And It Pleased the Lord: An Easter Tale

In the pit, time had no meaning. David, who used to think of himself as a young boy, when the world still made sense, before he had felt its burden, had momentarily, when he died, experienced elation without the immediate sense of the weight. He saw his son and they had their first conversation about it, but afterward it settled in again. Actually, when he thought about it, it was really that he couldn’t settle. He hadn’t for a long time.

It was the weight of expectations. In the pit there was no parchment, nothing to write with, which for David was a kind of torment. For some people writing is a compulsion only relieved by its act. Otherwise the words store up. It might have helped to sing, but he lacked a harp as well, and he had never been able to unaccompanied. He felt locked up.

It was a long moment, a pregnant pause. He waited.

When Jesus appeared in the pit, David remembered many of the things he’d written, and they all bubbled to the surface. In his days, and under his burden, he had never had recourse to repeat his hymns. These were tasks left to others. Once recorded they had been consigned to history, to others, to later generations, but none of them, when he saw them in the pit, had felt them as he had. 

Jesus was different. David saw that immediately. Without knowing who this man was, he knew. He began to sing.

He found himself exploring notes he’d never used before, words he’d never uttered. They just poured out of him. Those around him, and this was the miracle, rising up like a bubble within his chest, so he felt as if he might burst if he stopped, joined in perfect harmony. He was lost, for the first time in a very long time, among the flock.

And he saw a smile on the face of this man. He knew it had been there before he started singing, but he thought it was a reaction all the same. 

He couldn’t stop singing. He had never been happier. The weight was being lifted at last. And he felt young again.