The catacomb was without season. No high temperatures, prevailing winds, inches of snow or pools of rain. The sun didn’t shine. There was no night. Little vegetation, a constant cool environment and no animals or insects. It was truly an abandoned land, forsaken yet created for a purpose.
Minutes passed like days. Days accumulated as months. Hope was failing, though the unit remained together, as they awaited fruition. They stayed connected as one, never altering the plan. And in this distant utopia, not a whisper from The Promise Keeper had come. The feeling of abandonment was great and worn like a scarf of shame by all, weighing heavy and a burden in itself.
Minute to minute, some, if not most, would question why they’ve been left for dead. Or even worse… why they were saved from eternal damnation disallowed to taste the intoxicating joys of heaven.
For others, they would remain numb, neither hoping and wishing nor dreading and despairing. They experienced nothing, as to not be let down further by holding an obviously empty hope. The rejection and abandonment couldn’t scar them any deeper, or so they worked hard at convincing themselves of this untruth. Their ears remained closed, their hearts frozen and their lips uttered no sound.
And then there was Peter. Though feeling all the same morose emotions as the others, the overriding pull he felt that there was more to this and their preservation was important. He would speak quiet words of encouragement to those connected directly to him and those within ear shot. Little did he know, the ones that heard would pass on the sentiments so that all in The Gathering could hear. These words became the life force and the glue that kept them in this plan of mass salvation from this place.
Things like, “The monotony of this island of despair weighs us down, but listen to me now: this is not our end. Neither our eternity,” would be uttered. Or, “Give in now and there is no tomorrow. This, here, now? Over in the blink of an eye and victory will be ours forever.”
The vast majority was not only clinging to each other for the sake of the plan, but for mental life itself. And in that darkest, most exiled hour, a rainbow of light swirled and connected sky to soil. It radiated warmth and it moved ever so slowly until it circumferenced the group. A great silence was upon them, immersed in this shadow a radiance. With eyes to the sky, they shot upwards, sucked into oblivion.
Time stood still as they moved beyond the speed of sound. For fear of annihilation, they clutched one another even tighter as they journeyed through the universe. Removed from the dungeon from whence they came and now launched towards anything better.
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