Thirty-nine days straight, and the rain had yet to cease. I was alone – isolated – drifting about aimlessly as a captive of the recent flooding. My single-mast sailboat had taken a beating from the latest gale, and though she was battered, tattered, and torn, I held onto hope, clinging to her for dear life. She was my salvation throughout this hellish month – strangely enough, a hell produced from the endless peppering of water.
My eyes remained wet and reddened through the gale, though not from the gale itself. I had been crying, pouring my heart and soul through those tears, trying to make sense of the senseless havoc that now surrounded me.
“Why are you crying?”
A voice: the first words I’d heard from another since isolated on my cat-boat. I did a double-take, searching back and forth for another soul who surely was to be my salvation from this drenching nightmare, but there was no one around. I had to laugh amidst my tears: now I was hallucinating. While clutching the mast and shivering, I decided to answer.
“Why am I crying? Why, you ask, am I crying? Take a look around you: what do you see?”
“I see an awful lot of tears.”
“An awful lot of tears? Is that all you can see? Do you not see the catastrophe, this recent flood that’s come upon us?”
“Yes, I can see that, and I can see beyond that. I can see the tears.”
“Well hey, that’s good and all, but can you see anything else? Like maybe a way to get out of this miserable, water-soaked grave?”
“Yes, I can see that too.”
The voice was beginning to tick me off. I decided to ignore it – to ignore myself. In a fit of rage, I slapped myself repeatedly then screamed from the top of my lungs, “SHUT UP!”
Silence.
The voice paused, merely to be considerate then continued amidst the torrent. “But don’t you wish to escape from this liquid hell?”
I contemplated the voice’s words. “Hell? Hell yeah, I do! I’ll tell you what: if you’re seeing something that I don’t, either get me out of this hell, or tell me how to get the hell out!”
That voice: so calm, cool, and collected as juxtaposed against my ire. “To begin with, have you considered praying?”
“Praying? What the hell are you talking about? How’s that gonna help me when there is no God?”
“There is no God? How do you figure?”
“Oh, come on! Take a look around you, man: supposedly God caused the sky to rain for forty days, and then he destroyed the entire population of earth with a flood. Even if there is a God, he’s at it again!”
“How long has it been raining?”
“For thirty-nine days straight, man.”
“Ah, so forty is not yet upon us. Have you seen anybody else amidst this gale?”
“No. Between this maelstrom and my tears, I can scarcely see a thing.”
“So since you haven’t seen anyone else, everyone else is probably dead… Is that it?”
“Exactly!”
“Or… perhaps there are countless others still alive.”
I hadn’t thought of that. “You don’t know that!”
“And you’re so certain?”
I hadn’t thought of that, either.
“And God never said he would never send another flood.”
“Well what did he say then?”
“He said, ‘Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.’ So you see, God said he wouldn’t curse the ground because of man or destroy all of the living creatures.”
“But what about the others? Surely everyone’s dead!”
“Do you not count? If everyone was dead but one, wouldn’t that mean that God still kept his promise?”
“Well… Well, technically, yeah. But what about cursing the ground on account of man? What about that, huh?”
“Who’s to say that others aren’t on higher ground? Who’s to say that the ground they’re treading on isn’t as dry as a bone or solid as a rock?”
This… This voice was really beginning to piss me off. “You mean to tell me that I’m the only one who’s in this mess? That I’m the only one out here, isolated amidst this hellish hurricane?”
“The words are yours.”
I couldn’t be sure that he heard me, yelling from the top of my lungs throughout the raging gale. “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!!! YOU’RE MAKING NO SENSE!!!”
The voice heard. “Think about it: for how many nights have you cried yourself to sleep, worried about the economy… how you hope against hope to make your next house payment… wondering how you’re going to feed your kid and salvage your broken marriage? For how many nights have you made yourself sick, thinking about how to get the funds to fix your car – to make it to that desk job that you loathe, which in itself makes you sick within the daily grind. And you wonder, day after day: isn’t there more to life than this?”
“WHO ARE YOU? I DON’T KNOW YOU!”
“You are correct. You don’t know me. And the answer is thirty-nine.”
Amidst the pelting wind and rain, all had grown silent: I was at a loss for words. The gale picked up as the words came to me. “So you’re telling me that it’s been thirty-nine days since I’ve been crying myself to sleep over all my worries of the world? That means… You’re saying this hellish flood is from my tears?”
“The hell is yours, yes, but the tears aren’t.”
“THEN WHOSE TEARS ARE THEY?”
“They are mine.”
“Yeah, right. So who are you?”
“I AM – the One you don’t believe in, and I’ve been crying over you because I want to love you, to heal you, to help you.”
I hung my head in shame. “Then save me, God!”
The Son pierced through the retreating clouds.
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