Chapter Five
Faithful Servant
I heard laughter. The giggling sound of the merriment of children at play was suddenly very close and yet so far away in a sense. Beautiful melodies of sound that enrichened my soul with joy, as I recognized the sound of my daughters.
“I have not failed to keep the innocent young souls of your daughters or the soul of your first love who put her trust in Me. I am ever faithful even as you in the weakness brought on by your self-imposed distance from My strength and comfort have been faithful to Me once again. Well done thou good and faithful servant!”
“I’m not faithful! I ran from you God with all my might!” I exclaimed in brokenness.
“Yes you did and yet you did not outrun My grace. Are you not tired of being away from My comforting presence? Do you not mourn the loss of My presence, even as you continue to mourn the loss of your family? Stop and know My love for you has never diminished. Come back into My presence Eli and let Me heal your pain and mend your heart and cause a new day to dawn in your life filled with new joys and a new purpose. Stop your wondering in the wilderness of your desolation and feel My peace, even as I lead you to a good place. Allow yourself to fall in love with Me all over again and be no more alone or haunted by what once was, but is no more.”
Crying and jerking with emotion I fell off the cot onto the floor. I pressed my face into the floor and choked out, “Please let it be so Lord of my life! I can’t go on like this anymore! I would rather die in this instant than go on one more moment feeling empty and barren of life, because I’m not right with you!”
I felt the warm presence of love pressed down from above fill me. A love I had been so long without and I cried all the bitterness’s of my life out into the floor, until I was spent with exhaustion.
I don’t know how much later it was as I lay collapsed of all energy upon the floor, but I felt the impression of the Creator of all life once more upon me as I heard, “That which your hand finds to do, do with all your might.”
I swallowed and asked, “What is it you want me to do Lord?”
“Loosen the bonds of those who are afflicted. Give the people that have no place to lay their head a home of their own. Abolish the ways of wickedness and find a place of your own in the land that I will show you even as I deliver your enemies into your hand thou righteous servant of the Most High. Only be faithful as you were today and I will do all this and more for I am faithful to deliver those who put their trust in Me, even as I will give you a place of honor in the Kingdom to come.”
“Why me Lord? Surely there is someone who is better than me!”
“Who is better than you, a man humble in spirit, but faithful in purpose. Eli, Eli, there is nothing that I cannot do through you, if you will only give me your freedom of choice as you did this day. Now get up valiant warrior for it is I, the Ancient of Days, who has given you strength and insight to accomplish what I have purposed for you to do. Even as I have purposed it, so shall it be done!”
I was thrust up to my feet from an unknown source and propelled toward the door of my cabin, even as a voice of Divine authority said, “Follow the star that I have provided to show you the hidden places of the Earth.”
I exclaimed in horror, as if I felt guilty of a great crime, “I threw it away into the sea Lord!”
“That childish bauble cursed from its creation and inscribed with man’s vanity! It is not a star, but only a cheap thing of no importance! Behold I have given you a true star to light your path! For do not I command the hosts of heaven even as I do the seas and the beasts of the earth?”
“Yes Lord!” I said in awed obedience, as I was driven from my cabin and up the ladder and out into the night air.
I grasped the railing, as I stared up into the sky full of stars overhead, but one stood out more than all the rest and it seemed low in the sky. It was moving steadily away from us.
I turned towards the bridge to see Big Jim manning the wheel alone in the dark, “Follow that star!” I cried out.
He nodded and surprised me by saying, “Yes my Captain!”
The Celestia’s Prize hauled back around in the night as Big Jim spun the wheel to line up with the star that seemed to pause briefly for us in the night sky as if it was waiting for us to catch up. The star started to move again and Jim opened up the throttle to full and the Celestia’s Prize surged forward slicing through the waves in pursuit of the star that kept pace ahead of the ship.
Like sleepwalkers the rest of the crew emerged out onto the deck to stare at the provided wonder in the night sky ahead of us. Matt came up alongside of me and I glanced at him to see him mesmerized by the star.
He said without looking at me, “I had a dream and now I’m awake only to realize that my dream is going to become a reality!”
I patted him on the back as new life and new purpose swept into both of our lives. I was glad to share this experience with him.
“What’s happening?” Christina asked in a scared voice.
I turned to her, “Nothing to be afraid of Christina. Instead watch and be amazed by what God can do!”
The star was getting closer to the surface of the sea and Divine instruction came to me.
“Flynn!”
“Aye aye Captain?”
“You and Ortega start closing all the topside hatches and the port and starboard window covers. Tie down everything else.”
“Aye aye Captain!”
Matt and Serena went along to help and I moved over to Christina, who held the railing with a death grip. She was staring at the falling star like it was a harbinger of doom.
“What do you believe in Christina?” I asked calmly.
Her horrified gaze drifted to me and she blinked and started to cry as she said, “I don’t know!”
On an emotional cry she asked, “Am I going to die?”
“Christina we’re all going to die at some point, when that is I can’t say. Your sister has faith and she’s a good role model for you. Start figuring out the important things and start asking the tough questions, because tomorrow is guaranteed to no one. I pray that you have time to decide what your choice will be in life Christina, but be warned of this. To choose not to make a choice or to play around and only half commit is making a choice. The wrong choice Christina!”
She was crying and in general she was petrified, but she wasn’t yet ready for more. She was getting quite the show to help her believe in the miraculous though.
I pulled her tight grip on the railing free and led her inside the wheelhouse as the star really started to plummet downward.
I stepped up beside Big Jim as he manned the wheel. He gave me a big open faced grin. Jim it would appear was full of surprises lately. For starters I’d never known that he exhibited a Christian faith, as he’d never talked of religion, just as he never talked in general.
“This is the best trip out yet Captain!” He intoned deeply looking as if he was having the time of his life.
I responded to his full smile with one of my own. I had a feeling that there were bigger and better things to come, but for right now it was nice to smile again and really mean it.
The smile left me though as the star came down and streaked across the water ahead of us. A channel of water rolled back and we were in the channel’s bottom, as we watched the sea split backwards away from us to either side.
Up ahead the bright heavenly body that had been our guide swung sharply to the right and then seemed to pivot around in a circle and then was gone from our sight. Jim and I shared a meaningful look and quickly we stood to either side of the wheel ready to help each other.
I saw it only moments before we plunged headlong into it. The upturned waters of the sea had been turned into a gigantic whirlpool!
“Turn the wheel!” I yelled, but Jim had already spun the wheel from his end, as I pulled from the other end. The Celestia’s Prize swung to the right and plunged downward around and around the whirlpool of cylindrical flowing water that went down and down and down into the depths of the sea.
It became so dark that all we could see was the faint light of the star that we had followed here far far below us. It was as if we were in a long train tunnel and the outside light was just a brief dot of color in the distance.
The ship was beyond steering and we were all thrown around the wheelhouse as the ship’s wheel spun free making its own way down the mad white-water course. Overcome by the dizziness of our spiraling descent there wasn’t one of us that was able to keep from retching horribly as we tried to grasp a hold of anything we could latch onto in our desperation to find a solid purchase of some kind in our fast-moving world of spinning fright.
Fear began to rise up in me that we could never survive such an event as this. Somehow this had all been a terrible mistake. It had to have been.
I grasped a hold of the threads of my spinning consciousness and jerked them to stop, because what I had dreamed and seen was real and it would come to pass even as God was not a liar. Armed with that faith I looked ahead out the forward windows and almost lost my faith for the second time.
There was a lot of light ahead of us now. Red light glowed eerily up at us through a hazy mist. It appeared like we were plunging straight to hell!
The smell and steam of boiled seawater pervaded into the wheelhouse so thickly that we could hardly see each other as we coughed on the somewhat acrid fumes. I wiped at the condensation of the wheelhouse window and briefly saw a vision of what hell must look like.
Columns of red magma rose all around us as the seawater rushed around the hissing landscape of molten fire as we plunged down through a gap in the mantle of the world. The red was suddenly gone after it seemed like it had been there for an eternity and breathing became easier for only a moment, until it became clear that we were all freefalling through space.
We started screaming and then abruptly stopped as we were slammed hard into the deck of the ship as the Celestia’s Prize connected with something roughly. It felt like we were in a fast river of some kind.
I wiped at the windows again as Jim managed to grab a hold of the wheel and steady its course. The ride was smoother, but we were moving unbelievably fast.
The window was partially clear of condensation and both Jim and I were able to see that we were on a fast-moving current of water headed downward at a sharp angle. Up ahead of us the current of water culminated in a big kick up of sea spray where the waters of the above world were connecting with the waters of the interior.
A lot of things were trying to fight their way through within my mind. Such as the reality that this hidden inner world really did exist, but those thoughts were put on the back burner of my consciousness as the kicked up white-water ahead of us got closer and closer.
I left the window to brace against the wheel with Jim. We hit the white-water hard and both of us were thrown from the wheel. I somersaulted through the air to land with a smack against the wall and for a brief moment I was able to open my eyes, but something drove me under and I blacked out against my will.