The Kingdom Land (12 page)

John refused to be rebuffed. “I hope you do believe
me. Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked.

“
I wish you could help. I don't even
know how to feel, let alone what to ask for. Do you think you could
give me a mom or a dad?”

“
I think you know the answer to
that, but I do know this is an important point in your life. A lot
has happened in a short time. Don't let bitterness drown out the
joy I saw in you just yesterday.”

“
But yesterday things seemed so
simple,” Erik said. “God loved me and had come to me. Now I know
there were lies I didn't even know about. Maybe His love was just a
fantasy and He will leave me just like my mom and dad
did.”

“
First of all, Erik, you need to
know that people will disappoint you and won't always be there when
you need them, but Jesus isn't like that. He is constant. His love
is constant. Even before you knew Him, He knew you and loved you
and He will love you forever,” John said.

“
If He knew me and loved me before,
how could He let all this happen? How could He have let my parents
get so messed up? Why didn't He keep them alive until I had a
chance to talk with them and explain how much I needed them?” Erik
asked.

“
God allows free will, Erik. It was
your parents' choice to live like they did. It wasn't God's choice
but He won't force anyone to do anything.

“
The second thing you need to
remember is that
none
of this changes the way He thinks of you. He loved you and
chose you and He called you by name. I know you feel your parents
abandoned you, and I guess they did. He won't.”

“
But I thought you said that all I
needed to do was love God with my whole heart and people the same
way and everything would be okay. Nothing feels okay right now.
I've even hurt the Coopers again. They're people who don't deserve
what I gave them last night.”

“
No, they don't deserve to be hurt,”
John shook his head, “and neither do you. But they understand
you're hurting. That's why they asked me to talk with you when I
showed up. They care about you.

“
I did say that all you needed to do
was love God and your neighbor. I never said that would mean you
would never face problems.” He gave a low sigh before continuing.
“Look at Jesus' life and the life of His family. An angel comes to
Mary when she's pregnant and says her child will be the Messiah.
What a great moment as she realizes that God is entrusting her and
Joseph with the promised King. Then after the birth they have to
run to Egypt to escape death and it ends with Mary seeing her son
die on the cross. Somehow, I don't think they expected things to go
that way. But it was God's route that the prophets had predicted
for centuries, and by those events happening, God's plan could be
completed.

“
Jesus' life wasn't easy and neither
was His family's, but it was victorious through all the turmoil. He
lived it to experience the same pain we all feel and then He died
on the cross to be a sacrifice for us. His Easter shows that
anything can be overcome, even death, through Him. The pain you're
feeling now doesn't mean God doesn't love you. It means you need to
continue to go to Him because without Him you are alone. You're a
needy person, as we all are. What we need—who we need, who
we
all
need, is
Christ”

At first Erik didn't have any response. They both sat
in silence. Finally, Erik broke the silence with another
question.

“
You know, John, I don't even know
how to feel or how I should act. I don't know if it's wrong for me
to feel hurt. Like maybe I'm saying God isn't good enough for me. I
just don't know what I'm supposed to do,” Erik said.

John's said, “I can't tell you what to do, but
whatever you do, be honest. Be honest with God. You should cry if
you have to cry. Yell at God if you have to let Him know how you
feel. He can take it. Tell Him you don't think it's fair, but don't
turn your back on Him and yourself and go back into your shell. God
can handle your complaints ‘cause He has felt abandoned just as you
have. Just don't turn your back on Him and quit believing He loves
you.

“
Really, Erik, it's a simple
decision we face every day. You can believe that He loves you and
has come to help you or you can choose to turn your back and tackle
the world by yourself. You can't have it both ways. But no matter
how much you hurt, you need Him to lead you out of the
hurt.

“
Let me read you something,” John,
said as he reached for a worn Bible wedged between the car seats.
“I told you to go to the Bible for answers. This is the prayer that
Jesus prayed for us right before He faced the cross:

‘
My prayer is not that you take them
out of the world, but that you protect them form the evil
one.'

“
See, Jesus didn't pray that we
would be taken from the pain and feeling of the world, but that we
would be sheltered from that which can kill us for eternity. There
is a difference between being sheltered from the physical world we
live in for a short time and being sheltered from the spiritual
world that is for eternity. We aren't little robot babies that God
programmed to never stub our toes. We're people feeling all that
goes along with being people, and that includes pain and that
includes joy and that includes love. Erik, all I'm asking you to do
is to be honest with the pain you feel, and at the same time not to
shut off your hope for the future.”

Erik sighed. “John, you make it sound so simple, but
it doesn't feel simple when I get alone.”

“
No, it doesn't always feel simple
at all,” John, affirmed. “Not when you're hurting. It would be
easiest to just give up. But then where would you be? It's hard to
know anyone loves you when you're hurting, but give God a chance to
prove Himself.”

Again there was silence as Erik simply stared
straight ahead to the long fields of grain. As John had talked
about not giving up, he remembered the culvert he would run away to
as a child. Giving up was to return to the culvert. He'd been in
that hole already. He didn't want to return to it.

“
Thanks, John, I need to go.” Erik
said abruptly, his words giving John no clue which direction he
would go. He opened the car door and started to climb
out.

“
Your aunt and uncle told me to tell
you that you don't need to work today or tomorrow if you need some
time to rest,” John added, causing Erik to pause a second. There
was nothing in John's voice to suggest whether he thought Erik
should do this. Evidently, he felt as though he had said enough,
but he did carry the message from the Coopers.

“
Yeah, I might do that,” and Erik
rose from the car and shut the door behind him. He climbed back on
the tractor, but didn't start the diesel. He waited until John's
Buick had left the fields and then Erik climbed back off the
tractor and went instead to the 54 Ford pickup.

 

 

Erik did not go back to the bunkhouse to lie on the
bed and dream as he normally would have in the past. Today he
headed the pickup west into the Rockies. Although the Cooper's farm
was in the barren plains, it was still only fifty miles east of the
Rocky Mountains. The continental divide made a sharp contrast to
the terrain. Only miles west of the harshness of the plains lay the
grandeur of the mountains. The mountains were Erik's favorite
place, as they always seemed to put a different perspective on
everything. He needed a different perspective far from the
depression of the bunkhouse, so he turned the pickup west. He saw
the peaks of the Rockies covered with snow on the horizon. It was
so different from the farm he was leaving. Maybe there was
hope.

To get to the Rockies from the Cooper's farm he first
had to drive back through Fairfield. As he entered the town he
remembered the thoughts he had just the day before. He remembered
the excitement that he felt when he thought of his future. Now, a
day later, it seemed as if nothing had changed. Yes, there was no
question Christ had come to him, and, yes, he still knew that
reality. At the same time everything around him was the same.

It was a silly thought, but as he drove this road
that he had driven hundreds of times, he had expected somehow for
things to have changed, not just him. He didn't know if there
should be more flowers or less heat, but things should be
different. What he saw were the same lifeless plains. It was stupid
to expect such a dramatic change, but somehow, because of his new
hope, he thought everything would be different. He quickly realized
that these thoughts were in common with the fantasies of his
dreams. Christ was real and Erik had experienced Him in the real
world, not illusionary dreams. His dreams were fantasy, as were
some of his expectations of Christ, but the truth of Christ was
total reality. The reality just didn't fit what he had
expected.

After passing through Fairfield the road turned west,
straight towards the Rockies. Each mile brought a new change to the
terrain and took Erik closer to the beauty of the mountains. After
ten miles the flat plains became hilled pastures. The soil was rich
here, rich enough to grow wheat. Here the sod would not be broken
by a plow as it was was used instead to feed the large herds of
cattle on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation.

After another ten miles, pine trees started to
appear. Erik wondered how these lone trees east of the Rockies
survived. They seemed to have broken loose from the rest of the
forest that lined the mountains. Maybe a bird had carried a
pinecone and dropped it far from its origin, but those solitary
pines showed a change was coming as Erik drove west. Erik didn't
know if those pines were weaker in their isolation from the others
or stronger than the others to survive far from the established
community of fellow trees.

Finally he came to the thick underbrush that hid the
beaver dams. Erik remembered the fishing trips with his dad. Even
after his father died, he would come to these same beaver dams to
catch the brook trout. He hadn't wanted to forget those memories of
his dad that brought comfort to him like a warm parka on a winter's
walk. Today he glanced at the dams, but he didn't slow the pickup.
Today, Erik was not looking to the past. He was somehow trying to
make sense out of the present and his future.

It was only a few more miles until he became
completely engulfed by the mountains and all the change they
brought. The transfer from the plains to the mountains happened
gradually, but it was the change he had hoped to see when traveling
the road to Fairfield. Things were different here. There were more
flowers. There was less heat. It gave Erik a chance to think
differently.

 

 

 

Chapter Nine

T
he
mountains were beautiful to Erik. They contained green colors that
never touched the plains below. They smelled of a mixture of pine
and wild flowers. Even though it was August, there were still fresh
blossoming flowers in the high meadows. Some of the plants were
buried with snow except for this brief time when the summer sun set
them free. They would only see the sun for one month and they
literally sprang up from the ground overnight when the snow left.
They came so quickly that one day there would be snow, and the
next, mountain irises. On the prairie the summer sun brought
drought, but here it brought life. The bushes that had been laid to
the ground with the weight of the snow now flexed their branches to
the air.

At this altitude even the small streams ran swiftly
with new water. Erik found one, following its babbling, and sat by
the stream mesmerized by the water that bubbled with freshness and
energy. It too had been freed from its winter’s sleep. After a time
he ascended even higher up the slopes.

It was this beauty and the freshness that had led
Erik to undertake the six-mile hike to the face of Chief Mountain.
He had never taken this hike with his dad. This was a route he had
discovered years after his dad died. That is why he chose this
trail. He wanted to be alone, alone even from his past. He knew the
sharp ascent and unimproved trail would take him beyond any
wandering tourists. He needed to be away from the farm and he
needed to be clear in his mind without interruption.

Erik sat on a cliff whose ridges overlooked Hidden
Lake. Hidden Lake was at the base of a grass filled meadow. It
looked to Erik as if God had taken a giant ice cream scoop and
removed the surrounding granite to form a lush meadow that was
hidden from the casual observer. The water of Hidden Lake carried a
deep blue tint that was only possible with the effects of the
glacier runoff. The blue carried the impression that it also hid
secrets in its deep trenched waters. A high mountain stream fed its
color as it emptied into the lake hardly wider than a pond, but
certainly as deep as the sea. Erik could even see an occasional
trout jump to feed on the afternoon hatch. The sides of the
mountain were sheer rock and void of growth. In the bowls made by
the intersecting peaks the glaciers had deposited rich layers of
runoff soil. In these bowls the lakes and meadows formed the soft
side of the hard cliffs. In these bowls was the greenery of
meadows. It was a beautiful sight of postcard perfection but with a
vibrancy that no photograph could ever capture and do justice.