Safely Home

by Randy Alcorn

The sun was just rising above its peak, the mountain looking like strawberry ice cream. He had just watched Venus, the morning star, surrender its glory to the greater light.

Educated evil was always the worst. Something terrible was coming.

“America’s idols. Materialism. Pleasure. Entertainment. Worship of celebrities. Obsession with sex. Food. Fame. All are idols, false gods. A wise pastor said China’s problem used to be Maoism, but now it is Me-ism. The problems on the outside are always easier to deal with than the problems inside.”

When men know they cannot hope in a country, in a political belief, or in themselves, they become free to hope in God.”

“He referred to a market economy in contrast to state-controlled. But to me it means if one form of dictatorship does not work, then try a more subtle one, disguised as freedom. As long as the Party controls the people—catches the mice—that is all that matters.”

“A frog was in a well,” Quan said. “A bird stopped to drink at the well. They argued about how the sky looked. The frog thought it was very small. The bird thought it was very big.” “O . . . kay.” “The bird could see the sky as it really was. The frog could see only a tiny part of it. We do not always see as clearly as we think we do.

“I heard you speak into the wind twenty years ago. And I hear you now, my son. You do not yet understand—some promises made in one world cannot be fulfilled until the next.”

I have learned God is not my servant. Did you think he was like the story of Aladdin? That he was your genie? That he is safe and tame, at your call to do tricks to entertain you? That is an American way to think, perhaps. But it is not true to Shengjing. You cannot rub a magic lamp and command God to do your will. You accepted blessing from his hand, and still you do—yet you reject him because of adversity?”

Are we not the clay and God the potter? When he refuses to conform to our wills, do we discard him? If you are looking for a religion centered around yourself, Ben, I must agree that Christianity is a poor choice.”

“Wife and husband must be more than lovers. Must be comrades, soldiers fighting side by side for same great cause. Ming’s mother say, ‘Wife and husband should not only lie down face-to-face, but stand up shoulder to shoulder.’ They must face together the worst Mogui can do to them. And when they draw strength of Yesu, he bind them together.”

“They don’t understand that I am not only at work here, preparing a place for them, but I am at work there, preparing them for that place.”

Yesu looked down on the company of men suffering across the dark planet. The King lifted his scarred hands, grotesque wounds, and turned them to the continents below. He whispered into the silent winds of cosmic space, “See, I have carved you into the palms of my hands.”

“What you do to one of the least of these, my brothers and sisters, you are doing to me. I do not forget.” Those close to the throne backed away from the awful fury they felt as he looked down at hundreds of places across the dark planet. The penetrating eyes saw all deeds in the dark as well as those in the light. The King saw everything. And he forgot nothing.

“Who are we to speak of cost? God hated what Mao did, but he used it. We do not understand providence. But the Chinese say, ‘A good fortune may forebode a bad luck, which may in turn disguise a good fortune.’ God works beneath the surface and around the corner and above the roof. We have a saying: ‘No man should judge a painting when he can only see the back of the canvas.’”

He could see now through all his rationalizations. His arguments against belief in a Creator had never been intellectual ones as he had claimed. By rejecting a Creator, he thought he could rid himself of a Judge. But it had not worked. His atheism had been the opiate of his soul and the executioner of uncalculated millions. But now his comforting atheism could no longer exist, even for a fleeting moment, for he had been forever stripped of the power to deny reality.

The winds of hell blew upon him. On them floated sounds of laughter and joy from a place far distant. These voices were torture. Many he recognized as belonging to Christians he had persecuted, worshipers of the Carpenter he had murdered.

The hands and feet of the only innocent man became forever scarred so that guilty people would not have to bear the scars they deserved. He saw the pain in those hands. It was an ancient pain that was the doorway to eternal pleasures.