The two men stopped because they could not agree which path led to the village.
I was clearing stones from a field. There were always more stones. You could spend a morning carrying them away and strike another with your hoe before noon.
One of the men pointed toward the ridge.
“Does that road take us there?”
“It does,” I said. “But you will walk farther than you need to. Take the lower path. At the old well, turn left.”
They thanked me. They ought to have gone then.
Instead, I asked where they had come from.
They told me they had been with Jesus of Nazareth.
I had heard the name, though everything I had heard came with somebody’s opinion attached. One man said he healed the sick. Another said people were making too much of him. Someone who had never met him knew exactly what was wrong with him.
These two had met him.
I set down my hoe.
At first I asked about the healings. Had they seen them themselves? What had the sick people been like before? What happened afterward?
The younger man answered so eagerly that the other laughed and touched his arm.
“Let him ask.”
But I had another question before the answer was finished.
They spoke about the Messiah as people speak about someone they love and still find difficult to believe they know. They told me what they had seen. They spoke about the kingdom of heaven being near, close enough to enter into your life now. They told me about mercy, about forgiving, about becoming small enough to receive what the proud could walk straight past.
I kept trying to fit it into what I already knew. Each time I thought I had done so, something else they said opened it again.
“And he welcomes people like that?”
“Yes.”
“Even when everyone knows what they have done?”
“Yes.”
“And what must they give him?”
The older man smiled.
I remember that smile more clearly than some of his answers.
There was no impatience in them. My questions seemed to refresh them. When I apologised for keeping them, the younger one said, “Keep asking.”
The shadows had reached across the field before any of us noticed.
I looked toward the ridge.
“You will not reach the village before dark.”
For a moment they looked surprised, as though the village had been somewhere in another conversation.
There was a tree beside the field and a low shelter where we kept tools. I brought dry branches and made a small fire. We divided the bread I had brought for my evening meal. One of them had a little food left too.
We sat beneath the tree, with the tools behind us and the fire between our feet.
I had not felt so awake for years.
There was something I wanted to ask, but I let several chances pass before I found the courage.
“Could someone like me tell people about it?”
They both looked at me.
“The kingdom,” I said. “Could I proclaim it too?”
The younger man leaned forward.
“Of course.”
I searched their faces for the kindness people use when they do not want to discourage you.
The older man said, “Our master told us the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. He told us to ask the Lord of the harvest to send workers.”
Then they began telling me how they had been instructed to go.
They spoke about travelling without a purse or bag, without spare sandals. About offering peace to a house, staying where they were received, eating what was set before them. About healing the sick and announcing that the kingdom of God had come near.
They also told me what to do if people would not receive me.
That part I listened to carefully.
I was not so young that I expected everyone to welcome something good merely because it was good.
At last the younger man lost his place in a sentence. His eyes had closed.
We laughed quietly, lay down, and slept.
At dawn they embraced me. The older man held my shoulders for a moment and wished me faith.
Then they took the lower path.
I watched until the bend hid them.
The field was the same. The stones were the same. Yet I wanted to finish everything quickly, as though I had somewhere important to go.
I decided against beginning in my own village.
There were people there who remembered me falling into a ditch with a basket of onions. There were people who would ask whether I had finished repairing my fence before announcing anything about heaven.
Besides, the men had told me that a prophet was not honoured in his own place.
I was no prophet. Still, the warning seemed useful.
I chose a village some distance away, along a road that followed neither their onward route nor the direction they had come from. I could add something to their journey rather than follow where they had already gone.
When the work eased enough for me to leave, I set out.
I took no spare sandals.
For the first part of the morning, even that felt good. I was doing it properly.
Then the leather tore where the strap joined the sole.
I tried tying it. I made a hole with a thorn and worked a narrow strip through it. The repair held for a few steps, then pulled loose.
I sat beside the road with the sandal in my lap.
I could have continued barefoot. I told myself that several times.
But the road ahead was rough, and the journey had already lost the shape I had given it in my mind.
A cart approached from the direction I had meant to go.
The driver slowed, looked at my foot, and pointed toward the space beside him.
“Are you going toward—”
He pointed again, smiling.
I climbed up.
When I began thanking him, he touched his ear and shook his head.
He could not hear me.
I tried speaking more slowly. He smiled with the patient expression of someone who had watched people make that attempt many times.
Here was a man who had stopped for a stranger without being asked. I wanted to give him something in return. I had the most wonderful thing I had ever heard, and I could not tell it to him.
Then I remembered the healings.
I prayed.
At first silently. Then I leaned toward him and asked God aloud to restore his hearing.
The man glanced at me, smiled, and returned his attention to the road.
I prayed again.
I waited for him to turn suddenly toward a sound. For a bird, the wheels, my voice.
Nothing changed.
At the turning near my village, he let me down.
I pressed his hand between mine. He understood that much.
He went on, and I stood watching the cart with my broken sandal hanging from one finger.
The next morning I left again.
This time I wore the other pair.
I considered carrying the damaged sandals as spares, then put them down. There was little point in taking a spare that had already failed. In any case, I still wanted to go as I had been instructed.
All along the road, I rehearsed.
I imagined ridicule. I imagined someone demanding who had given me the right to speak. I prepared answers for men who knew more than I did and for men who would pretend they did.
I also imagined, although I tried not to dwell on it, one person setting down what he was doing.
One person asking another question.
Perhaps I would forget the time, as the two strangers had forgotten it with me.
When I reached the village, a woman carrying folded cloth told me there was a wedding.
I followed the sound of voices. Men were moving benches, children running between them. Someone shouted for another jar.
I approached a man arranging cups.
“I have come to tell you—”
“Can you hold this?”
He put a board into my hands while he shifted a bench.
I held it. When he took it back, someone called him from the courtyard, and he hurried away.
Farther along, people were preparing for a festival. A boy dragged branches through the dust. Two women argued over where something should be hung.
I stood nearby, waiting for a pause.
There was always another thing to carry, another distraction.
At a quieter house, I thought I might finally speak. Then I saw the mourners.
A woman sat by the doorway with her hands open on her knees. A man beside her stared at the ground.
I could not ask them to leave their grief and listen to me.
I walked on.
By afternoon I had begun to feel foolish. I had prepared for people refusing the message. I had no answer for people who never reached the point of hearing it.
Perhaps this was refusal of a kind.
But nobody had actually refused me.
I left for another village.
That place had a gate, and the man at it stopped me before I entered.
“What business?”
“I bring news of the kingdom of God.”
He shut his eyes briefly.
“No.”
“I only wish to—”
“We have had enough messengers. One calls people here, another calls them there. They gather crowds, quarrel, block the passage. The elders have said no more.”
“I am not here to quarrel.”
“That is what they all say.”
He was already looking past me toward a laden donkey coming up the road.
I stood aside.
For a while I remained near the wall, thinking he might reconsider.
He did not.
I turned homeward.
The answers I had rehearsed were still in my head. None of the questions had been asked.
Why had it been so difficult even to begin?
I had not asked for a crowd. I had not expected to become important. I had only hoped for the chance to tell someone what had made me so glad.
Was I doing something wrong?
Should I have stayed at home until I understood more? Prepared better? Insisted in the wedding courtyard?
And why had the deaf man remained deaf?
The two strangers had spoken with such certainty.
Perhaps I needed someone beside me. They had gone together. One could speak when the other grew tired. One could remember what the other forgot.
“Send me someone,” I said as I walked.
I said it again.
There was another settlement reached by a turning off the road. I had passed it before without entering.
I slowed at the turning.
Going there would make the journey longer. It was already late.
But I could not bear to go home with nothing except these questions.
I took the path.
People were still gathered in the public hall. Some were finishing business; others stood talking near the entrance.
I waited.
Then I realised I could spend the whole evening waiting.
“The kingdom of God has come near,” I said.
My voice sounded too loud.
Several people looked toward me. Most looked away again.
I spoke another sentence, then another.
A man near a pillar turned fully toward me.
“What do you mean by kingdom?”
He spoke my language, though with an accent. When he used a Greek word, I answered with the little Greek I knew.
He seemed pleased.
At last, I thought.
But my mouth was dry, and everything I had arranged so carefully on the road had become difficult to find.
I began explaining one thing and remembered another that had to come first. I went back. A word failed me. I replaced it with a poorer one and saw him draw a conclusion I had not intended.
“So you mean—”
“No. Or not quite. What I mean is—”
He waited courteously.
His courtesy made me hurry.
I tried to tell him about Jesus. About the kingdom being near, about how one could receive it. I could hear how unfinished it sounded.
The man nodded.
“Yes, I understand. There are several teachings of that sort.”
It was not what I had meant.
I knew there was an answer. Yesterday I might have found it. Beside the fire with the two strangers, I would have had ten more questions.
Now I could only begin again.
He glanced toward the doorway.
“You must excuse me. Someone is expecting me.”
“Of course.”
“Another time, perhaps.”
He wished me well and left.
I stood beside the pillar.
The hall had emptied while we spoke. A man collecting the lamps asked wearily whether I was waiting for anyone.
“No,” I said.
I went out.
I could not bring myself to knock at a house and ask to stay. I walked beyond the last buildings and found a place near the fields.
There were dry twigs beneath a tree. I gathered them slowly and made a small fire.
Once it was burning, I sat down.
My feet hurt. My stomach was empty. But those were ordinary things. I knew what to do about them, even if I could not do much that night.
I did not know what to do with the rest.
The first fire came back to me.
Those men had been so happy to speak. I had given them questions, attention, time. They had given me something I could not keep to myself.
Why had it been so hard to pass it on?
“Do you want anyone to hear?” I asked.
There was nobody nearby. I did not lower my voice.
“If you do, why is there so little help?”
I watched a twig settle into the embers.
“Or is it enough that I keep trying?”
I had expected no answer, and none came.
Perhaps God cared about something I was not able to count. Perhaps seeing me get up after the broken sandal, after the closed gate, after that conversation, mattered to him.
But I wanted someone to hear. Surely he knew that.
I lay down, then sat up again to move a stone from beneath my hip.
The man in the hall had listened.
Not for long. Not as I had hoped. I had spoken badly, and he had gone away with something other than what I had wanted to give him.
Still, for those few minutes, I had been there. I had spoken about the kingdom. He had heard something.
Was that already an encounter?
Could it have been enough for today?
I did not know.
But the thought stayed beside me more gently than the others.
I lay down again. The fire gave a little warmth to my face. I meant to consider what I should do in the morning.
Somewhere in the middle of that intention, I fell asleep.
Tomorrow would show...