So here is my first Bible fic. It was a thought that came to me, about how humans long to feel God, and are afraid to lose Him. This character can be you, or anyone you want it to be. Sorry for grammar and spelling mistakes, I have no beta or second reader to spot them.
Disclaimer: God wrote the Bible; I'm spreading His word, just like he asked.
Harvest season, in the time of the Messiah:
It had been a long night. One composed of suffering. Of watching others sweat and bleed, of hearing their feverish cries penetrating a clear night. Sorrow would have hung about the place had we not been soldiers. But we were. We were Roman soldiers.
I sat next to a pitiful fire who's flames licked the air thirstily, but eventually lost the battle and died in a dramatic crack of embers. A man called Lon, a huge muscular fellow with short dark hair and an honest profile, sat next to me, nursing a bloody hand. I had seen the enemy slide through it easily. Lon would later tell me that I roared with fury, for we were friends.
"That is my job!" he jested, "for Lon means 'Lion!'"
As I thought back to that night in the days that would follow, I suppose I didn't realize how lucky I'd been; I sat unharmed but for a bleeding nose and a sizeable headache. But my comrades hadn't been so fortunate. One man, a mere boy who's shoulder span wasn't much broader than my mother's, had lost an arm, and cradled the bloody limb wrapped in sweat-saturated linen to his small chest, tears dripping onto his lap, as he lay, condemned to certain suffering. He, like many others, would be sent back to the garrison and treated, and if he survived, though he would almost certainly die of infection, would then be sent to live his life as 'Roman scum,' as a forgotten cripple by the roadside, until starvation, plague or something yet worse claimed his poor soul. I shivered over the embers thinking of it. For that was how life had come to be; one fought, and killed the innocent and guilty alike, without true cause, only at the whims of his superior. And when he was wounded badly or killed, his career was over. Those who lived into old age were either elevated to a higher position, or pushed aside.
Evil worked in circles. And yet we knew not the evils of our ways.
Cold season, in the time of the Messiah:
Pain blurs reason. Questions. Urgency.
Around me all of these things were mixed into muffled sounds. I was screaming.
Someone was holding me onto a bed. I vaguely saw scarlet blood running over my body before I sunk into a grey sub-consciousness.
"Physician. Hurry, blast you!" The Captain. My Captain.
"What happened?" an old voice.
"He got a sword run through him, just shy of his heart. He's bleeding, you must fix him." The Captain, again. I drifted, darker, lighter, pulsating pain giving way to blissful warmth.
But then there was screaming. From me.
"What did you do?" an urgent younger voice. Oh, I knew who it was, but what was his name? Gods, what was wrong with me?
"He was bleeding out. I have cauterized the wound."
With that nasty thought, there was an immense silence that pressed me into oblivion.
"Teacher. He is awake. You came at the right time." A softened voice said. It rang in my ears.
"My child."
"I am not your child," I was confused, and my chest hurt.
"Any man who is willing is my child."
This man was but twenty or so. I was older by him if anything. I could not be his child, and yet….
"Where are my people?"
"We found you here, lying alone. Dying. They left you," quipped a man standing behind Jesus. He gazed bitterly upon me.
"Peter." Another voice, a younger one, came from out of my sight, "Bitterness shall accomplish nothing but to put wrinkles on your face."
"Be quiet, Mark."
It crashed onto me. This man. Peter, Mark... His teachings, those things that the others, even Lon had laughed at. But I had listened, though my Captain's words had pressed heavy on my mind. He lies. He is a traitor... and yet, this man had spoken of a kingdom for all his children. I was his child? Suddenly I was excited in a horribly exhausting way. Too many questions to speak of, so little breath with which to express them.
Oh, but my wound hurt so badly!
I had heard tales of him healing the sick and crippled. But right then I had something else I wanted. It struck me so hard I almost cried out.
"Don't heal me, Teacher, please!" I begged.
Though I could tell he knew already, he queried, "Why not?" His hand was on my shoulder, gentle, and light.
"Because as long as I lay dying there you will be beside me." I whispered. I felt myself flush.
He turned to the several men who stood behind him, "I say unto you, blessed is he who is willing to suffer, that he may only be with Me."
He faced me again, "Your longing for Me has healed the emptiness, the spiritual and mortal wound in your heart. Your faith has brought you to Me."
I began to drift into cool, comforting sleep soon after that, and through it all, I felt on my forehead the hand of Jesus, the son of God.