The wind swirls and races high above the city. Sometimes, like invisible fingers, it reaches down into the dark chasms between high buildings, touches men, then returns and carries their residue to the four corners of the Earth.
One evening the wind reached down, felt its way along a broad avenue, whirled way down a darker side street, then lingered, twirling discarded matchbooks and gum wrappers in a lazy waltz, and waited. For, careless and fickle, the wind may go where ever it wants, yet always it pauses and waits when God is near.
It waited this time in front of the Charles Avenue Theatre of Modern Art. What few street lights still worked in that dingy part of town had long been on. In due course the theatre's red doors opened and the evening's last theatre goers spilled out.
They were an odd bunch of counterfeits. They wore their cheap suits and last year's formal dresses, made their judgments of the art they had just witnessed, then left, most of them by city bus. Yet they were not lovers of art. They were lovers of the lives they thought lovers of art lead.
Inside the theatre three stage hands were cleaning up. One small benefit of a theatre like that was the number of half pint bottles invariably strewn beneath the seats after each performance. The stage hands collected the bottles, drained them into a larger bottle they kept for this very purpose, then retired to sit, drink and talk at the edge of the stage.
From the lobby came the sound of a door opening and closing. In due course a man appeared at the back of the theatre. Now I will not try to describe what this man looked like exactly, because he looked more like everyone else than he did himself. Other than that, his clothes were threadbare, he had a wispy beard and big eyes surrounded by a web of fine wrinkles.
The man approached the stage. "Did I miss the play?" He asked the stagehands.
"Yes, 'fraid so." Said the old stagehand.
The visitor considered. "Well that's a shame. I heard the play was about God, and I so wanted to see it."
"Didn't miss much." Said the young stagehand.
"Oh?"
"Nope." Said the middle aged stagehand. "We all lost interest after the second act."
"Is that so?" Said the man. He thought for a moment. "Do any of you mind if I ask how the play went?"
The stagehands looked at each other agreeably. "Well," said the old hand, "the play was about a man who wanted to emulate God."
He continued, "In the first act, as a boy the man prayed every day that he would be able to do God's work. So he studied long and hard and after time became a great physician who saved many lives."
"I see." Said the visitor. "What happened next?"
"In the second act," said the young hand, "a mortal disease broke out in the man's home town. So he labored day and night and eventually found a cure. With no time to spare, the man prepared a big batch of his formula and began to administer it to all the townsfolk who were afflicted. At last, there were only two people left who had the disease. One was a two year old child and the other was the town drunk, an old man who had never known or cared for God. Yet the man had only one dose of the cure left and there was no time to make more. So he had to decide which of them he would save."
The visitor stared at the stagehands for several moments. "Well, which did he choose?" He asked.
The stagehands looked at one another. "I guess that's where we lost interest." Said the middle aged hand. "None of us paid attention to the last act."
This seemed to trouble the visitor. Then, looking back at the stagehands he said. "I see. I wonder though, which would you have chosen?"
This question plunged the theatre into a long, awkward silence.
The young stagehand spoke first. "Oh that is easy." He said. "I would have saved the child. She had many years left to live but the old man had only a few."
The visitor smiled. "That makes sense." He said.
"No it doesn't." The old hand said after a short pause. "Why rob the old man of life before he has a chance to find God? Cure him and perhaps he will seek redemption. The child is too young to have strayed from God in any case."
This answer seemed to deeply trouble the visitor. For long moments his head shifted back and forth, as if he was torn between these two choices. Then he looked back up at the middle aged hand. "And how would you have chosen?" He asked.
The middle aged hand had stopped drinking long before and was listening to the conversation with rapt attention. "I think we should have watched the third act." He said. "I think maybe we cannot know the right answer because where men see flesh, God sees the soul, and how is He to decide which soul is more precious than the next?"
With sudden comprehension, he stared intensely at the visitor. "Who," he asked, "would you have chosen?"
The visitor hung his head. Then came the awful tears. He tried to speak, then stopped. Words had become fatiguing and useless. Silently he turned and began to walk away, slowly at first, then running, as prey does from the eternal huntsman.
The visitor fled through the outer door of the theatre, then ran off and vanished into the night, but not before a little of Him rubbed off on the wind which waited outside.
Then the wind carried this little bit of Him high up above the city, where it whirls and twirls, then mixes and falls, like rain, into the hearts of men who will never know the depth of God's love for them.
END
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