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We didn’t know who we were, and more importantly, we didn’t know whose we were—forever proving that identity precedes purpose. You can’t know who you are until you’ve settled whose you are.
“As best I could piece together, Frank continued checking names off his list until the head of the snake tracked him down and offered him the world.”
There are more people enslaved today—women, children, girls and boys—than in the history of the world. And there will always be demand.” I nodded. “The intent of man’s heart.”
She looked concerned. “Am I in trouble?” This time I did put my hand gently on her shoulder. “No. You’re not in trouble and you’ve done nothing wrong.” She was crying now. “What’d I do?” “You were born beautiful.”
People in darkness don’t know they’re in darkness because it’s all they’ve ever known. It’s their world. They navigate primarily by bumping off things that are stronger. Immovable. They don’t know darkness is darkness until someone turns on a light. Only then does the darkness roll back like a scroll. It has to. Darkness can’t stand light. And it hasn’t. Not since God spoke it into existence. The problem comes when you turn on a light and find those in darkness who, having seen light, prefer the dark.
How many had he saved? How many had he brought home? How many faces, blind and hopeless, had woken one day to find him holding a flashlight, patching their wounds, beginning to mend their broken hearts, and offering freedom? At no cost to them. He’d already paid it.
His skin bore the scars. The entry and exit holes of multiple bullets. Knife slices and punctures. Payment extracted.
Bones suffered beating after beating, and for what purpose? Simple really. To reveal to his brother the singular fact that while he’d known a way out of that hell on earth, he’d come back. Day after day. Why? One reason. He would not leave his brother to suffer alone. No matter how guilty. This act of selflessness was mind-blowing to Frank. A paradigm shift beyond comprehension.
I could understand running through hell to rescue the innocent. I’d done that and kept the record on my back. A record of the undeserving. Of the betrayed, rejected, and abandoned. But Bones not only emptied the market, he ran back into that same hell—hell squared—a second time, to rescue the one who’d enslaved them. Why?
Wanting justice, I’d kept a record of wrongs. Payment to be exacted from the guilty. On my terms. It fueled and justified my need for revenge. Bones? Bones kept a record of hope imprinted on his heart.
Sometimes, given their depth, we become little more than the sum of our wounds, and it takes someone else to see what we can be instead of what we are. No one was better at that than Bones.
“Tell me what you know about sheep.” I shook my head and spoke out loud. “No. I’ll tell you about the one who keeps them.”
