What I am about to tell you is totally true, beyond a shadow of a doubt and undeniably without any thread of exaggeration.
I was on the last leg of my Sunday morning run; the sun had just managed to reach the horizon while I had still yet to see its morning glow. The air was thick with humidity and any trace of coolness had long ago evaporated into the sweat that now poured off my tiring body. I turned the last corner of the gravel road, the last mile of my run and was about to head into the thickest part of the forest which made the road upon which I ran a living tunnel. Overhead trees draped across the lane, blotting out the sky above. The recesses of the darkness seemed to go on forever, the air cooler, whispered voices of beings therein. I was well within this domain when the thought of coyotes came to mind. Just as the thought entered a small dark figure of a squirrel raced across the road ahead of me, momentarily causing my heart to jump. I went back to the idea of the wolf-like creature and wondered how I might have reacted had the carnivorous being I had imagined actually passed before me. “Where they watching me even now,” I asked myself, my eyes searching as I ran the inner depths of the forest that lay to my left. The blur of vegetation passed as a movie as my body moved forward, one foot plodding before the other, the taste of salt on my lips. Not long afterward, I turned my focus forward again as I emerged from the wooded section of the road and came out into the growing brightness of the morning, running past the pond and up the last hill of my run, soon to put the images of primeval forest behind me.
After my brief cool down, I found myself on the back porch, looking out upon the pond and road from which I had just emerged. My glass of water in hand, I sat down upon the rocking chair and allowed my bare feet to breath in the cool morning air. I leaned back and closed my eyes, the air, my body becoming one with the world around me, drinking in the moment, blood pumping, my breathing relaxed, all was good.
The sounds of the earth serenaded my soul.
Then suddenly, from the depths of the darkness came the bark and howl of a lone coyote: its voice so close, so clear; so haunting.
My eyes flashed open and noticed the horses standing below where I sat on the porch, their images visible in the gray pasture shadows. Their actions confirming the sound I had just heard; their ears perked and alert as they turned to face the dark woods from which I had just passed moments earlier on my run.
Something from a repressed memory of an ancient time reached my consciousness, something unbelievably real, yet unbelieving in its existence.
“Had I known of their presence while through yonder dark woods I hath traveled,” came the voice in my head? “Surely it was just coincidence,” I replied, “or was it?”
I waited to see if there were another call but none came; only the sounds of predawn chorus continued.
My eyes scanned the lower horizon, watching for any signs of movement, but there was nothing.
The padded paw left no trace, its breath a mist upon the morning air and then vanished like the beast from whence it came; nothing left behind but the memory of its passing. A shadow in the mist.
Then I began to wonder to myself, “Was this the way we suppress so many other things in our world, things we recognize but then dismiss when they our outside the realm of our belief?” If nothing more than a physical image can be brushed aside, then what else is there that we understand as truth yet knowingly pass on its belief until we form the space in which we can comfortably exist, one we know and are familiar with, yet one that scares the hell out of us should we venture beyond its borders; the howl of the wolf, the connection to a world beyond our control, one where we are no longer the masters. The padded paw of silence follows us waiting for our minds to stray from the path, ready to pounce upon our unbelieving weaknesses and use them against us before we recover and scamper back to the safety of our predefined borders. How many without faith find themselves in this predicament everyday as they succumb to the evils of the world in which we live, finding themselves trapped in a darkness they cannot control or emerge; lost to the clutches of its demonic fanged breath.
Without the armor of light to protect us, the Word of God, we are mere babes in the woods. It is up to those of us who know better to prepare those who are without; salvation through God’s grace and thus become children of the light. Otherwise, we leave them to become prey to the claws of the world’s clutches.
How many only wish it were just a dream from which they could emerge, or a morning’s run through the early morning mist? How many can we reach before the fangs of this world pull them asunder?
What will you do to escape, what will you do?
