
Father Elijah‘s real name is appropriately David. King David was a type of Christ and of the Overcomers.
As the story unfolds David is faced yet again with the grief of losing a person he loves deeply, in a life already filled with the multiple losses of every loving and stable person he has ever known.
The death of his pregnant young wife in a bomb blast in Jerusalem is the final crushing event that precipitates his transition from a secular Jew, rapidly climbing the ladder of academic and political success, to a life of religious devotion.
He is surprised when summoned from his simple monastic life on Mt Carmel to go to Rome where he is commissioned by the Pope to bring the challenge of the gospel to the ‘Antichrist’ figure, a task he feels deeply inadequate for.
Though salted by life, there is still fire to face, and his saintly spiritual director points out to him, that at times he will experience ‘consolations’ but at other times it will simply be ‘by faith’
As I revisited Come Lord Jesus, I was deeply moved as I joined again with that community of life, worshipping together in spirit and in truth.
The next morning someone else who had watched texted
….I saw faces that were new to me. I saw faces that I knew but younger and I saw faces of those who have departed……but what I actually saw – was eternity!
……departed ones like Paul Cupples whose story I told, of dying in total weakness but bravely, a few months ago, and my mum who oft quoted,
“THIS TOO WILL PASS.”
I lay in bed that night considering the snippet of a verse in the passage from 1 Peter 1:6, about how though now,
“.…for a little while, if necessary.”
……you suffer griefs in various trials
“….for a little while, if necessary.”
Imagine that! Whatever it is we are suffering, in the light of our eternal destiny, it can be viewed simply as,
‘a slight inconvenience’
I pondered the discovery I made that afternoon.
………that I have mistakenly booked and paid for not one but two trips to Ireland next week!
‘a slight inconvenience’
and then a few hours later the discovery
……….that our drains were backed up and sewage was flooding our basement
‘a slight inconvenience‘
Both were resolved the following day!
…..THESE TWO DID PASS!!
This is the truth called PERSPECTIVE, that sets us free.
The greatest grief in this life is that of loosing loved ones, which in turn prepares us for the loosing of our own life!
My mum gave up her spirit just after I had finished singing to her,
“Good shepherd may I sing thy praise
Within thy house forever.”
In the above still I captured from the recording of 31 years ago, my mum is singing, “Sing a new song to the Lord”
This exhortation comes to us from those now part of that choir above, where unending worship rings…..through all eternity.
If I read the book for only one line, it was when a weary and discouraged Father Elijah asked the godly Don Mateo,
“A message? From whom?
From our King. He wants me to tell you this.
‘By day and by night my gaze is fixed upon you. I see how much you suffer for me.'”
May we beyond ‘consolations’ find our consolation in fixing our eyes, on the one whose gaze is continually fixed on us…. from all eternity,
“…..who has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” (1 Pt. 1:3)










