Though he was just twelve, Dave had been asked to read a scripture at his aunt’s memorial service. Though she was his only aunt, he was sure she would’ve remained his favorite even if he’d had a dozen or so to choose from. They had been very close.
As the service approached, Dave’s mother helped him pick out a verse that had been meaningful to his aunt during her prolonged illness. Reading over it several times, rehearsing, practicing, Dave had the passage basically memorized, though his mother thought it would be more poignant to read it, when the time came, directly from his aunt’s Bible. Dave agreed.
When the day of the memorial service arrived, seated there in the front pew between his parents and awaiting his turn to speak, Dave recalled that day five years ago on which he’d found out his aunt was sick. He had a conversation with his parents about what was ahead for her, the treatment, the side effects. Dave, without being told specifically, knew it was all very serious.
After taking it all in, when he next saw his aunt, little seven-year-old Dave told her that he didn’t want her to die.
“You have to live forever,” he had said, blinking back his tears.
Sitting in the pew, Dave also remembered her reply.
“Don’t worry,” his aunt had said. “I am.”
During the hymn just preceding his reading, Dave made sure one more time that his bookmark was in the right place, then when the song ended, rose from his seat with his aunt’s big Bible and ascended the stairs to the platform. Settling in behind the pulpit, he opened the book and turned to John’s Gospel and took a deep breath.
“From the Gospel of John,” he began.
But as Dave was about to recite the passage, outside the chapel the clouds began to break in such a way that the light inside the room suddenly and profoundly changed. Angling through the stained glass along one side of the chapel, the sunlight brought an almost silvery color to the dust particles suspended in the air above the congregation. The shift drew Dave’s eyes upward from the page to see this new light pouring through the stained glass then striking the wall at the back of the chapel. There, each and every color in the beautiful glass was cast upon the broad white wall. Bright golds, electric blues, deep purples, rose reds, and garden greens, all appearing with stunning vibrancy.
Because everyone else was facing forward toward him at the front, at the pulpit, no one saw this but Dave. Though he wanted to tell everyone present to quickly spin around and look at the kaleidoscope of color cast there on the wall, there was also something so fragile and miraculous about the phenomenon that he sensed by calling attention to it, it would vanish as instantly as it had appeared. Then again, as fleeting and elusive as it seemed, its appearance suggested, in the nature of its arresting beauty, something of eternity inside it. Dave glanced down at words he was to read, then back up toward the wall, feeling that the two were certainly somehow connected.
However, as the seconds elapsed, Dave also realized he’d now been stationed at the pulpit for some time without beginning his reading. Those assembled were probably thinking that he’d lost his place or perhaps that he was freezing up. In fact, maybe he was. Just then though, the light began to change again, fading the color on the wall, such that Dave now experienced a flash of doubt about the import of what he’d actually seen and felt.
“...Gospel of John,” he repeated forging ahead, but now with a slight tremble in his voice as he followed his finger on the page, touching each word he was reading.
“‘I’ve told you these things,” Jesus said, “so that in Me, you may have peace. In this world, you’ll have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world.”
He looked up. The brilliant colors on the wall were gone, but a broad smile crossed his face though his eyes felt somewhat wet and salty now.
“Everyone,” Dave said, summing up the Gospel he’d read from. “Take heart.”
He then stepped down, seeing as he descended that all traces of the miraculous light on the wall had vanished. Maybe a dark cloud had arisen in front of the sun like it does sometimes and what was visible had become invisible again. But he had, in fact, seen it for a moment and now was fully persuaded that his aunt, indeed, would live forever, just as he himself would also.
God—Thank you for eternal life. Amen.
