Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Desire (01/17/05)
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TITLE: Sounding the Alarm - Waking the Dead | Previous Challenge Entry
By LINDA GERMAIN
01/24/05 -
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A pick-up truck was coming towards where I stood at the end of a long country road. Two people were in it. I could see the dust kicked up behind as it whipped through old ruts and unpaved trail.
The truck came to an abrupt stop and the driver jumped out. It was my son’s best friend, the one who died violently nine months ago. I hugged him as if he were my own child.
“How can you be here? You are dead!”
Stepping back to look right into my eyes, he replied, “No, you are the one who is dead. I am alive.”
I begged him to sit down and wait for my son to return. He said he was here to remind us that earthly existence is not real life. The KEY that opens the door to eternity demands repentance of sins and belief in Jesus.
He had one message; that real life begins after our last breath on earth. As he made to leave, I could not help but hug him again, hanging on for dear life, hoping to delay his departure a few more seconds.
I cried, “Wait, please, he will be here pretty soon. Stay, tell me about where you live now.”
Very sweetly, he removed my arms from around his healthy human form. He was not ethereal or misty in any way,
Quietly, almost in a whisper that I nearly missed over the noise of my own sobbing, he said, “We were all meant to be together.”
As suddenly as he had appeared, he jumped in the truck with the mysterious other person and took off in the opposite direction. When my son and some others arrived, they would not believe me. One sneeringly insinuated I must have been hallucinating. I related the exhortation about life and death, but I was talking to myself.
Lying in the dark, my opened eyes were flooded with new mourning. Still shaken from the reality of the dream, deep sorrow wrapped itself around my heart with a restless desire to activate more effective warnings to the lost. Many of us function in non-threatening cocoons of a Christian community, secure and soothed in the weekly rituals of attendance, study, and charity.There are people in our lives who will not be with us in Heaven because of our fear of their rejection.
Too many itching ears are tickled by glossy, worldly misinformation that leads to false assurance. Vague declarations read between fuzzy lines may not make the impact of a true rescue. Half-hearted attempts that merely allude to eternal life tend to lose their grip. After all, if the building were on fire, we would not whisper in an embarrassed voice, “Uh, you may want to evacuate, I think the place is burning.”
We would scream to the top of our lungs, “FIRE! Get out!”
It is risky to climb up on the scary bell tower, shinny up the thick rope, hanging on with all our might, and sound the call to truth; to clang, and ring, and peal, and chime, and gong until we are bruised and exhausted from the toiling of the toll!
Were we drafted, or do we have a choice to accept the commission to go into all the world proclaiming the gospel? Did our Father in Heaven mean for us to tiptoe around in order to preserve relationships, even if there is little or no self-perception of spiritual blindness?
Thank God, at last I have come to my senses and am pressing on to embrace this new fervor, this burning desire, to take the sword of the Lord into battle for souls. I pray for his empowerment to speak the unvarnished message of hope.
This yearning is stronger and more urgent than the need for human acceptance and love, but what greater love is there than to leave our comfort zones and lay down our lives for our sisters and brothers?
My burning desire is to march in the Army of God, to sound the alarm, to wake and not sleep.
I have a dream.
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Blessings, Lynda
I liked this phrase.
>>> It was a confirmation of an imperative desire to confront the ignorant disregard for matters of eternal life.<<<
This, on the other hand, took some re-reading to decipher.
I have had similar dreams, only with my deceased brother Bryan (dead these 5 years now). Those vivid dreams where he appears and talks with me effect me the same way this dream effected you. You wake up sure for a few moments that it was real, and not a dream. It's powerful, indeed.
I appreciate your openness and zeal. Thanks for posting.
Kathy