Show and Tell

So this is 5-Minute Friday and I cheated.  This definitely took longer than five minutes because, with me, stories always do.  But I did want to finish - the end is too cool for waiting...  So I hope my fellow FMF bloggers will forgive me - The prompt this week is "Tell".  Thank you to Kate for continuing the FMF link.  It really is too much fun.

In a loud voice they were saying:

"Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain,

to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength

and honor and glory and praise!”

Revelation 5:12 (NIV)

Curio was excited.  Today was Show and Tell and her name had been chosen to be first.  But what?  What could she bring to her class of little angels?  She was flummoxed.  Velvety wings quivering, mouth drawn up and puckered in thought, she searched through her closet. No, no, and no - she would not bring the slightly bent halo from her cherub years.  She would not bring the silly pink tutu she had insisted on two birthdays ago.  She would not bring the cuddle-bug lamb, her slightly frayed, squeezed-lumpy, night-snuggle friend.

She wanted to impress her teacher, with the kindness eyes and the joy smile.  She wanted to hear him say How marvelous; How wonderful; How amazing.  She wanted him to tell a story about her object, like when her friend Patience brought the mustard seed, and when Primus brought the apple.  But what?

All through dinner, all through her toss-and-turn sleepless night, all through breakfast - she couldn't think of anything to bring.  Anything good enough, anything meaningful enough, anything strong enough or new enough, or shiny enough.  Nothing.

And finally it was too late to bring anything at all.  Her wings fluttered slowly, dragging in the ether; she barely made it to her seat before the Teacher entered.

He looked like a man.  Just a man.  Her friend Rumor told of his life in the long ago and far away.  Rumor said he was born low in a manger where cows and donkeys ate.  Rumor said he was the son of a carpenter.  But Curio knew he was more than what he seemed.

His hands were pierced, scars healed.  He had scars at his hairline, torn and ragged from the crown Rumor spoke of.  The crown of thorns placed on his head at his trial.  The trial that convicted him to death.  Convicted him for saying he was more than a man.

She saw the slight stoop in his shoulders where he had borne indescribable weight - the weight of sin.  Curio shuddered at the thought of the world's sin on the shoulders of a man, hanging on a tree, sliced and bruised.  She remembered the day - she thought the universe would end when he died.  She had seen the veil torn - between heaven and earth, she had seen the line between the darkness and the light. In that line, in that space, was her teacher.

And the Creator turned his face away.  For an instant, for a split of a split of time.

Curio stuffed a fist in her mouth to stifle her gasp.  Her stomach clenched, her throat closed up, her face grew hot; her eyes filled.  She felt, for an instant, for a split of a split of time, depths of pain and loss like a bottomless ocean.   Like a star-less sky.  Like a never-ending fog.  Like a speck of dust in rolling desert dunes.

She looked at her teacher.  His kindness.  His compassion.  His good-ness.   Just as plain to see as the robes swirling about his legs and torso.  He stood by her bench and gently plucked a tear from her reddened cheek.

This is Curio's Show and Tell.  How wonderful!  How marvelous!  How amazing!

He raised it high for all the class to see.  A single tear, sparkling and precious, held between his finger and thumb.

Curio saw, then, what he saw.  What the class saw.  In the impossibly tiny, tiny space of that single tear was her Creator, Master of the Universe, Lord of the Angel Armies.  And then Curio heard the music, the music she loved from the throne room of her King:  Worthy is the Lamb...

She smiled because she understood.  God, her great God, was capable of anything.

Linking today with 5-Minute Friday, Blog-Lovin Blog Hop