Chapter 1

Jeshua walked up the winding dirt path, eyes on the ground. His curly dark hair was wet against his neck and his feet squished in his sandals, but it felt good to be clean after a long, dirty day at work. He had hoped the bath would also refresh his mind, but it hadn’t. Something deep inside of him ached, a familiar, heavy tiredness that rested upon his shoulders, pressing down on him. At such times he had to get away to think, to ponder, and to pray.

The streets were deserted, and the setting sun cast a long blue shadow out in front of him. As he passed the small adobe houses, he could hear conversation, occasional laughter, and the squeals of children playing. The smell of barley bread and mutton stew filled his nose, making his stomach flip-flop in anticipation, but there would be no dinner for him tonight.

On the outskirts of town, the Nazareth spring bubbled in its granite basin. Jeshua cupped his hands under the flowing water and drank a long, cool draft. Straightening, he turned back to his village. With forty small adobe and sandstone homes, a few commercial buildings, winding dirt streets, and terraced fields on the surrounding hillsides, Nazareth sat like dregs in a cup, a poor town of poor people.

"Ho, Jeshua!" yelled a child. Jeshua turned and a trio of boys scampered by, beating the ground with sticks and chasing a ball made of sheep’s wool wound with string. Jeshua raised a hand to wave, but the boys were already past him, laughing as they chased the crude ball down the winding street.

He turned and continued on up the hill, turning to the right when the road forked. Each step was an effort. He leaned heavily on his staff, surprised at how weak he felt. Throughout his life, a gray melancholy had occasionally settled upon him, and he had borne it stoically, but it was coming more frequently now, and lasting longer. When he was a little child in Egypt, he would sit on the river bank in Alexandria and watch the dirty, slow-moving Nile pass and would be filled with an overwhelming sense of doom. He would look upriver, expecting a bank of dark clouds to come sailing around the bend like a dark galleon bound for an unknown sea. He would stand, rooted to the spot, unable to flee, awaiting its arrival, shivering in anticipation and fear. Later, he asked their old magus friend about the image. The soothsayer studied his star charts and then knelt and took the young boy in his arms. Jeshua was surprised when he felt sobs escaping the old man, who held him so tightly Jeshua could barely breathe. Then he released Jeshua, wiped his tears away, and smiled gamely. "On your way," was all he said.

On your way, thought Jeshua, taking another painful step. And here he was, these many years later, still on his way to meet the coming darkness. He imagined it like a bank of unseen storm clouds just beyond the horizon. The cold winds preceding it raised the hair on his neck, filling him with dread and chilling him to the bone.

He pulled his cloak tighter. The magus had no advice for him. His mother tried to salve his melancholy with herb poultices and whispered recitations of happier memories. His father tried to take Jeshua’s mind off the darkness with work and play. But only God could lift the burden and release Jeshua from the darkness, giving him hope once again, even for a short time.

But these days God was silent. His voice had always been like the touch of a feather on skin: delicate, almost imperceptible, easily dismissed as the passing wind. Jeshua had to train his mind to listen to the Spirit as he had trained his ears to hear the far-off call of a hawk. It was a skill that needed constant attention, and the only place he could practice it was far from people and the sounds of life. Yet even as he separated himself from others, especially his own family, it became more difficult. His parents and siblings gave him strength in the most unusual and unexpected ways. A laugh from little Miriam would erase a dark thought. A tussle with his brother Simeon would remind him that life was struggle but it was also joyful. A kind word from his father would fill his heart, and he would remember the great capacity for love that existed in the people he loved.

At such times he knew what he was here for: he was here to gently blow on the cooling coal of love until it flared into flame, filling the world with the fire of God’s love.

Yet at other times, when the darkness came, he found it difficult to see his path. But even at such times, when he wandered through his life much as others did, lost and directionless, the tiny Voice still whispered to his soul. God had not left him entirely alone; he was not without tools. He had been blessed with a great, surpassing gift—the gift of love, and in every prayer he uttered, he thanked the Lord for the spring of kindness that welled up in him whenever he met a stranger. And the fount was even stronger when the person felt unimportant or beaten or just plain worn out. Jeshua knew how it felt to be weary; he was weary most of the time these days. The darkness was coming, and he wondered if he would have the strength to face it.

At the crest of the hill, the dirt path wound between a stand of sturdy red oak and slender, oily-leafed terebinth trees, and when it curved to the east, toward the Tiran Valley and Tiberias, he left it and climbed up on the boulders that bounded the road. A goat trail appeared and he followed it, the sun glinting on the horizon to his right. After a few minutes, he found himself on a rock shelf looking south out over the Jezreel Valley. He sat with his back against a pine tree. Many leagues to the west, he could just make out the towering heights of Mount Carmel. As he watched, the sun slipped below the horizon, and for five glorious minutes the bottoms of the fluffy clouds were a bright pink, then orange, then red, and then the sky turned purple, then a cobalt blue, and the evening star shone in the west.

The sunset had lifted his spirit, but the heaviness soon returned. He bent his knees and clutched them, rocking slowly, trying to clear his mind in order to hear the still, small Voice. Shadows filled the valley like broth in a bowl. In the distance, at the foot of Mount Carmel, the fires of the tiny village of Meggido became visible. Jeshua rubbed a spray of pine needles between his fingers and cupped his hands over his face, inhaling the sweet smell, but still the weariness would not leave him. The wind sighed in the trees, and he heard the distant voices of shepherds calling their flocks home. In the valley below, he could make out a wagon slowly transiting the Jezreel road. Fires glowed in a dozen little settlements. He looked up again, hoping for an answer, but the arc of heaven was silent.

"What’s happening?" he whispered.

In answer, the wind sighed, and fell silent.

Jeshua bowed his head on his knees and prayed.

* * *

He dreamed.

He was standing by the pine, looking out over the Jezreel. It mirrored the summer night sky: thousands of torches and cooking fires lit the darkness below, and a great pall of smoke hung low over encampments where two great armies faced each other, awaiting the dawn, a black slash of no-man’s land separating them. From his elevation, the layer of smoke hung below, making the scene hazy and unreal. Banners hung lifelessly in the still night air, and distant voices called out the watches.

His mind’s eye seemed to fly low over the camps, where hopeless, grim-faced men sat staring into small fires, thinking about the morning and the doom that awaited them. In large tents generals met, consulting maps, hearing reports of troop strength, and planning strategy. Strange, wheeled vehicles with arrow-shaped projectiles atop them collected dew in the darkness. Each projectile bore a seal of three red interlocking arcs, and Jeshua knew they would kill thousands when they were hurled into the sky in the morning.

Then Jeshua saw the dark backdrop behind the props on the stage below. The armies were going to battle because of him—he was why tens of thousands of husbands, sons, fathers, and brothers would go to their death in the morning.

He shook his head, trying to dislodge the idea. This was the immense black shape that had been moving toward him all his life. It had finally cleared the mist and come into plain view. Soon, his very name would become a sharp sword, dividing the world into two bitterly opposed camps—those who believed his message and those who reviled against it. The situation was doubly disconcerting—those who would fight in his name would no more understand his message than those who opposed and hated him. No one would understand, but they would fight anyway, for that is what men did—they fought over land, over women, over property, over ideas, and even over religion.

Jeshua stretched his arms out and lifted his voice. "I only want you to love each other."

They did not hear. In the valley below, the soldiers went on cleaning their strange metal weapons, the huge silver projectiles remained aimed at the silent, starry sky, and the generals continued seeking out their enemy’s weaknesses. The sons of God had finally managed to create weapons to wage the ultimate battle, and when it was over no one would be left alive. Blood would flow like the dark Nile, filling the deep, narrow valley. It would happen here, in this place, in a not-too-distant future.

Jeshua closed his eyes and slumped to the ground, burdened with the dark knowledge. He shook his head dismally.

For a long time he sat there, crushed under the burden. Each gasping breath came raggedly. What could he do? How could he stop this? Jeshua looked up and whispered into the dark night sky, "Father, must it be so? Is there no other way?"

The wind sighed through the trees.

"Then why am I here? You gave me the gift of love, a message of hope, yet they will use my words as weapons against each other. I will be the reason for the hatred and the killing. I cannot bear it." He hung his head and tears streamed down his cheeks. "Is that what you sent me here to do—to destroy the world?"