The remarkable story of Christian Jeremiah Johannan the First

[thefightinglamb]

I thought it would be awesome to start a Christian chain story...

So I will begin the story and then the next person to post writes as much as he/she feels inspired to, on until the end...which it shouldn't end...because as that song says 'every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end."

I pray that noone becomes silly and foolish on this thread...there are plenty of threads for that stuff on other threads...so please pray, and if you feel inspired write...Here I'll begin...

This is the story of a boy who lost himself and found God. Of how he left everything and found, and found...well, I'll leave it to you the reader if he found anything worth having. Christian was born into the world the 2000th year of the Lord, May the 1st. His parents had thought him unusual due to a certain red mark that was found on his eye they called an angel's kiss or a birthmark. He was a fairly calm child, born to nominally Christian parents, and seemed immersed in the world ...until the day that changed everything, and on that day he was separated from this world more sharply then physical death. This day so hard to describe was the beginning of his end. A day that strengthened his childish feet so that they could fight to stand even as they stumbled...It is a miracle how God births light from catastrophes but so it was and this is this boy's story. The boy testified of this day which he could hardly remember--being soooo young-- that it was God's grace that revealed the Lord even in the deep pit he was helplessly cast into....but had not the Lord wrote, "He reached down from on high and took hold of me, he drew me out of deep waters"?

 

[jaylynn83]

couldnt you have picked a better name for this guy???

 

[thefightinglamb]

I guess I have to write the second segment as well...grrr...peerhaps I wrote too hard of a beginning?..ps I know merciful is a corny oldschool name, but I love Pilgrims progress so let the words fly...its her families last name. I am leaving it kind of at a bad spot, but if anyone wants to continue there, good luck...otherwise I will try and come up with a good place to hand the story off to someone else later.
God bless
tony

Most of our childhoods are like logs drenched in and helplessly cast into a river...if our parents be evil, then we as victims inherit their hate, their lusts, their anger, et cetera...if our parents be righteous and good God-fearing Christians we learn to be holy, and to reflect our Lord...But what happens when this chain is mercilessly rent asunder? What happens when a child so innocent and pure is torn from his mother's tit or father's love?
When Christian was five, his parents got a divorce...an altogether common occurrence in this age of the world. but why? that question always in the back of innocent, loving naive minds...let us retrace his parents briefly...His father was named Christian Joseph Johannan, the third child of his parents, Margaret and Jacob Johannan...Margaret and Jacob were 'good' virtuous worldly people...who never understood Christian Joseph...he always sought to distance himself from everything...from them as well as the world...he learned to hate everything and this hatred got painted in his life in the common rebellions of any person who doubts Christ and his love. At the age of seven he started cursing; at the age of 14 he started drinking; at the age of 16 he lost his virginity; at the age of twenty three he had lost hope in everything including all this disaster that he sought to muddle himself in so that he would not be seen either by God or himself...Perhaps he will learn later what allowed this chaos and mayhem to enter his life...Enters Margaret.
Margaret was and is one of the most unbelieveable people anyone could ever meet...She was holy but also instantaneously forgiving, a combination that the Bible describes as a rare jewel. Margaret was born the sixth child of Hezekiel and Mary Merciful. Hezekiel was a righteous and holy man, not on his own, but trusting in Him who said whoever puts his faith in Me--shall find rest...And Hezekiel had found this rest through many a trial and tribulation...but alas he had found that treasure that no money could buy, an ability to rest calmly ever in the Lord's presence. Mary was a bit off a strange one. She had been polluted by the world until she met Hezekiel, then she called him her lord even as that great women Sarah called Abraham...and this faith healed her of her spiritual deformities...all of their children were holy to the Lord; this was a family that caused anyone to see them to remember God...even as Paul said that he was the fragrance of Christ to everyone, to those on the way of sin to ruin and destruction, and the fragrance of life to those who believed...

 

[thefightinglamb]

How does a Christian who has had the blessings of a holy family, and an intimate relationship to the Lord become nominal? And how does somone as pure as Margaret fall in love with 'filth' like Christian Joseph?...
Perhaps, the mystery is hidden in that statement "Jesus died for the unrighteous when they were still in the plagues of sin." Perhaps it is the secular statement that "love is madness." Perhaps it is hidden in God, and unsearchable as the counsels of God are above human council..."A man's life is not his own; it is not for man to direct his steps"...so we all make elabotate plans for and in our lives, knowing that "no plan, no knowledge, no council can succeed apart from the Lord." But still, we being man fill our minds with our planning, our feignt foresight of what we want, what we fear, and what will never be...and we live our lives in this fantasy...unless we turn and put our faith in Christ...unless we believe, as Margaret believed with such ardent, naive, pure, artless faith and unsparing love the day she met Christian Joseph...
See we all our enmeshed in things we will never get to the end of, but still our minds will be spinning...So we have two choices: one--to believe that every moment is a gift ordained by God; or Two--live in distrust of the moment and try to figure out if it is not God behind the scenes controling everything but Satan and his hordes that still rule this world...everything in life depends on what side of this chasm you fall...For the same moment that causes you to fall, can strengthen you or drive you to despair and break your heart...
So, as said before Christian Joseph has lost faith in everything by the time he was twenty three...Margaret, on the other hand, was twenty-two; and though she had seen the frivolity of life--how vain everything was but seeking to do the will of God...had received everything as from God, she was pure, poor, and loving...He was reckless, hopeless, and helpless. He saw the veil of the next day enshrouded in the deepest clouds; she always welcomed the bright glorious sun with equally bright, sparkling eyes and a desire for truth.
The day they met...

 

[thefightinglamb]

balancing himself on the curve of a sidewalk...like humpty dumpty before his disastarous fall...feeling like a bird, who strangley finds himself up on a phone line--sitting as usual--but somehow missing its wings...Even so, he placed one foot in front of the other on the curve, as a child might with a smile wondering how for he could go--but this was no game to him, his soul was in jeapardy and all he had was a song he had forgotten--that he was searching for, ever harder...Work had become a pendulum in time's hand to him and his steps as meaningless as the uniform swings...
He looked up and all he saw was a veil of his past...the miasma of his crooked ways and his perplexing hope that never was satisfied by the emptiness he forced himself into...
She on the other hand, was ardent and shining like the north star in a vast night, pointing all sailors and souls to that ever present beauty--God...She experienced the world with a deep, profound, frieghtening trust in God...Every moment was in God's hands, every breath her little heart sucked in was a fragrance of his presence...
And looking up, she saw a grown man balanced on the curb, and she remembered being a child and wanted him there with her.

He looks out blankly...she smiles at him, wanting to open his closing doors...and for some reason something clicked, he saw her, in the midst of his darkness, as a troll might with piercing clarity remember what it was like to be holy.

 

[thefightinglamb]

'Who are you?' He says.
"Who do I look like?"
"Light"
She chuckles...he nervously fidgets with his hands in his pockets...
"What happened to you?" She says softly...
"I wish I knew...I'm lost in a dessert far from everyone who sees clearly."
"But I'm here..." She murmers sweetly...
"I know, what are you doing here?"
"God reminded me of how gentle he was to me as a child...how I once stood like you, on a curb, without a care in the world, because I trusted in him...and he, for his part, was faithfull..He cares me, and gives me everything I could want."
He turns as if hurt, stung...
""I never see anything anymore...its like I spiritually live in the basement I was soooo afraid of growing up...and for some reason, I from step to step cast myself into this oblivion."
"What are you talking about?"
"All I have known is hurt."
"Owe."
"Yeah everything I have known has scarred me, I feel like a blind man seeking the sun, but unsure of what way is up."
" Do you know God loves you?"
"What is love...? See how he loved his own Son?"
"His Son loved and still loves you..."
"Strange way of showing it."
"He sent me to you."

 

[thefightinglamb]

He stares into her bright eyes, before retreating inward.
There is a silence.
"I am here for you," she finally mutters.
"How can you be here for me when you are soooo far from me?"
She takes a step onto the curb and with girlish charm says,
"God is very near to you...it is you that has been hiding."

It is a strange thing how those of the weaker sex can bring the stronger sex to their knees--even to the brink of salvation or destruction...for there our certain words that pierce the spirit from the soul as the Bible says...and leave men perplexed, devoid of the thousand walls they have taken refuge in...and being attacked? or rescued by the honest and pure Word of God, they tremble, feeling the first instances of true love--they fear it is that plague they have known so long--death...

So even now, Christian Joseph felt his soul being stripped of its false armour, and helplessly being examined by this girl a year younger than he was...

Yet always when lies, hardness, and callousness flea before God--as they must...then the surgeon's knife cuts the meticuluos cure, but every moment, every breath turns and moves the deepest roots of human existence, bringing a glimpse of new life.

 

[thefightinglamb]

And just that moment his sin and Satan put into his heart: flee, run away...
He was afraid...it is one thing to be dirty in a swamp; and another thing altogether to be dirty in a house perfectly clean...just so, the profane play in mud all day long with their friends--and think nothing of it...but pierce this filthiness, and you have but children afraid of light...even as the Psalm says "There they are consumed with dread, where there is nothing to dread; for God is present in the company of the righteous."
"What does it matter to you? I am not your fairy tale; the darkness has scarred me: someone like you would never understand someone like me...and if you did, what could you hope for, but pain?"
She listens somewhat bewildered...then replies, "The Lord clenses the wounds he makes. He will polish and prune you if you but trust in him. He asked me to come to console you, so I came; but if you want me to leave, I will..."

 

[thefightinglamb]

I actually just dreamed how this story goes on...God is awesome...hopefully, I can portray it as awesome as it was when I was sleeping...just finished writing and it is a lot different than the dream...hopefully, the Lord willing, He will give me the same dream again or else go on and show me more...

He stares off into the distance--blind and silent...
Her heart convulses...it is one thing not to love nor know how love moves within you...and to be callous without love...
Yet, it is another thing altogether to love and feel the arrows straight to the heart.
Just then her heart hit her with a dark, poignant pain...like a deep pit, incredibly vast--and she saw her love at the bottom of it...perhaps beyond her reach, beyond even memory...as if she had not known what love was to begin with...but this lasted a split second, while her heart groaned inside of her...and then she regained consciousness...
She limped away...someone might ask, how can she feel love or its pangs without truly knowing someone or having just met someone? I will leave that to you the reader to experience for yourself, God willing...for God can make you care for anyone however much He wills...even from the beginning...
She, for the first time in her life, felt the deep wounds of Christ...though not the complete wounds: she knew that this world had holes in it...where people suffered and stumbled, possibly their whole lives over the same obstacles...Not knowing how easily they could just "let go and let God" in...
And tears formed in her eye for this guy she knew not...and she paused and sat down.
He continues to stare off...and then suddenly experienced a lacking he had not known before, as if even the emptiness he daily experienced, had been robbed of its meaningless meaning...for though He would not say it this way, the meaning and profundity of her life...cut his heart and his mind as sharply as life is divided from death...and his heart flickered...as if weary to awaken to that terrible, dreadful, vulnerable emotion of love.
He turns and sees her sitting...
He quickly walks directly to her...
"What is wrong?" He impores...
"You...I know not if you'll ever believe...but I care all the same...and you may never know how much...for its as much as the Lord has given me...and He has given me himself."
This was like a plethora of words tangled together, an emotion put into words, that confounded him...

 

[thefightinglamb]

What does it mean to care? I am reminded of how gorillas will wash and pick through each other's fur, meticuluosly searching for anything dirty in order that they may pick out the muck from each other's fur....it is the same with souls...in order to be close, you have got to let people examine and prune your heart...
But when the heart first feels the 'threat of love', it is like a paranoid soldier...who knows the sound of guns, and how deep bullets penetrate lives...Thus, when it feels true love cutting into the soul...it is perplexed, wounded, fearful, and 'waking'...like a drowsy child from a long nap...the eyes flicker, and remember, remember light...what it is like to see...what they actually care for...and what is truly worth dying for....and, to be honest, the other feeling quickly arises also "it won't last", "they don't really care", and "how foolish I am to think this is different than anything else that hurts me in this world." So the paranoid and the hopeful wrestle the great fight for the soul of man...and to the victor comes either new life or a retreat into the darkness.
Courage or Cowardance...and NO middle ground.
"What are you?"
"A lover of Christ."
"How can you care for me if you love Christ...I am your worst nightmare...I am a hardened spiritual criminal...I am the blithe blind man who tramples on people like you...I am a graveyard of my past...and shattered, I bleed on people like you...you are suppose to ignore me...as an outcast...as pathetic...as condemned by my own folly...and not let your hands be stained by my foul blood."
"No...you have Hope, for the Lord and I am not willing that you should die...but rather that you should repent, and attain salvation...Jesus's blood runs deep...and his love is for all who are thirsty...so come and drink....I care not for my own life, but that I may follow Him and what He shows me...and so I have sought you for Him."

 

[thefightinglamb]

She stares into his murky, forlorn eyes..."Will you do something for me?"
"What?"
"Will you pray with me?"
He sharply retorts, "What for?!?"
"For this to mean something...for you...for life to come from this encounter with a stranger."
He looks out, yet again.
To those who pray, it is a strange thing to not understand prayer. It is like a plant not having roots...for their souls constantly suck nutrients and life-giving water from their Source--and that source is the LORD...
But to those in the dark...it is like asking them to draw water from a well they know not of...One they may have dreamt of, but never tasted...and assailed by the enemy's taunts...they become convinced it does not exist.
But then there are these moments in life...WHERE A WELL STANDS GLARING AND GUSHING IN FRONT OF THEM...and they see and feel if they but got on their knees and put their hands into the stream...they would find that mysterious, deep well of life.
Life thrusts these daggers even into the most callous hearts...giving them the chance to repent and live, or nonchallantly to fall on the path of blindness.
"How can I pray to someone I don't feel or see?...besides the Lord does not listen to prayers from or for 'people like me.' "
"If that were so, how could I care for you...let me pray...for I have faith. What is your name?"
Like the little prince asking for a sheep, he answers, "Christian Joseph."
She takes his rough hands in her small fingers, stares into his eyes and forces him to hear these words:

"Dear God, I thank you for giving us light and love: the two blessings that matter most. I thank you for giving us understanding so that we can turn all your blessings into thanksgiving through Jesus Christ. I thank you for all that you have given Christian Joseph...I ask that you would open his eyes and his ears to your presence...even as you said "You are very near to all of us"--so I pray that you enter and establish his life on you...that you would turn him away from dark and gloom and to you the source of all holiness. I come to you as your servant, your friend, and your daughter...O Father hear me for the sake of your Son Jesus Christ...and for his sake have mercy on Christian Joseph and allow him to turn to you...I lift up and lay this before you, humbly, wanting to see your glory proclaimed in all this world. The Lord be praised forever. Amen."
In silence, she waits and wonders at what the Lord will do...then she quickly stands up...forces him to hug her...and leaves...
It was not until she left that He discovered that he did not even know her name....He didn't know many things now...He felt like a man who had successfully walled himself on an island, then suddenly bewildered to find himself in the middle of a city...without a wall to cower behind...and without support...she just left..."What does this mean?"
More important than not knowing if he would ever see this 'fair-footed flick' again, was the thought that he saw himself in all the horridness that encompassed his life.
And he KNEW the next time he saw her (which some force told him he would--he did not see it as God right now, though it was), he would have to be ashamed of continuing in debauchery--or turn and quest for true love and light...even if it crucified him...and thus two roads stood before him...both demanding his soul...he felt both demanded his life...one had the advantage of being familiar and of not getting hurt (being callous)...but the other offered love, life, and truth in exchange for the past lies, sin, and darkness.
He stood there bewildered.

 

[thefightinglamb]

I thought I should note that I see Christian Jeremiah Johannons' story begining at this first meeting of his yet to be parents...so even as I said I would briefly sketch his parents, so I did; but now I feel I am at leisure to explain--how this love brought Christian Jeremiah into this world...

It is a strange feeling to be an author suddenly bereft of his grammar...or a person who has seen light even as they are still in the dark...
And choices have to be made...how will I ever write again? or how will darkness ever appear the same again? And how beautiful is light!
Christian Joseph looked out into space...and forlornly marveled for the first time in years. People stuck in mud do not marvel at anything God does in life, but the mud clogs the tires and the engine...and the windows--until all they see is mud...and no sunshine, no beauty, no grace...just endless redundancy; sloush, sloush, sloush through colorless, tasteless days...But when the Lord pierces this darkness, something extraodinary happens...the soul begins to remember something of innocence and love--how God treated and cared for them when they were young...and dumfounded, the heart wonders of God...of newness, of cleanness; and suddenly hope shines fourth...
They begin to see the truth that "Nothing is impossible to God." That light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
This led to the longest night of his life...his soul fighting his past for a gasp of fresh air...

 

[thefightinglamb]

How strange it is to be a stranger to yourself! How peculiar for light to illumine darkness so clearly...Someone in the dark does not see darkness...they do not understand wisdom or ignorance...they do not perceive true beauty or the truly horrid...but truly they see NOTHING...no light, no darkness, no color, no love, no sin, NOTHING...

But when someone in the dark either steps into the light or is thrust into it...they immediately see the truth...They see what they are and what they have become; they see the darkness like a silent stalker seeking to suffocate them in misery...they see it swallowing up the past, the present and the future...like a giant leech sucking the nectar out of everything holy and pure...and leaving a rotten kernel of blindness and apathy...

But God, out of his grace, always forces that question into our hearts and souls--"So, blithe man, what do you care for?"
And the soul is silent...
Then God forces someone or something to awaken that distant, forgotten emotion...and to remember love...
Even as the angel stirred the pool at the gate called beautiful, so the Lord descends and stirs the blind, callous heart to be moved...

So this one meeting changed Christian Joseph from walking in the dark to seeing light and love...but it also caused him to fear..."O my God, she lives in the same world as I do" was the continual thought roaming his mind...and also "what if my sin, my darkness has or will hurt her?"...and he would rather die than allow his sin to hurt her...Was this out of selflessness or selfishness? I will let you, the reader, judge this later...

 

[thefightinglamb]

She returned home, cup overturned, agasp.
Love had always been her strength and her refuge, but she had never felt or seen how poignantly it could hurt her.
What was this? Who was that?
She was swept away by questions; spinning and spanning voids of darkness and uncertainty.
It was not a question of whether or not she was to care for him or anybody; she was a Christian and this meant that what she was was to care without fear of consequence.
But still she did not know that loving sinners could hurt so incredibly badly.
Everything was swirling around her, and she fell to her knees and prayed...
And she lost strength and laid on the ground. She waited and listened, watching.

Have you ever loved someone that is in love with darkness? Have you felt how futile it is to try and explain to them how glorious is the Lord, light, and love? And you see their hearts lusting after some sin with corrupt eye? Have you ever thrown your heart after them without reserve like the Lord chased you? Not thinking you can save them, but forcing them to confront you and God and to either accept living in the light or to codemn themselves by retreating into darkness? To force them to see that what they are running away from is "paradise."

 

[thefightinglamb]

He awoke that night with many a strange dream. One moment he was being dragged up in the net of fisherman with hundreds of fish, but he felt incredibly dirty and foul...and as the fisherman sorted the fish, he was discarded back into the sea...the next moment, he was sitting in an empty classroom with a glass in the middle of the room and in the glass was a liquid white as light...something told him, "Come drink." But fear and trembling entered his soul and "I dear not' entered his mind--he wanted to run and have the hills cover and hide him from that presence...but he heard "Fear not."

He stumbles forward. Takes up the glass, but accidentally? drops it; both the glass and the light shatter asunder...and underneath the brokenness there is blood as if a giant bug had been squashed beneath it...the blood keeps increasing until it covers the both broken glass and mingles with the light...and then it keeps filling the room until it comes closer and closer to him...in his soul it felt so heavy that he thought that the blood could either stain or clense the world...a crushing, overwhelming presence and then he awakes. Drowsy and lost.

See, to the righteous to be lost is wicked, because they have been thrown off course and no longer see the way...and but for prayer, they know not where to go.

But, for the wicked or the sinner, to be lost is the first step to salvation...for no longer tied down by the fatigue and weariness of the darkness--they daily swallow whole like death--they reach out with hands empty, and desiring something true, a desparate plea escapes their lips.

 

[thefightinglamb]

It is a funny and strange thing to not know who you are--or how you became what you are now.

"For a thousand years are to the LORD,
like a day that has just gone by,
or like a watch in the night."

Have you ever tried to completely clean an eighty year old window pane that has not been cleaned in decades? If you had, then you would have seen how muck and dirt cling to both things and people in similiar ways: there are layers upon layers of filth, and despite removing one layer and thinking it clean, when the light shines through it you see that there are still possibly thousands of layers yet to clean. Even so, when the Lord first pierces our darkness, we grasp for breath as we see the thousand years of our former darkness like a great overwhelming flood.

And we are in need of CPR from some God-ordained Christian to help us relearn how to breathe, how to walk, how to smile, how to wash the darkness that clings so closely away.

Christian Jeremiah Johannan the First awoke in a peaceful and broken way. Yearning for life yet standing in humble artless poverty.