Short Stories

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     Why I thought then that I needed to deal with Moses’ “injustice” I cannot fathom now. I believed my zeal to be pure and holy, its only aim to keep one man from lording it over his people. Now I see it as only jealousy—and a heart that did not know the ways of God. My God, am I cursed to live in this death forever, separated from You by a yawning gulf that I can never cross? God of my fathers, have mercy!
     How can I warn those who still live on the earth? In light and air and— Ahhh!!! How can I tell them of the horror of this place? If one such as I rose to warn them, would they not give ear? O people of Israel, heed the word of the Lord lest you be damned as I am!
     To us in our wisdom, the cause seemed so just, so holy. Moses and Aaron were taking too much upon themselves. Could they not see that we were just as qualified as they, that we possessed the Spirit of the Lord just as they themselves did?
     O wretched, blind fools that we were! To do battle with the Lord God and think that we were on His side!
     We suspected nothing as we stood before the people in our priestly garments, thinking that we were doing the will of the Lord. Would to God that our eyes had been opened! Opened to the facts of our own willful blindness and our fight against the very God we purported to serve! I would even now gouge out my eyes and chop off my hands only to have the chance to stand before Moses and beg forgiveness.
     But, alas! it is too late!
     Why do these memories continually haunt me? I can still hear Moses speaking to the people… “If these men die the common death of all men… then the Lord hath not sent me. But if the Lord make a new thing, and the earth open her mouth, and swallow them up, and all that appertain unto them, and they go down quick into the pit; then ye shall understand that these men have provoked the Lord.”
     What an awful thing to have provoked the Lord of Hosts! But fool that I was then, I began to get angry. Who did Moses think he— Before he had hardly finished speaking, the earth split open beneath us. I remember a blast of heat, like breath from the mouth of a dragon. Wild clawing of the air. Screams. An awful stench, like sulfur. Darkness such as I had never seen before.
     In an instant, my blind eyes were opened. I saw my righteousness as the Lord must have seen it. A moldering, putrid pile of rags. Worthless. I saw my hypocrisy, my jealousy, my pride, my haughty spirit. The contempt that I felt toward Moses’ authority. The absolute disdain of— My God, I deserve this! All of it!
     O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?

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