Hooks and Arrows

‘Grab my shirt!’ He shouted, and He started running. He ran quickly, His sword drawn. Enemies fell on our left and our right, their weapons powerless against us.

I was able to match His speed, my feet a blur beneath me. As He darted left and right, I veered with Him with almost effortless ease, but it took all my strength to hold onto Him.

Suddenly, I fell. It was not that He pulled away from me because, as long as I held onto Him, we were inseparable. I lost focus. I thought of something else, made something else more important than holding onto Him, and I hit the ground. Hard.

I was disorientated for a moment, and then I heard His voice, in a shout and a whisper at the same time. ‘Stay down! Hold up your shield!’

I heard Him, but I was bruised, afraid that something was broken, so I lay in the dust, utterly vulnerable to our enemy. He said it again, but still, I did not move.

I felt no pain when the hooks went in. They shot from our attackers bows and landed on my skin, effortlessly piercing my skin and sinking into my muscles, some even to the bone. That is not the part that hurt, and for a moment, I wondered why He had been so adamant about avoiding this enemy. This powerless enemy with its harmless hooks.

But the hooks were not innocuous. There was no innocence in the enemy’s attacks, for suddenly, I felt excruciating pain as the hooks pulled me to my feet. My shield lay half buried in the mud as the enemy dragged me away from it. I strained to reach it, but the pain became too great. It was easier to give in to the force of those pulling me. I took a few steps backwards and the pain eased.

‘Stand!’ He shouted. ‘Stand where you are, I’ll come to you!’

I tried to stand still at His words because I knew then that His words were good and true. I still know it now, for even now they are. I tried to stand, but the hooks that were buried in my back and in my arms and legs began to pull the flesh from my body. I screamed, but He didn’t come. Or He didn’t come quickly enough. I took a step towards their bows. Stand, His words echo, but I could not. The pain was too great. It overwhelmed me, so I sought reprieve. I stepped closer and closer to our enemies, and further and further from Him, all the while thinking, He would never want for me to bear so much pain!

But again, He shouted, ‘Come back to me! Don’t give in!’ I looked at Him, and met His eyes. In the midst of the battle, with His sword in hand, I saw a fiery love for me in His eyes that I cannot explain to this day. And while, in that moment, I was able to distinguish the fierce rage He held for our enemy from the intense love He had for me, I was angry at His words. Though I knew His words were the most true of all the words I would ever hear, and though I remembered that He had warned me of the tortures of battle, still I was angry that He did not come. How could He want pain for me?

Amidst my pain and self pity, I failed to recognise why He wasn’t with me. He had drawn the fight away from me. He had made my battle His to win on my behalf, with no backsies.

He had made my battle His to win on my behalf, and He took great pleasure in our victory. But all this disappeared from my mind when I was faced with the pain of it. It was overwhelming and, much to my discredit, I ignored Him and gave in.

It was only when I felt the upswell of wind blowing off the cliff edge that I realised that none of it was innocuous. Our enemy was out for blood. Their plan was to pull me to the edge of the chasm, and their hooks would not hold my weight. I would hang over the edge of the cliff for mere seconds before the hooks ripped out my flesh and I fell to my death. It was stand or die. So close to the edge, it was run or die. So, I dug my heels into the ground and rolled one foot forward onto my toes until I had the momentum to lift the other foot off the ground. I cried out as the hooks pulled out pieces of flesh.

I had taken two steps when He arrived,  my shield in hand. With one sweep of His sword, He cut me loose, and I stumbled to the ground onto my hands and knees. He slid the shield onto my aching back and told me to grab His shirt. Tears streamed down my cheeks from pain, tiredness and relief all mixed into one. There was a compassionate urgency in His eyes. ‘Grab my shirt,’ He said again. And I did. There wasn’t a type of pain that could stop me from holding onto Him. I held onto Him with both hands. I held on so tightly that my hands grew stiff, but I didn’t think about anything except holding Him. And I didn’t tire of it. I couldn’t, because if I did, I would die.

Then we reached the place where our enemy could not reach us, a place where we could lay down in lush green fields near an abundant fresh stream. We washed in the water first. All the dust and grime washed off of me and into the water, carried off by the stream. It stung, but it was good. I welcomed that pain because it meant I would be clean.

I sat gingerly on the blanket He had laid out, the flag of His kingdom rippling gently in the wind as it covered us. It was only then that I saw He was crying. I hadn’t looked at Him at all since we’d stopped,  from the shame I felt, and from the fear that He would reprimand me. But when I finally looked at Him, I saw Him and me in a completely different way.

‘I know that you know better now,’ He said softly, and then He moved closer to me, and started to tend to my wounds. He wept as He meticulously pulled out each hook and threw it so far it seemed to disappear into the distance. He would stop to wipe the tears from His face and then keep working on the wounds, and He started smearing His tears on every wound on me.

Then, a strange thing happened. Each of my wounds started to tingle. It wasn’t pain exactly. But, it did hurt. It was a stinging, burning kind of hurt. And then, slowly, the pain began to subside. Not only that, the wounds started to close. I ran my fingers over a wound on my shoulder, and it wasn’t there anymore. I barely felt a scar. 

I wriggled around, I wanted to turn to Him, but He was not done, so ever so gently, He continued to run His hands over my wounds and scars, making the skin new, with nothing to remember my injuries by. I lay flat on the ground and let Him work in me everything He wanted to do. It made so much sense to let Him do what He wanted now. I fought hard against the regret that stung my eyes. If only I had listened to Him and stood when He’d told me to stand, and run instead of giving into the arrows.

‘Do not use your strength for regret, my child,’ He said, discerning my thoughts. ‘All your strength is reserved for me. Yield it now to rest.’

I put my hands under my head and the tears trickled down through my fingers. I hadn’t noticed the small cuts on my hands that then started to tingle as my tears ran over them.

‘How can this be?’ I mumbled, overwhelmed by the generosity of His healing gift.

‘I have made tears to heal,’ He said. ‘And I have made you like Me. So, stay with Me always.’

I couldn’t stop the tears from falling now. All over my hands and drowning the spot of blanket beneath. I imagined one day running my tear stained hands over someone else’s wounds.

‘Yes, my child,’ He said, ‘Even so, I have made you like Me.’

We wept together until He was done. And then I put my head against His chest. I could hear His heart beat and somehow each thump gave me breath in my lungs and strength. I tightened my arms around Him and He, too, pulled me close. Then I felt them. The scars, I’d never taken the time to see. The scars that had been left, so clearly, on His flesh, that no longer existed on mine.

‘Why?’ I asked in a small whisper, the tears filling my eyes.

‘Mine are the wounds we remember,’ He said. ‘Mine are the wounds that paid for all. No memory of the others is needed.’

Again, I cried, and it was like the tears ran over the broken, unsure places in my heart. The sting of the lies I’d held onto for so long intensified for a moment and then left. Only the truth remained. The truth that He loved me. The truth that He fought for me, rescued me, paid for me, and after all that was done, He healed me and made me like Him.

So, I spend my strength now, holding onto Him, and we go to far off lands and fight in perilous battles. Battles that I’ve won before the start, because He is on my side. Rather, because I am at His.

I ran my hand over my healed arms and legs and wiggled around to face Him. It was my turn to have my eyes full of tears. ‘I don’t deserve what You’ve done,’ I said through my soft, blubber of tears. ‘I deserve to be lying at the bottom of a canyon.’

‘You may feel that way, but my plan was different.’

‘Why?’ It was so soft I barely heard myself say it. 

Because this is what I do, ‘I fight, I defend, I save, I heal.’