Scripture. I understood at once.

My schooling was the mountain where I had dwelt “long enough.”
When I finished my schooling, it was time to “break camp and advance.”
Th e Lord had put a world before me and prepared me to take
possession of it. Th e time for sitting at the learning desk was over—it
was the time of life to act. Deuteronomy 1:6–8 was every graduation
speech I had ever heard. I’d heard it at my own graduation; no doubt
my children and their children would hear it at theirs.

“But what does it teach spiritually?” Hal pressed.

His question led me on. We should move beyond being taught the
basics of the faith to act in the world as the Lord taught us to act. Th ere
comes a time when sitting at the Lord’s feet, at “the mountain,” is no
longer where we belong. Th ere are lands before us to conquer in his
name.

“It’s the life goal of every pastor,” Hal said, “to bring his flock away
from the mountain and lead them into acting on the promise. I hear
it in Moses throughout Deuteronomy, and in Paul when he says of
himself, ‘When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me,’ and
in the writer of Hebrews when he scolds his readers for still living on
milk like infants, and not being ready for the solid food of maturity.
Most people in the pew spend their life at the foot of the mountain,
being hearers of the word but not doers. I used to plead with God to
give me one congregation or one board of elders that could leave the
mountain before my ministry was over, but he never did. Th ere were
some very deep and committed believers I knew over the years, some
who moved on spiritually to deeper levels, and some who took possession
of the promises God had laid out before them. But if success in
ministry means leading people beyond the elementary level, I’ve been
one of God’s colossal failures as a servant.”

His eyes were beginning to tear, and I was about to begin reassuring
him that he must be wrong, that he surely had led many to a deeper
understanding, that pastors always had to deal with the lowest common
denominator in the congregation—the new people constantly
coming in who needed the milk of elementary teachings of the faith.
But before I could speak, he pushed his chair back, signaling the end
of our talk. “You’ll be late for work,” he said abruptly. “We’ll talk more
about Deuteronomy later.”

I e-mailed Hal that afternoon to ask if he was all right and to tell him
I was eager to discuss the next section of the text. Verses nine through
eighteen were about government, designation of leaders, judges and
judging, things I thought I knew a little about. Hal quickly set me
straight.

“You’re not ready to talk about what you think you know,” he replied
by return. “Th e subject of government will come up in the text again,
and we’ll talk about it then. Just read the rest of chapter one, verses
nineteen through forty-six, and the fi rst verse of chapter two.” So I did.
Later, Hal e-mailed me and told me to meet him in the fast-food area
of the airport for coffee the next evening.

Then, as the Lord our God commanded us, we set out from
Horeb and went toward the hill country of the Amorites
through all that vast and dreadful desert that you have seen,
and so we reached Kadesh Barnea. Th en I said to you, “You
have reached the hill country of the Amorites, which the
Lord our God is giving us. See, the Lord your God has
given you the land. Go up and take possession of it as the
Lord, the God of your fathers, told you. Do not be afraid;
do not be discouraged.”

Th en all of you came to me and said, “Let us send men ahead
to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the
route we are to take and the towns we will come to.”
Th e idea seemed good to me; so I selected twelve of you,
one man from each tribe. Th ey left and went up into the hill
country, and came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it.
Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought
it down to us and reported, “It is a good land that the Lord
our God is giving us.”

But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the
command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your
tents and said, “Th e Lord hates us; so he brought us out of
Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy
us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart.
They say, ‘Th e people are stronger and taller than we are; the
cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the
Anakites there.’”

Th en I said to you, “Do not be terrifi ed; do not be afraid of
them. Th e Lord your God, who is going before you, will
fi ght for you, as he did for you in Egypt, before your very
eyes, and in the desert. Th ere you saw how the Lord your
God carried you, as a father carries his son, all the way you
went until you reached this place.”

In spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God,
who went ahead of you on your journey, in fi re by night and
in a cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and
to show you the way you should go.

When the Lord heard what you said, he was angry and
solemnly swore: “Not a man of this evil generation shall see
the good land I swore to give your forefathers, except Caleb
son of Jephunneh. He will see it, and I will give him and his
descendants the land he set his feet on, because he followed
the Lord wholeheartedly.”

Because of you the Lord became angry with me also and
said, “You shall not enter it, either. But your assistant,
Joshua son of Nun, will enter it. Encourage him, because
he will lead Israel to inherit it. And the little ones that you
said would be taken captive, your children who do not yet
know good from bad—they will enter the land. I will give it
to them and they will take possession of it. But as for you,
turn around and set out toward the desert along the route
to the Red Sea.”

Th en you replied, “We have sinned against the Lord. We
will go up and fight, as the Lord our God commanded us.”
So every one of you put on his weapons, thinking it easy to
go up into the hill country.

But the Lord said to me, “Tell them, ‘Do not go up and
fi ght, because I will not be with you. You will be defeated by
your enemies.’”

So I told you, but you would not listen. You rebelled against
the Lord’s command and in your arrogance you marched
up into the hill country. Th e Amorites who lived in those
hills came out against you; they chased you like a swarm of
bees and beat you down from Seir all the way to Hormah.
You came back and wept before the Lord, but he paid no
attention to your weeping and turned a deaf ear to you. And
so you stayed in Kadesh many days—all the time you spent
there.

Then we turned back and set out toward the desert along
the route to the Red Sea, as the Lord had directed me. For a
long time we made our way around the hill country of Seir.
—Deut. 1:19–2:1

Manchester Airport is a busy regional airport. Tens of thousands of
flights and several million passengers pass through it every year. Th e next
evening, as I took my place across from Hal with a cup of McDonald’s
coffee, the security lines for the evening flights were formed, and travelers
by the hundreds were moving in and out of the terminal, a steady
wave of humanity on the way to or from some business or family or
recreational destination. Someone has observed that all stories ever told
could be titled either “I Took a Trip” or “A Stranger Came to Town.”
Th e story contained in the Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament, the
Bible that Jesus read—is of the “I Took a Trip” nature, a journey story
of God’s revelation to humanity, focused into the journeys of men and
women of faith and then of a people chosen to be a people of faith. Th e
story told in the Christian Scriptures—the New Testament, the part of
the Bible written about Jesus by those who walked with him or learned
from others who had—is of “Th e Stranger Who Came to Town.”
Hal sipped on his coffee and I on mine as we watched the fl ow of
people for a time.

“I thought we should discuss this section somewhere that we could
get a sense of journeys,” Hal began. “Watch the people going by. Th ink
about what the journey is, for each one—where they’ve been, where
they’re going—now, tomorrow, next week.”

I recognized the journey motif easily in the passage that made up the
rest of chapter one. Th e travel from Horeb to Kadesh Barnea on the
edge of the Promised Land, the mission of the spies, the rebellion against
entry into the land, the change of heart after it was too late and the
unsuccessful attempt at entry, and the thirty-eight years of wilderness
wandering. It was an abbreviated recapitulation of the journey story
told at great length in the earlier books, and a reminder to the people
of where they had been. In academic terms—I had learned from the
commentaries—it was part of the “historical prologue” that preceded
the requirements of the law that was to be given in Deuteronomy and
made part of a covenant between God and the people. But Hal was not
interested in academic analysis. After my summary, he plunged in.

“Journeys,” he said, “are not just travel in space. Th e journey of Israel
in this passage is a journey in space and in time, like these people
around us. But, more importantly, it is the journey of the spiritual
experience of the people. It covers most of the wanderings before the
entry into the land—a period of thirty-eight years—and the experience
of a failure of faith. Th ey have been brought out of the bondage
of Egypt, led through hardship to the edge of plenty, and promised
success by the Creator of the universe. Yet they refuse to go in, blaming
their unbelief on God’s evil motives toward them. Although God saved
them by bringing them out of Egypt, they claim he intends to destroy
them at the hands of Amorites. Although God loved them and carried
them ‘as a father carries his son,’ they claim that he hates them. It’s the
psychological phenomenon of ‘projection,’ where a person attributes to
another the same feeling that he or she has toward that person.”

“You mean they really hate God?” I asked.

“What else can you conclude?” Hal answered my question with a
question of his own. “At every turn, they do the opposite of what he
asks. Every time he shows them why they should have faith in him, they
are unfaithful. Th en the consequences of their unbelief are brought to
them. He sends them back toward the desert and tells them they will
not see the good land; only their children will. Th is is, in eff ect, a death
sentence—to wander in ‘that vast and dreadful desert’ for the rest of
their lives. Faced with the consequence of their sin, they repent and try
to make it up by doing what they’re no longer commanded to do—a
further rebellion—and the result is utter failure. At every point, they
act contrary to God, and the result is that the blessings are withheld
and given to a generation that will accept them.”

I wondered aloud with Hal about how I should fi nd the story relevant
to my own life—or to the lives of people fi ling by. Was it just about a
nation, or does it apply to individuals? Is it of interest only as history?
Or as moral teaching? Or does it represent something more?

“Th e Hebrew scripture of Deuteronomy,” Hal responded, “is written
with ‘you’—the people to whom it is addressed—in both the singular
and plural. Th e shift from addressing the individual to the group ‘you’
occurs throughout the book, often within discrete passages. Since
both are translated simply ‘you’ in English, you don’t see the difference
in English Bibles. In biblical studies, the technical term for this
is the ‘Numeruswechsel.’ Both singular and plural ‘you’ appear in this
passage. You don’t need to remember the technical term, but what’s
important is that the message is addressed to both the nation and to
individuals.”

“To me and my country, then, right?” I asked.

“For you, Chris, that means it is addressed to you personally and to
every other individual human being. But the heir to the Israel of Moses
is not the modern state of Israel, nor the United States, nor any other
contemporary nation. It is the church—in the words of the Apostles’
Creed, ‘the holy catholic church,’ the church universal, the community
of believers, or at least those who associate together and profess to be
believers.”

“So it’s really for me and the church,” I said. “But how is it relevant?”

“As for its relevance,” Hal said, “this would be a good time to talk a
little bit about how we should interpret Scripture. We’ll need to deal
with this all the way along in our study together. Th e story we are
reading now is, first of all, history, and we can learn from its example.

It is, of course, history with a moral. Th e story is not told just to tell
it, and not just because it happened or is interesting. It is a story with
a point, a teaching, something we need to absorb and by which we
need to be guided. Acting in faith and in accordance with God’s will
brings success, while unbelief and hesitancy in the face of God’s clear
command brings defeat, disaster, and wandering without hope in a
wilderness. As the saying goes, ‘Those who do not learn from history
are condemned to repeat it.’”

Th e security lines were growing short. Most of the evening fl ights
had loaded and left; the sojourners within them were on their way to
the next stage of their journey, or to their destination.

“What else?” I asked. “Th is sounds like a literal understanding.

Simple enough. Th e Bible tells a story, the facts are true, and there are
lessons to be gained. Are there other ways of understanding it?”

“Th ere are,” Hal said. “Beyond the literal historical sense—and the
moral or example we can take from that—are the allegorical, typological,
and anagogical senses of Scripture. Th ese are not the same, but people
use the terms somewhat interchangeably, and everyone doesn’t always
mean the same thing when they use them. Th ey must be used with
care.”

“I think I know about allegory and types,” I said. “But what’s the
difference?”

“In allegory,” Hal replied, “whole stories or sections of Scripture are
sometimes seen as symbolic or fi gurative of something else, ways of
expressing truths about God and humanity. Stories that don’t fi t well
with our current human understanding, such as the early chapters of
Genesis, or the books of Job or Jonah, are often seen as allegorical. A
great danger in allegory is that it can lead to fl ights of fancy where the
true meaning of the Scripture is lost in human imagining and we hear
man and not God. Another danger is that allegorical interpretations

become focused on words, or, worse, numbers, and fi nd hidden meanings
in the text that are supposedly known only to some inner circle.

Th is is the stuff that leads to cults.”

“And the allegory here?”

“Th e story of Israel is the story of humanity,” Hal replied. “God does
great things for them, and they turn away from him, afraid to follow
his commands, blaming him for their fears. In the end, they deserve
only wilderness wanderings and death.”

“And what about typology?”

“In typology,” Hal said, “particular historical events are seen as
prefiguring or symbolizing something that comes to full significance
in Christ. Th e crossing of the Red Sea prefigures baptism; Jonah prefigures the resurrection of Christ. Typology is usually grounded in the
Scriptures themselves, which often make these connections explicit.
Jesus taught that the Law of Moses, as well as the prophets and the
psalmists, all wrote of him, so we are not off base in seeing these connections.
Moses is a type of Christ in many respects.”

“You had something else, too,” I said. “A word I’ve never heard
before.”

“Anagogical,” Hal replied. “In anagogical interpretation, one finds—
beyond the literal, moral, allegorical, or typological—a spiritual and
even mystical sense in which the scripture has eternal significance
in leading believers to the true homeland. Th e anagogical sense of
Scripture is better felt than taught; it’s what comes from the depth of
contemplating God in prayer and meditation in light of the Scriptures.
When you understand Scripture in an anagogical sense, you will have
gotten beyond the milk of elementary teachings and will be eating real
spiritual meat.”

Th e last evening flights had landed and their passengers disembarked.
As Hal and I parted, we passed through the crowds on their journeys
through the world, briefcases in hand, suitcases trundling behind them,
and children in tow. I had much to contemplate. History with a moral.
Israel as an allegory of humanity, its journey that of Everyman. Moses
prefi guring Christ. And that other word—anagogical—the deeper
spiritual meaning. I could think of far too many events in my own
life—and in that of churches of which I had been a part—that were
troublingly similar to the story of the spies, the rebellion against taking
God’s promise, and the resulting exile in the spiritual wilderness. I
watched the travelers in the airport making their way past, to cabs or
cars or shuttle vans, carrying the baggage of life to wherever they were
going. Every one was a human soul on a journey—in time, in space,
and in their spiritual life. How many, I wondered, were wandering
in the wilderness? How many standing in disobedience to God’s clear
commands? How many on their way to the Promised Land? How
many—indeed, were there any—who knew God’s words in their truest
spiritual sense? Did I? Could I?

I was glad I would be meeting with Hal again soon.

Chapter One

BEAUFORT, SC
December 21

From the loft of her Bay Street art gallery, Elle Garvey leaned against the waist-high wall, admiring GG Galley’s “Art in Christ-mas” show. Visitors and patrons—some Beaufort residence, others curious tourists—milled among the dis