The Kingdom Land (8 page)

Erik lifted his eyes from looking straight into the
coffee cup to looking straight into John's eyes, wishing he had
some answers.

“
I should have never asked about
your parents,” were John's first words. “You should be excited
about your new life with Christ, and I've changed the subject to
what people can do wrong. I shouldn't have done that.

“
The reason I asked is, what happens
in our life is important. We aren't just looking up at heaven and
not affected by what's happening here. But I'm sorry. I'm sorry for
what you've faced and I'm sorry for asking about something that was
none of my business.”

“
That's fine. I would rather tell
you the story than have someone tell it wrong, and make up more
lies. I know there're plenty of lies out there about what happened.
You may as well hear the truth.”

“
But this isn't the time,” John's
voice rose with conviction, “to be pulled back to the past. The
greatest day in you life just happened, and that's all that's
important. I can't fathom how much hurt you must have lived with.
But a new life has opened its door within you. Your heavenly Father
isn't too busy or too pre-occupied to simply sit with you and hear
all you want to say.

“
He loves you Erik. He loves you
more than you know. I don't know about your parents. Sometimes
people get distracted and forget what's important, but Christ;
Christ wants to be with you. The Bible says God is our Abba Father.
That means He is the most intimate Father possible.”

“
I thought I came here to get
breakfast, and I had a lot of questions in my head. I didn't even
ask the question that matters; yet, you just answered it. You said
to keep it simple. What you said about God being my Father is
simply what I needed to know. Is this how God works? Does He bring
you to a place where you went to by accident, and then He answers
you?”

“
Yeah, Erik, I think you're right.
God has a way in leading us so He can show He's watching after
us.”

Erik suddenly realized the restaurant wasn't as busy
as it had been.

“
John, I probably made you late for
church.”

“
I can go to church any Sunday. I
don't as often have a chance to meet a new friend and be excited
with him.”

Erik thought of his own responsibilities. “The first
thing I need to do is check in with my aunt before she sends out
the search teams. After that I need to get cleaned up. Hey, this is
my day off. I was going to relax and now look at me.” Erik picked
up his check, and was ready to leave.

“
Sorry, I've got that.” John pulled
the check out of Erik's hand. “Don't make me a liar, too. I said
I'd buy you breakfast. I have something else for you,
too.”

John pulled a small leather bound book from his back
pocket. He handed it to Erik. It was a Bible.

“
You might want this to answer a lot
more questions,” John said. “It's just the New Testament and
Psalms, but it's small so you can always have it close
by.”

“
I can't take this. It looks like
you've had it a long time, and it has all your notes in it.” Erik
added as he thumbed through it. He made to return it.

“
I have had it a long time. It's
time for me to get a new one, and it's time for you to have one
close by. Just do me one favor, Erik? I'll meet you next Sunday at
10 o'clock at New Life Center. Until that time, read my gift to
you, which is actually His gift to all of us.”

“
Thanks, I'll see about meeting you
next Sunday.” Erik still felt reluctant to commit to anything. When
he had opened the Bible, he saw John had marks and note on almost
every page. Erik felt like he had a cheat sheet for his high school
exams. He knew he needed every answer he could get.

Erik left John in the cashier's
line. Small as the town was, Erik had never met John, but many
people in line clearly knew John. It was obvious they had just come
from church.
Those are his type of
people…and I guess now I am, too.”

 

 

 

Chapter Six

J
ohn
quickly moved to the now considerably shorter line to pay his bill.
Through the diner windows he saw Erik get into his pickup and John
worried.
How much can one kid take? He’ll
need someone to help him so he doesn’t get lost in his problems
again. Christ will surely help, and that help also needs to be from
a mature Christian.

John knew how hard it would be because he had been
the same as Erik not that long ago. He remembered the exact day he
met Christ.

On that day John walked into a
church not to pray, but to get a handout. He, too, had looked like
a harvest bum, but at the time John
was
a bum, a hobo. He had just
arrived in Fairfield early in the day in 1969. He hadn’t picked
Fairfield as a destination; no one would. John rode the freights,
not as a paying customer, but as one who had found an open door on
an empty boxcar and jumped aboard. John was hungry when the freight
stopped in Fairfield, so he slid off the car and looked for the
nearest church for a handout.

It wasn’t unusual for such visitors at the New Life
Center. Fairfield was located on the Great Northern train tracks
that were the main route from Minneapolis to the Port of Seattle.
The train traffic brought its travelers, not from Pullman cars but
from empty freight cars. These men were the rejects of society; the
ones who couldn’t make it within the main stream. John was one of
them, but God still beckoned.

His life, and that of the other
hobos
,
was the
life of the big freights with four locomotives that could take
twenty minutes with their seemingly endless line of boxcars to pass
through Fairfield. As the trains slowed to pass through town, it
was easy to see those open cars with men’s legs dangling out the
side as they sat staring at nothing. To the kids of Fairfield,
watching by the siding, these men were exciting. These men were
foreign travelers who were free to come and go as they pleased and
the kids would fantasize of the exciting trips they would
encounter.

The reality of John’s life wasn’t a fantasy. It was
the life of a person who had to search for every meal in trashcans
behind restaurants or at soup kitchens. It wasn’t a life anyone
would fantasize about or choose to live. It was a life reserved for
those who had left their lives and their hopes behind. No one knew
or cared about these men.

When John had hopped the freight days before in
Seattle, God knew his name and cared to follow him. All of the bums
had a story; most were fiction. John’s was true and known by God.
John’s story began in the Vietnam War. Most of the people of
Fairfield would never hear the stories of what John saw. John was
so determined to leave that hell behind that he would not repeat
its misery. Later, a few people came to know John had served two
tours of duty in Vietnam.

He arrived in Vietnam early when many in the States
weren’t even aware there was a place called Vietnam, let alone a
war. He stayed through some of the fiercest battles. But he never
would tell how it felt or how it looked to be part of such
chaos.Only those who fought by his side could relate. At first,
John didn’t talk about the war because he couldn’t. After meeting
Christ, he didn’t talk about it because he felt the Lord had done
such a miracle of saving and healing him from that hell that it
would be an injustice to take anyone there in stories.

John was neither a wino nor a dropout. The war had
left him beat up, much like Erik, so he hit the trains as a bum
with nowhere to go. By the time he got to Fairfield, he knew the
fine skill of panhandling and the rituals of soup kitchens.
Usually, if the church had such a ministry, they would have food,
but the food would come with a price. The price was not dollars the
vagrants would not have, but a lecture on the greatness of God and
the need for salvation. John knew the ritual well and would bide
his time to get the food.

At New Life Center it was different. They invited him
in, set real dishes, not paper plates, before him and let him eat
in peace. They had noticed a tear in his shirt and asked him if he
would like a different one from a collection the congregation had
contributed. It almost seemed to John the people felt it would be
an honor if he would take one of their shirts. It wasn’t like they
were doing him a favor. It was his favor to them. Somehow this
attitude confused John about the reason he was there. He was there
to get some food and be gone. Suddenly, he felt he was part of
their lives.

When John asked the pastor when the sermon would be
given, the pastor looked surprised. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a
sermon prepared. I’m not sure I know what you mean.” What John
meant was that his experience with the church had always come with
strings attached. “We’ll do this for you, but you have to do this
and be this way and listen to that.” Here, there was simply giving
as if it had already been given to them.

They had even offered to let John wash up in the
restrooms and use a new toothbrush and comb they put by the sink.
After he was done, John didn’t leave. He stayed to hear their lives
and then to hear the story of their Savior’s life. He had gotten
off a freight train because of hunger, but he didn’t realize the
food he would receive during those days would make him never hunger
in emptiness and loneliness again.

The pastor of the church, Pastor Hodgson, had been in
Fairfield long enough to know its people. He knew they would
quickly brand John as a hobo, and that distinction would never be
lost. He was a man who wasn’t concerned about where a man had come
from, but where he was going. He made sure the people of Fairfield
would only know that John had come from the West Coast and that the
railroad had brought him. John had worked for the engineering corps
in the Army building bridges and temporary camps. It was natural
for him to become a carpenter. It was only a matter of days before
John looked just like a native Montanan.

Fairfield was a town that knew everything about what
every person did in town. They didn’t know or care about what
happened in the world outside of Fairfield. Fairfield was its own
universe and life outside of it really didn’t matter. So it was an
easy place to start a new life. They would never know the other
life of John that had ended when he hopped off the freight.

John quickly became part of the community. He was
strong and knew how to work, and that was what people respected.
The Lord had found a place for him long before he knew the town and
His touch healed John of many of the scars he had received during
the war. The greatest miracle in his life was that the Lord could
take a man completely demolished by the misery of war and heal him
so that his hard heart was a soft cushion for others and his faith
a strength to many.

John could talk to Erik about the simplicity of
Christ because the simple touch of His hand had touched John. Those
people who knew him now would never guess the hell and mess his
life had passed through, and that was fine with him.

It was because John knew his own past that he said a
prayer for Erik as he drove away. John’s healing had come quickly
and his transition to the life of Fairfield short. He didn’t know
if the same would be true of Erik since Fairfield had already
formed their opinion of him. Besides, John had the wounds of
several years at war. Erik’s wounds were a lifetime of abandonment.
It might not be as easy for Erik. A hardened heart is harder to
heal than a mind damaged by the images of war. War is terrible, but
a heart is life.

Chapter Seven

 

 

T
he drive
from Fairfield to the Cooper's farm took twenty-five minutes. The
drive always seemed too long and tedious to Erik. At the same time
he had driven the route so many times that his mind responded to
every chuckhole and dip in the road without any conscious
awareness. It was a good time to continue his thoughts. There were
still many questions, but they seemed to all come from the last
statements John had made: “Christ loves you. He loves you more than
you know.” He thought of the past when he drove this road with his
dad.

He remembered the usual times of quietness. Although
they were both in the car there would be no conversation. There was
a certain comfort in knowing his dad was there, but he also wished
they could actually talk. The topic of conversation wouldn't be
important. Just to be recognized would be nice. As the fields of
grain and occasional farmhouse passed the windows, Erik never knew
how to take the silence. Was his dad just not a talker? Were his
thoughts of his work all too consuming? Was Erik just a kid who
didn't warrant comments or concern?

Typically, Erik had avoided these thoughts whenever
they crept into his mind. Today, as were many things, was
different. The thoughts of his dad still stung. His questions were
still many, but now there was another reality. Now he knew that
there was Someone who cared. God cared for him, and as he spoke
with John, John also seemed to care. What John said made sense.
Maybe his dad hadn't ignored him out of indifference. Maybe his dad
was so caught in his own despair and sense of abandonment that it
was impossible to reach out to a kid.