A.D. 30(113)

Seventy times seven. Not a number but the meaning of always, without ceasing. Yeshua’s way was to abide only in forgiveness. And he was the power of that forgiveness.

“Would you like to see, Maviah?” he asked, stepping toward me.

Yes, I thought. I could see with my eyes, here in the dream. But he was referring to different eyes—the eyes of my heart. The lamp of my body that could see light instead of darkness.

“Yes,” I said.

He stopped in front of me.

“Will you lead them into the way that I will show you?”

He was speaking of the desert, surely. Tears filled my eyes.

“Yes…”

“Will you follow my path and be the light of the world to shine in that darkness?”

“Yes…”

“Then your faith will heal you, Daughter.”

He lifted his hand to my face and I closed my eyes.

“Peace…” The moment his fingers touched my eyelids, a blinding flash filled my mind.

“Be still…” Immediately the wind stopped. In one breath the boat became still. As if it had never been, the storm was gone.

Only blinding light remained, filled with a word that echoed through my mind.

Forgive. Release any offense, not only against others but against the world. Find no offense in the waves. Trust Yeshua instead.

I was thinking of the wonder in that word—forgive—when the dream was taken, leaving only darkness.

My eyes fluttered open. My vision was still blurred.

I’m awake, I thought. I’m awake and it’s dark and olive branches reach for the sky above me, like fingers crawling from the dream.

I gasped and jerked up my head, straining for view. I was in the grove, under the tree where I’d fallen asleep. The eastern sky was only just beginning to gray, close to morning.

Nothing had changed here in the grove above Bethsaida, where my world was falling apart. My mind had found expression in a dream written from all I had heard Yeshua teach. All that Stephen had spoken under the tree.

But a dream of my own making.

“You sleep deeply, Daughter.”

My heart leaped and I twisted to the sound of his voice.

He was there. Yeshua! His face turned toward the graying sky. How long he’d been with me I didn’t know, but surely during my dream of him.

I scrambled to my feet, now fully awake. No one else was near.

“I come here often to be alone with my Father while the world sleeps,” he said. “I find the trees calming and the silence comforting. It’s here that I pray his kingdom come. His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. It is here that I learn of forgiveness.”

The kingdom within and among and at hand, even now.

He turned his head to look at me and, though my sight was not clear, I imagined the same spark of wonder in his eyes I’d seen in my dream.

“You are still blind, are you not?”

He said it with such compassion. His voice did not accuse me. He only pointed out my state of being, for I was blind in more ways than one.

“Yes,” I dared to whisper.

“But to follow the narrow path ahead of you, you must be able to see.”

I nodded. Tears rose to my eyes, unbidden. A part of me was still on that boat tossed by the storm, which had become all the challenges and fears I faced. Yeshua alone was my savior, now offering me sight.

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to say more but could not.

“You must remember… what you will see now is only the half,” he said. “There is far more to be revealed in time. Only then will you be able to follow where I will go. This is the way, and even so, it will become forgotten.”

Yeshua turned to me and stepped forward. And with each step he took, my anticipation quickened. I knew. I simply knew. I knew faith, for in that moment I would do whatever he asked without the slightest question.

“Today you can only follow where I have been. But then, you will follow where I go.”

I could not keep the tears from rolling down my cheeks now. His every word was water to my scorched soul, the bread of life itself.

He stopped before me. “Daughter…”

There was such tenderness now. My knees were too weak to hold me and I felt myself sinking to my knees, trembling under his power. With everything in my being, I was desperate to reach out and cling to him. To offer my life to him. To trust him without reservation.

“Master…” I breathed.

“Now you see already.”

His hand touched my head and I felt heat rush over my crown and spread down my spine, then through my arms and legs.

There on my knees I closed my eyes and wept like a child. The sorrow I had carried for so many years was washed from my mind and heart, which were flooded instead with light and love. I knew without a shadow of doubt that I had found not only myself, but in Yeshua my master, and through him my Father.