The Kingdom

A Last Performance

         Kingdom – A Last Performance

In the shadows of the sanctuary, as she had been for the last three weeks, Kelly sat with her usual look of detached disinterest. Pastor Harold was a relentless bull dog chewing on the scriptural text for that evening's gathering. Harold nibbled at the bottom line of his talk for nearly fifteen minutes until he savagely bit into the meat contained in Jesus' own words: Luke 12:3-5

3 Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.

4 And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do.

5 But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.

Harold nodded to me as he closed, “If God is watching your every word and loves you enough to give you this warning about what you say, how much more will he be watching your every action? Fear God! Fear God! Fear God! Not just tonight listening to me, but fear Him in every part of your life. He will judge every one in the end, and those who are lawless will not have a place in the Kingdom of God.”

On cue I stepped up to the podium and ripped into the song I had been practicing for a month. It was a sweet little cover of Bobby Fuller's “I Fought the Law.”

Voice, fingers, strings, and rhythms strummed to the beat of another realm that converged with my hates, loves, sorrows, joys and hungers. For two minutes I was out of my body and head and drew from the shadows of the sanctuary the one girl who I would have never expected to be moved. Kelly. As the last moments of concussive pounds on the guitar rang true she rose from her chair and walked towards the front.

“I never knew,” she said as she joined me at the front. The meeting was closed and the other kids were applauding and laughing and shouting out the last lines of the song.

Her hand touched mine for a moment as her tormented face, young and pretty seemed to peer through her own place of darkness directly at me. “I didn't know you could do that.”

“It was nothing,” I said pulling my hand away from her as though my skin had been burned. I searched her face. In an instant I recognized what I had done. It was something I had been working on for over a year. I wanted to produce out of nothing a devoted fan. I had drawn her out of the shadows. It seemed she had been unaffected by everything in this world until tonight. And then... All the chords, notes, scales, lyrics, pretending, acting, and choreography brought her youth, adoration and vulnerability into my sphere of influence. For good or bad, she was opening her life to me. I never despised myself more than I did at that moment. I'm not sure what I said to her after that but the result was I never performed again as I did that night.

Twelve miles away, my mother sensed some disturbance in my universe and was prepared for me when I got home. “I don't think you should be a part of that youth group anymore,” was all she said to me. I added a dab of depression to my already forlorn appearance.

“Alright,” I said and went to my room. There was nothing left in the world that I cared to fight for anymore. The one thing I had been working towards in music seemed vile to me now. There was nothing in this world I wanted. I didn't realize that I could be more resigned to the things around me more than I had been the week before. But it turned out I could and so I was.

It would be years before I truly understood what happened that night, but now I know. That night, during my performance, and for the first time, the Holy Spirit of God had come to give me direct guidance. He used my feelings to show me graphically something repugnant to my Father God.

I believe God had shown something to my mother as well. All of the fullness of who the world could say was me was now crammed into my Secret Vault. But mom knew there would be girls. She was determined there would be no girls. To that end, every avenue that could offer an interaction with the opposite sex, outside of school, had been cut off except “Youth Group.” That now too was closed.

Despite her efforts, I was learning ways to get past my parental imposed sainthood. In fact I was bending more and more of my law constricted will to embrace all of the libertine ideas and fantasies of my day and age. The 60s.

For one moment, horrifyingly surreal, God did in fact show me that I could trust Him to lead me only into “paths of righteousness.” If I would listen and obey. So much pain would have been avoided in my life if I would have continued to obey the Holy Spirit's leading. But instead I “dumbed” myself up to God's Word and learned to over-ride the soft voiced counsel of the Holy Spirit. In time my heart would be as hard as the granite walls of my Secret Vault and void of all peace. And the Kingdom of God slipped away from me, out of my grasp, further and further away.

♫~ Kenword~♫