The Warrior...Part 5

Part 1 - Upon the Rock

Part 2 - In the Upper Room

Part 3 - The Lord of Hosts

Part 4 - Uninvited Guest

Part 5 - The Gift

Picking up an empty bottle from the bar, Caleb sighed, “I come all this way and all you have for me is light beer.”

Dillon smiled, in spite of himself.  Caleb was very disarming, even dressed for some sort of battle that Dillon was hesitant to ask about.  “Sorry.  You’re the second person to complain about the beer tonight.  I didn’t really expect to be entertaining.  Guess I should look into something more palatable.”

“Sorry, chap,” Caleb pushed the bottle aside and turned to face Dillon.  “I shouldn’t be so glib tonight.  You had a brush with disaster.  Your friend Mark really did save you a world of trouble.”

“I felt that, too.”  Dillon began tidying up; it was his way of dealing with the stress and frustration of his encounter with his other self.  He avoided making eye contact with Caleb, but he asked the question that was burning in his mind.  “Was he telling the truth?  Do I really think that God…I mean…all that stuff that he said?”

“In a manner of speaking, you do.”  Caleb paused, as if trying to frame his statement carefully, and continued.  “You Mortals have something called a ‘subconscious.’  We don’t completely understand it; but apparently you sometimes ask yourselves rhetorical questions about Him that are faithless.  He says that it’s in your nature to doubt.  It’s one of the reasons that the Comforter comes into you.”

Dillon wrestled with the syntax of Caleb’s explanation.  It was the first time that he had tried to explain a complex reality to Dillon and it made Dillon realize the broad chasm that separated their worlds.

“Was it your voice that I heard?”  Dillon asked, “Telling me that he was my Flesh?”

“Yes.”  Caleb seemed pained.  “I am a messenger, after all, and I had to get that message delivered before he started making sense to you.  He’s very good at twisting your experiences to fit his desires.  I couldn’t let you go into that battle completely unprepared, no matter how busy I was attending to other matters.”

“Other matters?”

“I don’t want to trouble you with that right now,” Caleb said, honestly, “But I will tell you that I was dispatched to you two days after our last encounter.”

“In the church?  That was a month ago.”

“Yes.  But as I said, I was detained.”  Caleb paused again.  It seemed to Dillon that he would stop there but he continued, “There is an Enemy, Dillon, and he is aware of you now.”

Dillon did not know how to respond to that, so he let the statement hang in the air for a moment before asking, “Why is this happening?”

Caleb was incredulous, “You don’t know?  You Mortals always are forgetting what you’ve asked for.”  He shook his head and then chuckled to himself.  “Do you remember the day we met?”

“Yeah, in the woods.”

“You’d been sitting on a rock all day praying.  Do you recall what you asked Him to do for you?”  Caleb stood and paced across the room.

“I was asking Him to show me some sign or give me some insight,” Dillon was embarrassed that he could not recall more than that.

“Do you remember any of your exact words; anything specific?”  Caleb stopped beside the phone and was toying with the answering machine.

“No.”

“Let’s see if I can jog your memory a bit,” Caleb pressed a button on the machine and Dillon heard his own voice playing clearly.

“I wish I could be more aware of the things going on around me.  Please give me the ability to see beyond the mundane.  Help me to see the supernatural realities.”  As if purely for dramatic emphasis, the answering machine beeped and clicked and fell silent again.

“That was cool,” Dillon said dryly after a moment.

“A parlor trick, really,” Caleb affected an air of mock humility.  “Not as difficult, really, as turning your trekking pole into a snake.”

“You can do that?”

“Do let’s try to stay on-topic for just a few moments more, Dillon.”  Though Caleb chided him, Dillon sensed no real rebuke.

“So, you’re saying that I’ve been given the ability to see supernatural realities?”  Dillon stared at the floor for a few minutes before going on.  “How long will I be like this?”

“Indefinitely,” Caleb said in a matter-of-fact tone.  “Eventually, you will develop skill to control this gift and use it to encourage others.”

“Control it how?”  Dillon felt a sinking feeling that his “gift” was going to be a real hassle for him.

“In many ways, really,” Caleb continued.  “You might be able to enter into our realm at will, much like stepping through a door.  You might learn to coach others to join you there.  Someday soon, Dillon, you might face the Enemy as my people do: in literal single-combat.  As with most of His gifts, the limits are generally only in your mind.  However, I would focus on the basics right now if I were you.”

“And what are the basics?”

“You must learn to arm yourself against this present enemy.”

“Who was he?”

“As he said,” Caleb explained, “He is a part of you; he is you as you could be.  He was lying, of course, about being better.  He is your Flesh, the parts of you that continue in a non-regenerated state.”

“Unregenerate.”

“Your theological term falls short of conveying the deeper truth.”  Caleb almost rolled his eyes.  “I understand the need to convey Truth verbally, but it is almost always lacking, particularly as it grows more technical.  It’s why the Master always spoke in parables and metaphors.”

“I thought that He used parables because the people back then were so simple-minded.”

Caleb chuckled.  “People are still simple-minded, Dillon.  He used stories and metaphors to speak to your Hearts, not your minds.  The reality of regeneration is a good example.  You have intellectualized the Master’s words, ‘born again,’ and in the process lost the imagery and drama.  You’ve traded the language of the heart for the language of the mind.”

“You miss how beloved you are as newborn children to the Father, how perfectly helpless you are without His care and how He nurtures your maturity.”  Caleb paused and the silence in the room weighed heavily on Dillon.  “For the sake of your intellect, let it suffice that there is a moment of regeneration and a process of regenerating.  That’s the best I can do without giving you a lesson in the grammar of ancient tongues.”

Dillon nodded.  It seemed that Caleb had already given him the keystone:  the Language of the Heart.

As if he knew Dillon’s thought, Caleb concluded, “But if He thought you needed a lesson in theology, He’d have sent the Apostle himself.  Instead, He sent me, so we must assume He had some purpose in that.”

Caleb reached into a sheath over his shoulder and drew a long, silver sword.  The ring of its unsheathing and the gleam of its blade made Dillon flinch.  There was a flourish and almost martial air about the Messenger in that moment that took Dillon by surprise.  He had a sudden realization that Caleb was not just the benign person that he had been chatting with; Caleb was a potent and dangerous being with the strength and skill to wield powerful armaments of defense or destruction.  But then Caleb did something even more dramatic and unexpected.  He flipped the hilt in his hand and tossed the weapon to Dillon.

Dillon reached out and caught the sword by the hilt.  He felt the heft of the weapon in his hand.  He had expected to feel awkward since fencing was not something he had studied.  To his surprise, he found that it felt like an extension of his arm.  He took several test swings with it and then looked up to see that Caleb had vanished again.

The answering machine beeped to life and Dillon heard Caleb’s voice, “Careful that you don’t sever anything important practicing.  You’ll do well to take note of the inscription.  I’ll call again later.”  Dillon lifted the sword to read the inscription and was startled to find that the sword was no longer in his hand.

In its place, he held a familiar, leather book: his own Bible.  Dillon could not help but laugh.

~ Continue to Part 6 ~