Joel: A Boy of Galilee

by Annie F. Johnston

It seemed to waken Joel out of his trance; and when the bloodstained form was stretched gently on the ground, he forgot his glimpse of heavenly mysteries, he saw no longer the uplifted Christ. He saw instead, the tortured body of the man he loved; the friend for whom he would gladly have given his life.

Almost blinded by the rush of tears, he groped his way on his knees toward it. A mantle of fine white linen had been laid over the lifeless body; but one hand lay stretched out beside Him with a great bloody nail-hole through the palm,—it was the hand that had healed him; the hand that had fed the hungry multitudes; the hand that had been laid in blessing on the heads of little children, waiting by the roadside! With the thought of all it had done for him, with the thought of all it had done for all the countless ones its warm, loving touch had comforted, came the remembrance of the torture it had just suffered. Joel lay down beside it with a heart-broken moan.

Men came and lifted the body in its spotless covering. Joel did not look up to see who bore it away.

The lifeless hand still hung down uncovered at His side. With his eyes fixed on that, Joel followed, longing to press it to his lips with burning kisses; but he dared not so much as touch it with trembling fingers,—a sense of his unworthiness forbade.

As the silent procession went onward, Joel found himself walking beside Abigail. She had pushed her veil aside that she might better see the still form borne before them; she had stood near by through all those hours of suffering. Her wan face and swollen eyes showed how the force of her sympathy and grief had worn upon her.

Joel glanced around for Phineas. He was one of those who walked before with the motionless burden, his strong brown hands tenderly supporting the Master's pierced feet; his face was as rigid as stone, and seemed to Joel to have grown years older since the night before.

Another swift rush of tears blinded Joel, as he looked at the set, despairing face, and then at what he carried.

O friend of Phineas! O feet that often ran to meet him on the grassy hillsides of Nazareth, that walked beside him at his daily toil, and led him to a nobler living!—Thou hast climbed the mountain of Beatitudes! Thou hast walked the wind-swept waters of the Galilee! But not of this is he thinking now. It is of Thy life's unselfish pilgrimage; of the dust and travel stains of the feet he bears; of the many steps, taken never for self, always for others; of the cure and the comfort they have daily carried; of the great love that hath made their very passing by to be a benediction.

It seemed strange to Joel that, in the midst of such overpowering sorrow, trivial little things could claim his attention. Years afterward he remembered just how the long streaks of yellow sunshine stole under the trees of the garden; he could hear the whirr of grasshoppers, jumping up in the path ahead of them; he could smell the heavy odor of lilies growing beside an old tomb.