(pg 1 of 3)

By Mark Stewart

After days and nights of crying alone and feeling no one cared, Ashia ever stepped closer to embracing the only change in her life that she thought she could accept. Without considering herself or her close family or friends, Ashia chose in the middle of the night to deal with her temporary problems once and for all. In finality, that long quiet goodnight ever crept closer. Ashia’s beautiful blue eyes wept into nothingness or so she half thought.

Ashia opened her eyes. To her astonishment, it was so beautiful. For Ashia did not part from the old world without faith in something more, the Kingdom stood before her as beautiful as she had dubiously hoped. Ashia's biggest problem was that she did not believe in a relevance to living on the old earth. With darkness and suffering and solitude, Ashia’s view of the old earth was too pessimistic to endure. With her faith and pessimism about the value of life, this made Ashia truly unique. So as Ashia lifted her eyes to the brightness of eternity, she said, with great joy, I knew it—I knew it; life on earth was just a glimpse of the eternal.

Ashia looked at a flower on the ground at her feet. What color—I have never seen such color? As she breathed like she had never breathed before, Ashia inhaled with all her being the scent and color of a single rose like she had never smelled a rose before. She bent to the ground and spent several moments smelling the beauty of one flower after another—caught in an eternity of single moments. The life she craved was here and now. For the moment, the frustrations of the old earth life fled away forever—or so she thought.

As Ashia muttered to the flowers, she stated, “I knew Jesus was the Messiah. I just knew it. I knew His word was the truth, and people loved the temporal life too much.”

Having been completely consumed with flowers in her first moments, she finally looked up and saw a river. Though the beauty of the river that flowed through eternity was right before her all along, just like the people gathered around her, she had not seen the river of life for the flowers at her feet.

Yet, when Ashia looked up, she exclaimed out loud, “The River of life taught from of old as the pathway into the Kingdom of the Lord and His Christ—it’s true!”

Then standing motionless herself, Ashia rolled her head toward the Heavens still trapped in the breath of her first eternal moments. Ashia looked up to the stars. In her astonishment they looked bent and stretched. Then she realized that Heaven, the Kingdom of God was in motion. It moves in its own universe perpetually where or (should it be said) when there is no time—a place forever is its only name—eternity.

Ashia then said to herself, “The entire Kingdom of Heaven is moving at the speed of light and it makes the starlight streak across the sky.”

Ashia considered her revelation and said simply out loud, “We should have thought of that!”

Ashia mussed the teachings of the little Jewish man which taught that time would stand still at the speed of light. Ashia pondered in her heart that Einstein hit it right on the nose when he said there would be no time at such speeds and that light would be stretched in eternity. She wondered; did Einstein know all along that the Kingdom of Heaven was in motion? At that moment Ashia mused, she became aware someone was looking at her for the first time. As she turned, she could see her dad whom she had loved so deeply in the old world and she so deeply craved to see again. Her dad had lived and died by faith in his own time, having left a hole in Ashia’s heart since his departure.

Ashia ran into her dad’s arms. His hair, his eyes, everything about him was the same but different. As she patted his face so delicately,

“Daddy, you look so young!”

With a true father’s heart, he said, "Ashia I welcome you. There is so much to show you. Your great grandmother wanted to see you first, but I insisted in seeing you before anyone else. First: I must tell you something!

"Yes daddy"—Ashia asked. My beloved daughter, he proclaimed, “you are forgiven.”

"What do you mean daddy," Ashia interrupted?

He spoke again, “I know the circumstances that led to your coming here early. Daughter you do not belong here right now. Look at your robe.”

Ashia looked down. Yes, the blue tassels that symbolize the covenant of God were at the foot of her robe, but above that was something else.

Ashia’s dad looked at her. “Daughter you should not have done that. You should have waited for your own time. Father God has forgiven you because you loved so much and believed so hard in His sacrifice and mercy for you on the old earth, but you should not have done that.”

“I know daddy. I just did not want to be there anymore”—Ashia responded with her head held low before her mentor.

“Yes, daughter we know; we all know.” With a father's index finger under Ashia's chin, he lifted her head for her to face him and her new reality.

“What do you mean daddy?” As Ashia's head slipped off her father's finger, looking back at the ground.

“We were all watching everything.” He continued; “everyone knows everything about those who endure faithfully. Does not the scripture say plainly (paraphrased) “Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders.” We were watching my daughter. Your faith and your love and the goodness of Father God has saved you through Christ's sacrifice.

But!”

As Ashia's head rose up, ready to listen, she said: But –"what daddy," Ashia said?

“We never dreamed in the old earth how Father God would deal with those like you; and, I must say the judgment is just but very harsh.”

With an argumentative tone in her voice, Ashia said, “I thought I was forgiven.”

“You are my daughter, but you do not deserve all the same things of others that have endured and given all to the last minute of their duty.”

 “I suppose not,” Ashia admitted.

Still not grasping, “What do these marks in my robe mean,” Ashia questioned?

“I must tell you, daughter I have only told you part of it. As someone who did not trust Father God with your last hour and your last day, you are marked for all eternity. Having left the old world in unbelief for another tomorrow, those are marks you must carry forever! That is what those marks mean for all to see.”

With a squelly pitch in her voice, “O daddy, forever, everyone that I will ever talk to will know what I did. Everyone here was watching what I did? No—not everything.”

 

Ashia's dad interjected, “no-- toward the end it was too much even for me to watch you in your unbelief. But yes, my daughter, everyone knows, and the embarrassment alone is not all there is.”

“What else daddy—what else must I face?” He looked at the ground. Her dad would not look down in Ashia’s eyes. As Ashia got under his chin and drew close to see her dad's eyes, she asked, “what else is there dad? What are you not telling me?”