When Jack walked through the elevator door he shut his eyes tightly against the sudden brightness of the light. When he opened his eyes he realised that the glaring light was the hot sun which was shining brightly in the sky above him. Timmy stood close by, and both boys looked around them, and then stared at each other in silence.
Behind them were the farm sheds that belonged to Jack’s Grandad; before them stretched the field of golden barley waving and nodding in the warm summer breeze; and from behind the sheds came the sound of children playing in a playground.
Was it possible that it was still only Friday lunchtime? Was it possible that they hadn’t been missed at all? Had everything been an incredible dream? Jack looked at Timmy. Timmy looked at Jack. And Jack knew that if he looked anything like Timmy, his school uniform dirty, his hair wild, his face pale, and even a bruise on his forehead: well then, they must have been somewhere!
They began to make a careful examination of the farm sheds. They were both padlocked and silent and without any sign that they were remotely inhabited. Jack removed his spy watch from his pocket. He remembered the last time that he had looked at it, when he was lost in the land of Err. And as he looked at it now, with tall, untidy, stained Timmy looking over his shoulder, they saw the words ‘True Aletheia Time: Time to go home!’ fading slowly from the screen.
Timmy smiled. “I was afraid it was all a dream,” he said.
Jack grinned in return. “But you’re different,” he said. “It must be true!”
For, while they might be in doubt about many of the things that had happened that Friday lunchtime, one thing was beyond dispute, and that was that Timmy Trial had changed. Apart from the wild appearance of the two boys, which certainly proved that something had happened, there was a remarkable difference in Timmy. There was only one possible explanation: Timmy had become a Christian.
Jack and Timmy heard the school bell sound the end of lunchtime and they both set off at a jog around the sheds and back to the gap in the hedge that led to the school grounds.
“If there’s any trouble,” said Timmy, “I’m going to tell them that it was my fault that you left the school grounds. I chased you out of school.”
“That’s Ok,” said Jack. “It’s probably nothing to what Hugo and Henrietta are going to face!”
Timmy laughed. It was a strange thought that their friends, in an unknown land far away, were also facing punishment for the same strange events.
But, apart from the indignation of their teachers and their parents about the state of their clothes and general appearance, the boys faced very little questioning over that lunchtime escapade. It was assumed by their friends that they had been fighting; but both Jack and Timmy denied all knowledge of that. And besides, there was no doubt that they had returned from their excursion outside of the school grounds the very best of friends.
There were perhaps only two more immediate consequences of the adventure for Jack.
The first was that Jack astounded his teacher, Mrs Bubble, by offering to re-do his maths questions.
“I didn’t do them right, you see,” he told her. “And although I probably won’t get them right if I do them again, I’ll make sure I try properly this time.”
A bemused Mrs Bubble returned Jack’s exercise book to him, thinking, not for the first time, that teaching was never likely to be dull while she had Jack Merryweather in her class. And Jack diligently spent some time on Saturday re-doing his maths questions because he thought it would be pleasing to the Lord Jesus if he truly tried his best.
The second consequence of the adventure was that Jack could never adequately explain the complete disappearance of his school rucksack. No amount of diligent searching ever revealed its hiding place – which of course Jack well knew. He had last seen it in Mr and Mrs Weighty’s stall at Wishy-Washy Fair. He sincerely hoped that they had made good use of his lunchtime sandwiches which had been his favourites; he wondered whether they had ever tasted marmite in Err before.
Jack and Timmy often discussed their Aletheian adventure and the things that had happened to each of them, including when they were apart.
“I wonder what would have happened if you had met Wonky Dollar at Wishy-Washy Fair and gone with him to the Academy of Science-Explains-All with that piece of lego,” mused Jack.
“That lego!” exclaimed Timmy. “That was a pretty strange bit of the story, wasn’t it?”
“I wonder if they’ve found out by now that it was made in 2005,” said Jack. He had checked the lego box when he returned. Made in 2005 was a very long way from the millions of years old that the scientists in Err thought the lego might be.
“I wonder what year it is in Aletheia anyway,” responded Timmy.
Jack knew he was thinking about their friends in Aletheia. Were they growing older at the same rate as Jack and Timmy were, or were they far ahead already? Had they lived years in the weeks since their strange adventure? Jack wondered whether Timmy also thought about Henrietta Wallop. But he didn’t ask.
“If you had found Wonky Dollar at the Fair,” said Jack, “then you might never have been taken by Snares. You might have travelled with him in one of those strange big caravans we saw, or perhaps in an Atob, and got safely back to Alternative Teaching and bumped into us again!”
Timmy immediately looked serious. “If I had never been taken by Snares,” he said, “then I don’t know if I would have trusted in the Lord Jesus. I needed to be taken…because that helped me to realise how much I needed to be saved.”
“I wonder if that’s why it all happened that way,” mused Jack.
“I’m glad it did,” said Timmy.
They often discussed the challenges of Christian life too. It was a natural consequence of the lessons that they had learned so vividly in Aletheia that they should try to put them into practice, even in their quiet village in England. They went to the local church regularly where the Bible was taught, and they talked to their understanding Sunday School teacher about some of the things they puzzled over. They came to understand a little more about how they should be wearing their Christian armour of God5 every day.
The helmet of salvation was the mind, and they needed to train and guard and keep their minds focussed on the salvation that God had provided for them and what the Lord Jesus had done when he paid the price for the sins of the whole world12;
The breastplate – or body armour – of righteousness guarded the most vulnerable part of a person: it guarded behind them where they couldn’t see, and the front of them where the feelings of a person were in the heart. And so they must always guard their heart and feelings against desiring wrong things.
The belt of truth meant that they must be always surrounded and held together by the whole Truth of the Bible, not diluting it or changing it in any way.
Their feet were the only part of them constantly touching the world and on their feet they must wear their gospel boots: they must always be prepared to go to people who weren’t saved and bring them the gospel of peace which was the good news about the Lord Jesus.
The shield of faith meant that, if they were suddenly attacked and made to doubt that what God said was right and true, they must learn to always have faith in God and His Word the Bible.
And their only, their most vital weapon, was the Bible itself and all that it contained. It was the living and powerful Word of God15 so they must study it, learn it, use it in context in the right way, and rely only on what God said. Only then could they gain the victory in the battle of the small things of everyday life and in the big decisions that they might one day face.
And always, every day, around and about their entire lives, was the invisible, mighty power of prayer. At any moment they had access to God in Heaven who would hear them; and God could do anything.
“Do you think we’ll ever go back to Aletheia?” Timmy asked Jack wistfully from time to time.
“I hope so,” Jack always replied.
