NOTE: This is a fictional account, but is based somewhat unloosely on future prophesied events and promised conditions, as clearly as I can imagine them unfolding and being realized. It will be interesting to compare these prognostications of mine one day to how far off I was in some of my ruminations, and possibly how close I was with certain others. It is written in first person, with Frank Calloway as the protagonist. See Chapter 1 (there’s a link to it at the bottom) for more information.
My siblings were resurrected before our parents Jackson and Crystalina were. As I was the youngest and the last in the family to die, I was the first to be resurrected. So I was on hand to welcome them all back.
The first to be brought back to life after me was Emily Suzette, then Chanelle Marie, Daniel, Audra Aileen, and finally — as he had died young and was thus the last to be resurrected — Benjamin.
I met Emily in the meadow shortly after she experienced the same thing I had not long before: awakening to warm yellow sunlight caressing her eyelids; the chirping and twittering of exuberant birds; the smell of fragrant flowers and aromatic herbs carried on the breeze; the soft brush of the zephyr on her cheeks; and the comforting support of the firm yet cushiony bed of grass on which she was lying.
When Emily sat up, I was standing about a stone’s throw away, watching her and smiling. She, of course, recognized me, as her memory was completely intact and her eyesight was actually better than it had ever been.
“Frank!” she said, standing up and beckoning me forward with a “hurry up!” gesture.
I approached my youngest sister, my closest peer among my siblings. We hugged. We marveled at seeing each other ‘young’ again. We still had all of our acquired knowledge and memories and wisdom from decades of living. We had the best of both worlds: hard-earned wisdom and the vigor and energy that comes with perfect health. There is no more need of aids to compensate for diminishing physical faculties: Our eyes do not need optical assistance from prescription glasses; our ears need no hearing aids; our teeth are whole and real; even my hair, which had gradually absquatulated, leaving behind a shiny smooth sphere reminiscent of a true desert, returned to its former full and florid glory. We also have no need for canes, walkers, wheelchairs, knee replacements, hip replacements, or any of those types of things. We are all sound and whole, in tip-top shape.
Emily was smiling broadly, but her gestures and facial expression clearly asked, What’s going on? Where am I? How did I get here? How is it that you are young again?
She didn’t yet grasp that she herself was also ‘young again.’ As we caught up on things and I explained it all to her, I was simultaneously escorting her to the reflecting pool. When we arrived, I invited her, with a gesture of my hand toward the pond, to look in. As soon as Emily saw herself — the real her, as she later put it — she gasped in astonishment and delight, clapping her hands to her cheeks and even doing a little jig (a quick leap into the air followed by an exuberant wiggling of her frame and clapping of her hands in delight).
“I should have known! When I saw you looking so young, and feeling so full of energy myself, I should have known I had also reverted back to my real self!”
Emily had come up with a good way of putting it: Our ‘real’ selves; often in the old system I would feel pretty much the same as I always had, even after getting old — with the same desire to play sports and take long hikes and such, but then I would have to admit to myself that I just did not have the energy and stamina to do those things anymore. As Jesus said at Matthew 26:41: “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”; back then I would view myself as young, in my mind, but then look in the mirror and be reminded of my sad state of gradual inexorable decline. No more, though! Our reactions to our reflections now is as Emily’s was: jubilation at seeing ourselves anew in the best shape of our lives. I never tire of it. Sometimes you have to lose something (like the vigor of youth) before you truly appreciate it. Youth, in the sense of physical vigor, is no longer wasted on the young.
I ushered Emily to the reception that we had arranged for her return. She was glad to see and embrace old friends and some family members, such as a few cousins, nieces, and nephews (the same who had been on hand to welcome me back not long before). All the things I had experienced on my first day back among the living Emily now got to enjoy. And I delighted in watching her revel in that heartwarming experience.
In time, we welcomed back the rest of our siblings, in reverse order of when they died. Finally, the time came when all of us siblings anticipated the return of our parents. How thrilled they would be, not only to be young again themselves, and living on a paradise earth restored to perfect conditions, but to see all of their children again — even Benjamin, who had died before they did — and to see all of us, not middle-aged and declining, but in our prime again. It had saddened them more to see us, their children, age than their own advancing years and deteriorating health had disturbed them.
- To be continued tomorrow
Chapter 1 is here.
Chapter 10 is here.