Kingdom Wine

'What we will be has not yet been made known...'

Photo by Jamie Street on Unsplash

‘I’ll not do it, no way no how!’ She put her hands over her lips and shook her head. ‘I didn’t spend my life a good and Godly woman just to come here and become a wine-bibber. And I don’t care what nobody else does, I ain’t dancing like I’m in some road-house.’

The bright being beside her shook his head. All about was a new heaven, a new earth, an eternal Kingdom and here was one who refused the cup offered by the Master of the feast.

‘Woman, it is not the wine you knew. It, it is not to intoxicate but enliven. It is a celebration! All is well at last!’

‘If all is well then why do I need to get drunk?’ She asked this in frustration. You tell whoever sent this that I am a Godly woman and I lived my life without a drop of liquor or wine on my lips and I intend to spend eternity that way. If that’s what this is anyway. I always figured there’s be liquor in hell with the devils, so how do I know what’s good and what’s bad?’

‘The enemies are destroyed in the fire. You saw that. They have no part in this feast. You have a right to it.’

Opal pushed the hair back from her face, noticing to her consternation that it was not the silver gray of her last days on earth, when her family gathered round. Rather, that it was getting darker, black, deep, even more than when she was a wild girl in the mountains.

She saw, too, that the spots and wrinkles of her arm were gone and only smooth skin remained.

‘My sister Ruby drank liquor and do you know what happened to her?’

‘I do, woman, she suffered. But that is past. That is erased. She is here. And you know that. See, she is laughing and weeping!’

‘And a big glass of booze in her hand as usual!’

If angels could roll their eyes, he would have.

Her sister, the one she thought long lost, was dancing in a circle as the deep, burgundy liquid in her glass sloshed onto the ground all around her and her children laughed. Opal assumed they were her children, for they looked like her. But they had none of the pain in their faces that she remembered. They had the same wild eyes, the same carefree singing and joy, the same silliness as their mother. She wanted to move to her, to hold her, but she couldn’t.

Not yet.

A second being smiled and eased up aside the first. He whispered, ‘the enemy planted pride next to righteousness and fear next to morality. She worked to be here, forgetting she could not work to be here. And she is desperately afraid that it wasn’t enough. Give her a minute.’

‘A minute?’ The first asked. ‘What is a minute here?’

‘An expression they use. Just watch. She will come around.’

Opal walked away, stomping along a clear stream that swirled in bold rivulets. Her great-grandfather waved and beckoned her to a grove of trees where he sat with her kin; she covered her ears. And as she walked her old shoes, the ones she fell asleep wearing, simply fell to dust. The ground was too hard for them. And they were old, so very old. Her bare-feet were young and light and against her will, forced her to skip through the field. A comical thing, hands over ears, eyes closed, body too joyous to resist.

She did not see her dress vanish like her shoes. It’s old fabric too weak for the air and the light; to weak for her new body; its frayed seems burst, unable to contain her strength.

She sat by a great pool, alone (for she was allowed to be alone). Looking down into the crystal mirror that was the water, she was taken aback.

‘Pardon me ma’am, but you need to put on some clothes!’ Opal fell backwards onto the ground as she realized that she was speaking to herself. She stood, hands over her eyes, peaking through her fingers. Her body looked the way it had when she was 19-years-old and in love. But more perfect, more exactly the way she knew it should.

Gone were the scars of surgery, the wounds of her later diseases, the callouses of hard, back-breaking work. Gone were the swollen joints and bent back. Missing were the stigmata of the infection that finally took her. Vanished were the wrinkles of age, the weak, sagging, wasted muscles of her former legs and arms. Her breasts and curves were all new, her teeth white, her eyes bright with a color she had never seen; they hair even thicker it seemed, trailing down her back.

She ran her hands along her body, tentative, as if she had found something she did not expect. She pulled her hair up, looked left and right, the way she had as a girl before her broken mirror, when she thought she was beautiful; before she came to fear the beauty she later hid beneath shame.

‘So now I’m a Jezebel too. I never imagined this!’

She wanted to go to church in her favorite long dress, with the long sleeves for winter. To hear “Amazing Grace,” and feel the offering plate in her hand. She wanted the old, familiar grape juice and wafers of the old familiar communion. Wanted to clutch her Bible as she shook the hands of friends. All she ever desired was to be a good woman, a holy woman. And yet, inside her head, in the silence, a voice loving and silken said, ‘Fear not! For you are holier than ever before. And you are exactly perfect.’

She looked at the water again and a clinging white robe covered her, to her comfort and delight. It was the most beautiful thing, like the prom dress she could never afford. Like the wedding dress she never got to wear for the husband she never had.

But wedding dress it was.

She heard others and moved haltingly toward them. She was slowly, bit by bit accepting the fact that she no longer lived in the small, drafty house by the brown stream. She began to see that she had prayed her whole life for heaven and was now struck squarely in the face with it, but it not what she had thought.

It became clear that all the things she dreamed of had a sudden, shocking, breathtaking reality; more tangible than stone or tree ever were before. More real than sorrow or loss. The light brighter than the noon; the air clearer than after the whitest mountain snow.

She saw now that the vanity she suppressed and the sobriety she pursued for all the right reasons were no longer concerns. She was beautiful and to deny it would be blasphemy. She was rich and could revel in the life of the King’s daughter. There was no church, for all was church. And she could dance without being judged by anyone.

She stood and stretched. She spun. A thousand clinging cares fell from her heart. Fear and guilt and doubt and worry all left her in a last eternal exhalation of the remaining air of her old life, hidden still in her once dimmed spirit.

So large in life those things were now blown out and shriveled and shrank like the faintest dust.

A bright hand put a chalice in hers.

Opal put it to her lips and drank the new wine with a thirst she always felt but had never comprehended. Her head reeled, but not in drunkenness. Her laughter erupted, but it was not base or bawdy. It was music; the music all music aspired to be.

She dropped the drink, enlivened, and ran on to her new life. Faster and faster like wind, then sound, then light. Her breath deeper, her heart lighter, her foot-falls steady. She leapt through the air like a deer and landed, soft as a thick snowflake. She looked all around and tried to take it in, then realized there was no hurry. No hurry at all.

‘Reckon that was worth waiting for,’ she thought as she danced away. She was new wine a new wine-skin, after all.

She saw Ruby, her arms spread out to what seemed like sky. She rushed up and wrapped her arms around her sister from behind, pure joy meeting pure joy. A reunion unprecedented.

They tumbled to the ground, rolling and laughing for an age. Her nephews and nieces piled on and all who knew and loved her, or hoped to, gathered round clapping and singing, welcoming her home.

All of their hearts, like the glasses offered to them, were full at last.