Yeah, It’s Reality, It Did Happen… Whether you believe it or not…
The hammer rang against the nail, piercing skin, cutting vessels. It rang against the nail, piercing muscle, chipping bone. It rang against the nail, anchoring arm to roughhewn wood. It rang. It rang. It rang.
And then the ringing stopped, and the young man hung there under the scorching sun, faint with pain, alone. He could not shift his weight, flex his knees, or even turn his head without feeling the fire of the nails. His wrists were swelling around the nail heads. His blood was drying in the sun, turning brown on the wood.
He cried out, but God did not listen. It could have been God who drove the nails, then put his hammer down and turned away, smiling in victory. It could have been God who left him to bake and bleed in the sun, unable to stand, unable to fall, as the sun marked the passing hours across the cloudless sky.
Stinking with sweat. Crimson with sunburn. Dried blood crackling around the nails. Pain the only reality.
He cried out, but in the cauldron of his sun-boiled mind he heard only the voices of his accusers and the ringing, ringing, ringing of the hammer—sounds that would forever haunt his memory and echo through his nightmares.
“You’re a child of the devil,” they said. A child of the devil who needed to be contained.
A child of the devil?
He cried out once again, and this time, a voice, a mind, answered and a power coursed through him. Suddenly, he could bear the pain and make it fuel for his will. With burning will, he determined he would live.
And living, he knew what he would do.
(Prologue to the book, The Visitation by Frank Peretti)
“But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the chastening for our well-being fell upon Him, and by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, each of us has turned his own way; but the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him. He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He did not open His mouth; like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth. But God was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief; if He would render Himself a guilt offering, He will see His offspring, and He will prolong His days, and the good pleasure of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” Isaiah 53: 5, 6, 7, 10
Posted on
Wed, October 13, 2010
by Jill Perry