Pagdamenor Awakens

stories, parables & verse

It was late at night, just after the news. Old Pagdamenor walked through the small house, checking the back door, turning off lights, and closing the windows. The cat was already outside. Not far from the back porch the dog was asleep, lying half in and half out of his own small house.

Just before heading to the back room where he slept, the old man stopped in the small bath and ran some water into his bedside glass. The air was drier in this part of the country. Pagdamenor liked that, but he noticed that he sometimes woke up thirsty in the night.

A single bark outside told the old man that rabbits were probably moving across the grass. The dog was simply reminding them of their limits.

Out here, far away from city traffic, and the nearest highway, there were few night sounds beyond the occasional owl in the nearby trees. And his own snoring, of course. Smiling, Pagdamenor hoped that his snoring didn’t disturb the animals too much.

Sleepily, he pulled off his old shirt, stepped out of the baggy trousers he always wore around the house, and crawled into bed. Through the open window an unobstructed moon cast its pale light across most of the bed, and made everything in the room visible. But Pagdamenor didn’t see it. He was already slipping down into the soft abyss of deep sleep.

That’s when the he began to hear the song. Or at least he heard a voice singing. At first, he couldn’t make out any words, or even tell what language the song might be in. The melody was new to him, yet almost familiar. Not quite anything he could recognize, though.

All around him was thick darkness.

Pagdamenor tried to move toward the soft music. By now he could tell that it was clearly a woman’s voice. And he began to think that he could make out some of the words. But then they would escape him, vanishing from memory like shadows under a light. Moving forward in the darkness, he strained to see the source of the singing. The voice now sounded familiar. But who?

And finally, he could hear some of the words clearly. “Laughter in… hills... the trees… singing… clapping… I will rejoice…”

From where he seemed to be standing, Pagdamenor could not make out the singer’s face, but he now saw her robed figure in the distance. She stood with arms raise high, head tilted up, her eyes gazing into the soft light. And beyond that, was more light. He kept moving toward the figure and the voice.

Now he felt as though he stood in early dawn. All around him, Pagdamenor could begin to make out his surroundings. Beautiful countryside. Gently rolling plains as far as he could see. And a few stands of trees here and there in the distance. The pale blue sky grew steadily brighter and was now being washed with broad strokes of pastel color.

Ahead of him, now much closer, the woman stood fully robed in white. Her head was mostly covered in the glistening material. And the satiny robe reached all the way the ground. Only her face and hands were visible. She was looking up and into the north as she sang. Pagdamenor tried to move around to see her face more clearly.

The song was beautiful, compelling. It sounded like an ancient hymn of praise to God. And now, Pagdamenor realized, there were other voices that echoed hers, as a choir might. He looked around to see where they were, but saw no one across the whole landscape. And then he caught glimpses of distant figures, not on the ground but up high, standing in the clouds.

Some part of his mind now told him that he must be dreaming. This was like those dreams where he was flying, when he would suddenly realize that all of it was impossible. Seeing the figures up there in the early morning sky made it very clear. This was a dream.

Birds in the low branches just outside the window sang Pagdamenor awake. The whole room was bright with early morning sunlight. The sky must be perfectly clear, he thought, to make the morning so bright. Rising from bed, he stepped across the room and saw that only a few streaks of perfect white floated in the pale blue above. It was a beautiful day. A perfect day.

Pulling on his trousers, he began the morning routine. First to the bathroom, and then to the kitchen to put on coffee, then out back to release the chickens and grab a few eggs, then over to the side of the house to see if the garden needed repair or water, then back inside the kitchen to fill his cup with morning coffee.

Easing into his chair on the back porch, Pagdamenor set his coffee on the old wooden box that stood on end by the door. It had served him as a table for the last 14 years. He picked up his Bible to begin reading again where he had left off the day before, where Joshua challenged a lone man outside the city of Jericho.

Glancing up from his reading, he looked out over the back yard. In the early sunlight, the whole ground still sparkled with heavy dew. Near the edge of the lawn, a small fat rabbit gave a few hops, eating its way back toward its home at the edge of the woods. There'd been no signs of damage in the garden this morning. The little fence helped, but sometimes things still happened. The dog was out roaming around in the woods, no doubt.

Looking down again, the words on the Bible page took him back into a very ancient time. “And it came to pass, when Joshua was by Jericho, that he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, behold, there stood a man over against him with his sword drawn in his hand: and Joshua went unto him, and said unto him, ‘Art thou for us, or for our adversaries?’

“And he said, ‘Nay; but as captain of the host of the LORD am I now come.’ And Joshua fell on his face to the earth, and did worship, and said unto him, ‘What saith my lord unto his servant?’”

Pagdamenor tried to imagine what it would feel like, standing there before the great walled city, facing this lone man who turned out to be so much more than a mere man. What Joshua must have thought and felt!

It made Pagdamenor think of how it must’ve felt to stand in the presence of the Lord Jesus when He was teaching the crowds, or healing someone with a word and the touch of His hands. Jesus was a man, but He was more than just a man.

In some way, Jesus was God’s eternal Son standing there, stepping right down into the human world from eternity itself. How would it have felt to see Him, face to face, and to hear His voice with your own two ears?

As he pondered this, Pagdamenor supposed that Joshua had done what he also would’ve done, had he been in his place. And had I been among the people who saw and heard Jesus, he thought aloud, I would’ve fallen on my face, too. To see and hear the Son of God, face to face!

After reading for a while, he got up and went into the kitchen. There he started a pot of lima beans for dinner. He chopped half an onion and added it, along with a strip of bacon, to the beans. It was Thursday, his day to go into town for a few things. The beans would cook just fine in the crock while he was gone.

He fed the dog, put some fresh milk out for the cat, looked in on his garden once more, and then went to bathe and change into his going-to-town clothes. By mid morning, he was easing the old Chevy out of the small barn he used for a garage and workshop. He turned the car around and drove onto the country road that would eventually take him to town.

The drive into town was always a journey. It was a transition from one world into another. On a summer day like this, the fresh coolness of open meadows, green fields, and the occasional woods of the country would slowly give way to the radiant heat of of town: asphalt and concrete, the crowded streets, the buildings of bricks, steel, and glass.

Arksonville was not a big city. It was a small town by any standard. But it had grown up a lot in the last few decades. And lots of old pasture and meadow had been paved over to make a place for all the busy people who kept coming here to work and live. In an hour's drive from his front yard, Pagdamenor found himself surrounded by lots of those people.

Traffic lights, noisy trucks, rushing cars, very loud radios (or whatever they were), and too many people in too much of a hurry to even know what day it was. Pagdamenor made his way through all of this commotion to the relatively quiet corner, just a few blocks off the main street, where he could park and get a few groceries. The old IGA market was still there. Some of the people inside the store had been working there since he first moved to the area, 23 years ago.

Nodding hello now and then, and making his way down every aisle, Pagdamenor gathered up a few things. Then he stood in line, paid the cashier, and returned to his car. The car door on his side was already getting hot from the sun. And so was part of the front seat. But soon, he knew, the fall and winter cold would return to Arksonville again. It was never far away in these parts. That’s what he liked most about living in the north. He loved the snow and ice of fall and winter.

Driving back onto the main street, he turned left, heading back to the old highway. At that very moment, a young boy on a brand new motorcycle slipped sideways in the street, sprawling out in front of oncoming traffic. The boy was unhurt from the fall, but he lay in the path of a large furniture store delivery truck. The truck driver was in a big hurry, trying to get two days’ worth of deliveries made in one day. When he saw the boy and the motorcycle in the street, he had no time to stop. Without even thinking, he swerved, and the truck went rushing over into the opposite lane, head-on into an old Chevy going the other way.

Pagdamenor saw it all happen, and he was trying to get out of the way when everything went dark around him. That’s when he began to hear a voice singing.

At first, he couldn’t make out any of the words, or even tell what language the song was in. The melody was still new to him, but it seemed more familiar now than before. All around him was darkness and some kind of confusion. For a brief moment, he thought he heard a police or ambulance siren. But listening closely, he heard only the singing.

Pagdamenor started to move toward the soft music. And he began to make out some of the words. Moving in the fog of darkness, he was finally able to really hear some of the words. “...laughter in the streets… singing… clapping… I now rejoice to see His face…”

The darkness suddenly began to give way to light up ahead. That light spread quickly all around him, like the sudden dawning of a brand new day. Now he could see multitudes of people. They were on his left and on his right, in front of him, and even behind him. They were all singing the same song, and looking in the same direction ahead. Pagdamenor turned to see what they were gazing at.

All he could see was a very bright spot in the center of all the light. It was as though the sun itself had come down to walk among the people.

Pagdamenor began moving forward again, and was able to move faster and easier with every new step. He really felt like he was flying. The beautiful light was everywhere now, and there was no darkness left. Not even a shadow. Pagdamenor looked right into the brightness and was surprised that it didn’t hurt his eyes.

And then he saw Him.

A lone figure at the center of the light. Or maybe the figure was the source of the light. Pagdamenor couldn’t tell, and didn’t bother to figure it out. He kept moving closer, and closer, trying to see who the figure was.

As the Man’s features finally became clear to him, Pagdamenor simply did what came natural to him. He fell forward, face down, and he worshiped the Lord Jesus.

At last, at long last! he thought to himself. Finally, I see Him, face to face!

			a short story