Vampire

 

I am dead thirsty. I lap up the life of others, never quenching nor satisfying that longing within me for more. I am a vampire, always in quest of. I am enslaved by desperate pursuit. Ravenous and manic, I seek you. I come for you because I need the life in your veins. I need.

I can’t count my victims. Too many are they.

I see my next meal, a strange man on a vacant road. I approach slowly to stalk him. He is a lighted figure in a fold of darkness, as if he holds the sun within himself. His silhouette stands out against the evening. His mere existence is an annoyance to me. He neither cowers nor defies as I approach. He meets me eye-to-eye. It is infuriating.

His face is weathered, beaten and bruised, but serene. His hands scarred, horrific torment have they endured or given. Perhaps I have met a monster like me. I size him up. I can take him. The blood on his hands looks like it has been there for an eternity, though it has the stench of freshness.

He appears to know me. At the very least, he knows what I am about to do. And he doesn’t seem to mind. I attack with precision, injecting my fangs and drawing the blood. Slowly, deliberately, deliciously I drink in the depth of life from his neck. Almost instantly I realize this lifeblood is different. A surge, more like a punch, hits me head-on somehow. I reel, a bit, but return to the drink, drawing in its warm fulfillment. But again, it strikes me. It reaches me, deep within and takes me.

My limbs, my muscles, my entire being staggers and halts like a rushing freight train suddenly stopped by unseen hands. The cells of my body rebel, turning against me, and begin to transform. They are becoming something else.

As if I have no control over my being, they twist and coil without my direction or input. I am being remade. I find myself eagerly accepting this new thing, hungering and thirsting for it with all the desperation of my previous pursuit. Everything within me cries out. Astonished, I feel a presence seeping into me, filling my hunger. I am bloated with it, round and plump with this life. My thirst, palpable and parched, is satiated as if with a flood. I am overwhelmed.

I look into the eyes of my victim, a suddenly strong and invincible presence. His eyes are the color of me. His hands and arms around me, as though I were the prey, he does not look away. And in that moment I realize the blood on his hands is his own. This cannot be. A mythical creature, this; I do not believe in Jesus.

When he spoke he said my name as if he'd known it forever. I can’t tell you what that did to me. But I can tell you I will never thirst again, not ever.

I wrote this in 2008. It appeared then on a now closed site, Gather.com.

I posted it here in 2019, 2021, and now in 2024. It's one of my favorites.

The Living Bones

Ezekial 37:1-6

The hand of the LORD was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the LORD and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord GOD, you know.” Then he said to me, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the LORD. Thus says the Lord GOD to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the LORD.”

There are people in our world made only of bones. They are like other people, but not like other people, not like the living ones. They whisper, scream, speak. No one answers. Does anyone hear them? They move aimlessly. They long to be heard or seen, that someone among the living would reach out and notice them or make any kind of contact at all. Bones, but life can enter them. Life itself calls out to them.

I hear it. Now you hear it too.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. 

No one comes to the Father except through me." John 14:6

Something's About to Happen

 

Do you feel that?

The low tremor in the air. 

Or a shaking in the sky. 

Or something, Something. 

We are on the edge of a Thing in our world. 

What a loss for words I have, using the dreaded thing-Thing 

of which my first college English professor warned.

Yesterday I attended the funeral of a man younger than myself. 

None of us can brag about tomorrow. Will we be here or There?

I know Him, the Creator of it all. I know Jesus. He rescued me. There is a difference between someone who knows the Savior and one who does not. Can you sense the Presence in a life sitting next to you at a bus stop or in a church? 

Some accept Him. Others do not. 

When it is time to go, to Whom will you go?

"...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus." Romans 3:23-26

 

Bloom

where

you

are

planted.

Statues of Sin

 

The kings came to power, but each of them left the high places standing where 

the gods were worshiped in place of God and suffering increased in the land.

She approached the statue with sorrow for what she had once believed. Here sat a man made of mortar. Nothing else. The city was vacant. The war of the gods had scared almost everyone away. 

She remembered this place from her youth when she came with student friends and wandered to all the sites. It took a million exhausting steps to see it all. With her many years she stood again with the man of stone. He had been a hero, but now merely a symbol of what had happened. The tower had fallen. The museum was closed. Giants had built this place but  they were gone. The war had set us free.

The symbols they left behind were covered with code, markings to be deciphered, and messages to eachother. With secrets they had built this city to control the Earth. It did not remain, but the Earth did.

"What do we do with their symbols now?"

The statue spoke, 

"If the people's hearts are humble before God, these stones are powerless. Your children will not even know what they mean."

And with that the last of the high places came down and no one remembered them.

Rest

 

John 3:16-20

 

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, 

that whoever believes in him should not perish but have 

eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world 

to condemn the world, but in order that the world might 

be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not 

condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned 

already, because he has not believed in the name of the 

only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has 

come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather 

than the light because their works were evil. For everyone 

who does wicked things hates the light and does not come 

to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

Who is first?

 

Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves,not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others. Philippians 2:3-4

Modern culture tells us to seek Me first. It means me, not He. It instructs us to follow after ourselves and serve no other.

But...

We were not made to function that way. Especially women who nurture naturally. In my experience, Me first will not make us happy. 

What do you think?