nevertheless, death reigned
it was a time of triumph, when everyone did the right that glimmered across their vision. flickered, changed, vanished. and the chains that bound were heavy, but somehow invisible. labor unspeakable, conditions so much worse than unpleasant, the misery we heaped one upon another towering higher each day. and yet, as we trudged, we sang snippets of an ancient song of freedom, tied to some distant, forgotten past. we whispered words, disconnected, unremembered, as we bent to the task at hand, never looking up. what would be the point?
nevertheless, death reigned
and then He came, a murmur, easily missed. insignificant town, inconsequential family, flimsy lungs filling for the first time with our tortured air. but each day standing under the unnatural gravity of our reigning monarch and his murky fiefdom, He grew stronger, in wisdom and grace and age and favor, and soon the wind and the waves and the demons and the “righteous” came attacking, throwing everything they had in His direction. but each time He said still, they stilled.
nevertheless, death reigned
the rage of the darkness grew until the opportunity slipped in as a thief to let loose His blood, split the integrity of His body, steal the spark of life out of His very cells. but those final moments were equal to the life that had unspooled before our vision. He had stood, unhunched, unsullied, unbroken. He had sung the ancient song we’d long whispered, crisp and clear and so, so awful that we trembled as it resonated so deep in our chests it stuttered our breath. the song at full voice was unbearable. our chains too familiar, we despised Him.
nevertheless, death reigned
and it was catastrophic. cataclysmic. it was death, howling victory, chanting conquest, reveling over the vanquished. our despair was unutterable. despite our best intentions, He had caused us to glance up from our crooked path. in spite of a full life’s burden of dejection weighing down our eyes, we had begun to hope. and then He was gone. absent. taken out of the game with a brutality so familiar it ached, our palms itching from the slivers of a hammer wielded. and our slavery was burdensome, our hearts ever more embittered.
nevertheless, death departed
and then the Voice that spoke life into the first sunrise, spoke the self-same life into cells disintegrating, flesh putrefying, heart decomposing. and the stone rolled, the death clothes flattened, the grave emptied. just like that. as He had to the storm and to the demons and to the hounds of hell, He said be still. and they were silent. death lost the great gamble, forevermore descending. and we walked about ourselves unhunched, unable to comprehend the light that burned our vision, yet drawn to it nonetheless.
nevertheless, we began to sing
and though our scarred lungs could scarce draw breath, our gravelly voices could not but whisper and our weakened hearts fainted at every turn, we began to relearn the ancient song. though the life burden remained, though pain and grief and opportunities for despair met us with each long night, with each new dawn we were met by greater opportunities for hope. the song beat in our veins and pulsed through our ever-awakening hearts and drew us onward, onward, onward. and though He was still so, so far ahead in the unsighted mist, He was also so, so near, in the space between our breaths.