He enjoyed the fact that water was finally returning to barren places. Some more returning more quickly than others, like his lake. It had been awhile. He recalled when this lake was no more than a rock shelf without any water in it. Sixty years later he had a lake. Shallow lake to be sure, but still a body of water where once there had been none. Being that it was within walking distance, Eben was grateful.
Not long till dawn,
He thought with water dripping from him.
Splashing water on his face was a great wakeup call. Eben did so every morning before dawn. He liked to take this time to walk the short distance to the lake. It was a good time to be alone with his thoughts. Morning routines were a lot different now in the Kingdom for Eben. No more “getting ready” to meet the day. It was, ready or not, here I come. Each day a greeting of what experiences lay ahead. No dread, just looking ahead.
Eben met the days with anticipation. A morning “splashdown” helped refresh that thought. Shaking his face a little from the water, he combed his beard with his fingers. Stroking his beard he tossed his wet head of hair back smiling at the sky. He was a little bemused by the water running down his beard to the ground.
Didn’t Aaron tell him he had oil run down his beard and that it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
Thinking of all that oil that would have been dumped on Aaron, Eben looked at the face of the waters of the lake and thought. That would have been olive oil. A lot of olive oil. A lot of olive oil poured over his head and running down his beard. Enough oil running down to form a pool at his feet.
Eben shivered.
Hmmm, that would make it the first oil slick wouldn’t it?
Fortunately Eben thoughts were private, more or less, but once started, you never knew where they would go. Still thinking along those lines as water rushed off his hair and beard he considered,
Would that make Aaron the first greaser? How……,
At the thought of the word “ironic” Eben paused.
He recalled the time he had met “the Aaron[1]”. He remembered his faux pas when he tried to ‘act’ less in awe of the man. He had tried to comment on how aaronic it was playing on the word “ironic”…., and…, he had failed miserably. SO BAD was his comment he couldn’t recall what he said. But he remembered how Aaron had stared at him ‘not getting’ the humor of it.
Eben finally blushed and shut up.
It wasn’t the first time Eben had “blown it” in meeting someone from the Bible.
It certainly wouldn’t be his last. Something about generational, cultural, even “faith” gaps were evident when one started talking without thinking first. Since so many people came from a different setting and mindset, communication was interesting. Not to mentions the “ages” differences. Different also with the variety of personalities represented. A lot of people, including Eben, had to learn to “choose” their words wisely since not every word meant the same thing to everyone involved.
Politically correct became less than that. It wasn’t about image here. But more along the lines of words meaning what words were saying. What the words were; what the words meant. No one in his day every meant what they said, but in some places, words were all you meant. Now it the Kingdom of THE WORD…Well.
No innuendo’s or implied meaning. No subtleties or double meanings. If you said yes, it really did mean yes. No question about it. The rest was adaptive. Everyone had a different way of looking at things. This was about telling someone else how you looked at it from your point of view. Literal now was genuinely literal. If you said yes or no you better mean it.
Your Word was your Word.
At least that was what was being taught in the Kingdom. Of course the teachers were still learning that “truth” too. They like everyone else had to learn a new attitude. A new way to think; a better way to respond; a more accurate way to arrange your speech. It made for some interesting conversations. The learning curve had plenty of time to level out with a thousand years or so to go. For Ancients[2] change came easy, for those born into the Kingdom it was all they knew. For everyone it was a matter of course and came as natural as learning to walk and talk.
But the Survivors…,well…., that was a different story.
They had a complete set of issues all their own.
Learning communication and adapting to the Kingdom seemed to be challenging for them. Eben sometimes would rather talk to someone long dead, buried then resurrected than talk to those who had survived alive to enter the Kingdom of God by living through the Great Tribulation[3].
They just seemed to have this wild idea, sixty years later, that they were the head of the class being the last generation.
They were too smart or “intelligent” to realize they were back of the bus when it came to learning how to communicate correctly. Almost all Survivors had presumed their way was the “right” way. Some not only thought their way was the right way but almost acted as if it was the only way. Never mind the obvious, they had their way and of course, it was the only way.
Regardless of the challenges, they were learning to adapt, just slower than all the rest. Those who thought to be so wise were allowed to keep thinking that even if no one else agreed with them. Survivors were an obstinate lot, some said stiff necked.
Opposite to that were the Elders from the Scriptures. It was pretty amazing looking at an ancient ancestor. One of those heroes of the faith, or characters from the Bible, long dead before, but now alive in the Kingdom. Inspiring till some of the illusions of imagining what they were like in real life wore off. They were different than what one wanted them to be or imagined how they would act. Imagination was often greater than observation of a person in day to day living.
Most ideas were like that. Idealistically they were great men and women come from Bible Times.
In your imagination they could appear to be bigger than life. After all they were Heroes of the Faith. Stories were told about them. Myths and legends had grown up around them. They were bigger than normal life after all. They were “ALL CHRIST-LIKE HEROES”.
“Yeah right”
Thought Eben combing his beard with his fingers.
The one to one interaction of everyday life in the everyday world was often left out of the “stories”. Sometimes they were included too, but no one paid that close attention to. It was obvious everyone had been a sinner at one time…..everyone.
The reality was the image of the person in one’s mind was easier to believe in than the person in flesh and blood. The idea of who that person was might be a lot greater than the person could actually be in person. Sometimes it was hard to believe that these “saints” were just people too. It was too easy to have attached hopes of creating them into in image rather than a fact.
A fact that they were people with feelings and emotions. They had successes and failures like everyone else. That was hard to swallow. It was easier to want them to be bigger than life. At least till you met with them a few times. When you got to know them better it was easier to accept them as they are. Begin to meet with them personally and see how they dealt with this New Life. Share with them common experiences. Then it was good to enjoy them for who they really were. Appreciate the person that they were and see the being they were becoming.
Trying to relive their past life as you interpreted it compared to the life the person remembered, well, that was like trying to put the baby back in the womb, it just didn’t fit grown up.
That was when the heroic came out of the fantasy.
Dealing with that taught Eben to watch his tongue and keep his hero worship in check.
Eben learned the hard way to keep quiet, sort of. It was challenging to keep the hero worship down at times. Inspiration was where you found it, or He found you. Eben was easily inspired by the drop of a famous name or the song of a seagull, even the whispering in the breeze.
Singing often inspired him. When Aaron had led the singing with the Song of Moses[i] back “in the Day”. Eben was immediately awe struck, temporarily. He just stood there with his mouth open till some of those marching through Jerusalem almost trampled him. He quickly got in step and sang too.
When it came time to sing the Song of Limmud, Aaron was first in line to sing with Eben picking up the words on the second time through. Songs were sung three times when led by the 144,000. In order to familiarize, four more times were often sung by others with styles and variances mixed in. It made for quite choir as somehow even the variations harmonized in the Kingdom. There were a lot of singers here. Elvis certainly was in the building and singing was a national past time here. Everyone liked to sing, harmony came natural.
Apparently Aaron liked to sing, so did Eben. Eben had thought to comment to Aaron once on the golden calf incident making a joke about loving to party, but having already made one dumb mistake, he wasn’t about to confound it with two. Much later he told others of his thoughts and attempts at humor.
They didn’t laugh either. Of course this didn’t slow Eben down, he laughed loud enough, long enough and deep enough for three people, maybe four. Of course when it came to the hero worship, he never told the people he met what he had previously thought of them. It was a little embarrassing to admit how elevated an idea of them could ruin a good friendship with them.
For Eben it was a good idea not to bring up the past too much.
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