PURPLE HEART

I don’t remember dying… but I remember lying on the hospital bed… awaiting transition 

I wasn’t that old… maybe a hundred and a few toppings… but I had lived a great life… in the jungles of Somalia… the deserts of Sudan… the roughies of Congo… and the heat of Kenya. The beautiful thing is most of my peers would not even remember that I once existed… not because I had not thought about leaving behind empires and legacies… but because I knew all earthly empires and legacies eventually fade away. 

I had forsaken all my PhDs, my investments, and my wealth at the age of 52… when it occurred to me that I would always want more despite the apparent sufficiency… avarice was and is an inherent strand in the human DNA… the unregenerate… and I wasn’t going to leave on like that. 

So I had taken up my cross and not only sponsored missions but volunteered for every mission I sponsored... the complex newness that came over me was beyond the principles of quantum physics and philosophical dissertations… I was a new man, heaping my treasures in heavens… trading the currency of faith for the souls I reached out to… 

“Hey” I heard that all so familiar voice that you could never get used to “Welcome Home…” he continued and when I spun round my aged knees buckled (despite the new strength that surged through them)… 

I fell in awe, not quite sure if standing in the presence of “Greatness” was appropriate… I looked… but it felt like I could never exhaust the vista of his face… 

“My Lord” I uttered with a voice lost in emotions… 

He smiled “I am not He… I am Michael” he came over to me and helped me up… “Please rise… I am at your service” 

If Michael was this beautiful how entrancing would My Lord be…? Hitherto, everything was all white, but the moment he took my hands, the true nature of my whereabouts was revealed to me… now I grasp what Paul meant when he said “the man beheld things that he’s not allowed to say”… not because his voice failed him or he was banned from saying anything… the words to communicate them just didn’t exist. 

It wasn’t about the streets of gold… gold here is the least of awes… allow me the youthfulness of using the word “Dude”… Earth is a mangled work of art compared to this… just pacing this streets alone was enough to pleasure me for an eternity… my whole body wept in bliss as we were transported through space without moving our limbs… 

Then we arrived the throne room… words do also fail grey hairs… sensations too wild to be imagined by the best of authors wracked my body when I beheld My Lord sitting at the right hand of My Lord… both were wrapped in Light… strong enough to shield Jehovah from my view but subtle enough to let me experience Him…

Oh! What glory treaded my cells… my body burned with so many tender emotions that I fell flat and moaned in awe… “glory… glory… glory…glory”

Then I felt my Lord stand above and when I lifted my head… I saw… I saw… I saw those golden holes in his hands as he held a crown over me…

“In Sudan I saw you” He smiled as he said this and I knew life “In Somalia you fed me… In Kenya, you visited me in prison, in Congo you clothed me… and in Nigeria you gave it all up… I was there son… I was there” 

I opened my mouth to say something… anything… but only tears bubbled out

“Well-done” he continued “here”… and he placed the crown on my head 

I don’t know how long it took for you to realize that earth is just a transitory phase… but I want to encourage you to keep faith… and set your eyes on the glory that awaits… It’s beautiful beyond your comprehension of beautiful 

And if you haven’t come to the knowledge of Christ yet, hop out of that path to eternal doom… don’t miss this awe for anything on earth…

I am… doesn’t really matter… but I am dropping this note from heaven… the awe here is inexplicable...