Jesus Came By

SHF_RE_JesusCameBy - 1980ish // 02_tweaked

One day recently Jesus came by. “Hey, Tom,” he said, surprising me at the door.

“Jesus,” I said.

“Let’s take a walk.”

I shut the door on what I’d been doing, and we headed out. Every busy, worried, painful thought shut its desk and turned out its light for a recess.

Houses, yards and streets we left behind, heading no place in particular, just some place a good ways away. We went through woods, fields, pastures. Cattle watched us coming, watched us continue on. Frogs at a pond dived to where they could watch but not be seen. We lept a gully, climbed a hill, took turns helping each other through barbed-wire, crossed a creek, swung from a branch, climbed a gate. A grandmotherly breeze patted us both on the face. Birds showed off for one another in the sky. The sun watched us as it herded white clouds onward to other counties, to wherever it was they were needed.

“Let’s run,” said Jesus. Down a long hill we accelerated, rocketing off a boulder to a landing that could have broken our legs. We shuffled like old bent men under little trees already spreading their arms like big ones. Feeling tired for awhile, we took the long way around a hill, giving more towns of cows our two-man parade. But soon we wanted exhaustion again. We ended our outward journey by weaving at top speed through a stretch of trees lined up like a wall, but a wall meant for going in and out. And then we allowed ourselves to fall on a vast pad of last year’s leaves, almost drunk with too much breathing for not enough air. We laughed at how close to dying we felt, how blithely we took it, knowing that in just a few minutes we would feel as alive and as young as ever.

As we made our relaxed way back, the sun headed over and down to its private farmhouse beyond the far hills. The landscape began its rounding up and tucking in of a million sleepy minds. As we walked, he listened. I talked first about things I was proud of and sure of, then about the other things. I didn’t want my crying to sound like giving up or begging, but it did. But I think only to my own ears. He looked at me with gladness, more proud of me for my troubles, I thought, than for the other.

We arrived at my place long after the stars were out. They were at their full brightness in a sky as clear as a sky can be. It was easy to think, in that quiet stillness, in his company, that such unveiled stars could only mean this world was about to end, that all challenges had now been met. It was easy to think that we two the last ones up and about on earth, the ones who would say to this world its final good night. But I knew better, and I shivered.

“You’ll be fine,” he said, untroubled for me. “We’ll do this a few more times.” And he left me there, standing at my door, alone and far from extraordinary, about to go back to work and so much else. And I believed it. It took no effort to feel it. “I’ll be fine,” I told myself.