Jos is one of those extremely creative guys who going somewhere. His company just went public on the NY stock exchange. Not only is he moving up in the firm he’s the spice guy, exciting … you never know what he’s going to do and everyone loves him. He lives on the very edge of controlled chaos and high production, but he is who he is and he’s ok with that…Besides his style has worked well so far and now the sky is the limit. To celebrate their success the firm decided to take the entire office and families on a cruise and who better to put together the event of a lifetime than Jos…he accepted. For months the cooler talk and lunch chatter imagination ran wild, he achieved celebrity status, at least in the company. Jos set it up for everyone to gather in Miami the day of the cruise. He would fly down that morning, meet them all at port, personally hand out the boarding passes and off to the adventure they would go. No one knew Jos had a gambling problem. The night before he was to leave Jos went out with his buddy’s, tied on a serious drunk and lost half the money he held for the tickets. That morning he slept through the alarm, threw on wrinkled cloths and ran for the airport thinking somehow he’ll fix this and come out smelling like the rose he always had. TSA was slow, he almost made it but when he got to the gate his flight was pushing away. It was too far to drive…17 hours. He begged the agent to call the airplane back but there was nothing she could do. Jos went into a rage and after security released him his heart began to sink and as he drove home he went deeper into a despair he had never known. The party waiting with high hopes in Miami became nervous, soon disturbed, then very angry...they missed their cruise departure. The CEO had to do something. Trying to make the best out of a bad situation he booked space on the next ship but it was nothing like the first. Jos didn’t leave his condo for a week. He kept rehearsing what he should have and shouldn’t have done. The despair gripped his heart like an iron cage making it hard for him to breathe. There was no room in his mind for his sailboat or the high end sports car he bought last month. He hated the thought of getting drunk and partying with his friends…all he wanted was to be alone and barely that. Jos sat there in the trap of his own mind with no future, no past… only the now of every waking torturous moment. One hour was an eternity. So…what did the future bring for our friend Jos (a Dutch name pronounced ‘Yosh)? I don’t know. What I do know, in a flash, all that he built his life upon came crashing down in slow motion before his eyes and there was nothing he could do. The wheels were in full motion. And when his possessions, personality and self-justification offered no escape…what remained was the painful knowledge of undeniable failure resulting in fear and self-loathing. Jos finally faced who he is. I would like to say Jos left his Manhattan apartment in search for another bottle of scotch when he ran into one Christ’s own and… in the loneliness of his abject failure… understood the hope of Christ and believed. But this is no guarantee. It is just as possible he encountered a man with a gun, heart attack or a speeding taxi and lost life that day…dying in the darkness of the hopelessness that filled his very being. For the author, the playwright….even on the street this is called ‘Judgment Day’, and coincidently, it is called the same in the Holy Script. It has been suggested by theologian’s that shadows of heaven and hell are built into our conscience and many experiences these in life circumstances. Being involved in an accident where your car caused the loss of a life, an exposed illicit affair that causes a parent to lose the respect of the children, news that your pancreatic biopsy is 75% positive…Experiencing the likes of these are shadows of hell, so much so that folks often refer to them as ‘a living hell’. You’ve seen the fear and hopeless in their faces…time is standing still for them in the worst of places and most want out now. On the other side there are shadows you never want to end. The experience of a first love, a sunset that captivates every sense of your being, the promotion worked so hard to get, the clean underdog boxer who pulls himself up off the ropes in the last round, against all odds, and finds the strength to defeat a dirty fighting, overpowering opponent. This sense of love, justice and peace made whole expands our hearts and is only a taste of heaven…these we wish would last for an eternity.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 02:23:51 +0000