Cave Arrest
Stories
Contents
“Cave Arrest” by David O. Bales
“Everything Under Heaven” by Peter Andrew Smith
Cave Arrest
by David O. Bales
Revelation 21:1-6a
The ocean wind punched John and swirled his robe around his legs. He leaned into the gusts. The weakness of his illness made him stumble; but he caught himself and stepped from his rocky hole east toward the morning’s growing light. Some mornings he had to stand here for an hour outside his craggy prison.
“Only once,” the centurion had shouted at him. The squad of four soldiers had dragged John up the hill which he had little hope of ever descending. In front of the cave that would be John’s prison the centurion, angered by having to climb so difficult a cliff, yelled, “Only once I’ll tell you. You disobey and your exile will end in death. Every morning you must be out of the cave as the sun peeks over the sea. You then will wait right here.” He stepped to the lip of the crag which was the highest on Patmos. “The soldiers can look up and eyeball you.”
From the shore to his cave was a quarter mile. Yes, from the shore the soldiers could spot him. Then daily he stood waiting while someone, usually a laborer from the farms, was compelled to climb the trail. In some places the ascent was almost straight up, like following a snake toward heaven. With a basket tied on his back the man delivered a plugged jug of water and a lidded pot of cold, soggy vegetables to John.
For two days, he’d been too ill to exit his cave. As threatened, no food arrived. Finally, this morning he managed to step from his cave and remain standing as some poor sod climbed, bringing water and a vat of scantily boiled, fibrous vegetables.
John’s physical suffering was bad enough; but his great age and near starvation were destroying his memory. His revelations of heaven had revived his strength; but he now discovered every morning, as he endured the wait for his daily meal, that his elderly memory leaked like flour through a roughly woven bag. He tried to recover the visions and their sequence. He was desperate not to forget the words. He knew he’d never forget the voices.
His situation felt like a double defeat by Rome. First to be exiled here and now to worry that heaven’s precious visions might slip from his grasp.
Daily he shuffled corner to corner around his unwalled prison compound. He prayed and concentrated on remembering the visions. What else to do with the small space of his exile that was paced out by the centurion? One hundred steps in each direction. At that boundary lay his invisible prison walls. Not house arrest. He called it “cave arrest.” So, most of the day he praised God and prayed for his seven congregations, for the success of the gospel, and for his memory. Each dawn for a year found him more desperate.
This morning he squinted into the salty wind that blew his beard up beside his neck. Seagulls swooped near him as if to snatch the food he hadn’t yet received. He gazed toward the shoreline to the tents of the Roman prison detachment. When the wind was right, he sometimes heard the soldiers’ voices, like voices between fishing boats across Galilee Lake. His meal from below approached slowly. He didn’t recognize the person. The man was clearly not a farmer. He was a Roman soldier — a wicker basket crisscrossed with ropes wobbled on his back. Was this a new punishment approaching him?
John peered over the precipitous edge and onto the top of the young man’s head as he approached the last tricky footholds. Red hair, long and tossed around in the wind. He watched the man’s face appear over the rim. He was panting. He grasped a rock to pull himself up while the woven basket teetered on his back. He untied the basket and opened it. Then he turned his eyes to the thin, stinky old man whose white hair flew in the wind like a halo.
Those who’d brought food and water before snatched the empties and dashed back down. This soldier in his early twenties spent a few heartbeats looking at John. As the soldier hesitated, John did what he’d never done before. He said, “God bless you.”
The freckled faced young man nodded, stuffed away the empties, tied up the basket and left; but he returned the next morning. Again, John said, “God bless you,” and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Novius,” he said, and his reddish face blushed.
“My name’s John.”
Novius grabbed yesterday’s containers and was off. This first human contact in months was like medicine. John was happy to be able to bless someone, even if he were one of the enemy forces. The stringy wet vegetables tasted better this morning.
“Novius, you’re here again,” John said the following dawn.
The young man smiled, “Yes,” he said as he handed John his water and meal. He hesitated, anticipating John’s blessing.
John said, “God bless you, Novius.” They stood silently for a moment and John asked, “Why do you have this duty? Punishment for something?”
“No. I asked for it.”
John tipped his head to the side in question.
“Keeps me away from the centurion’s curses a while longer.” He chuckled and hurried down the trail.
That was the beginning of the answer to John’s prayers and, as it turned out, to Novius’s also. John wanted to preserve heaven’s message. Novius was seeking faith, even if he didn’t know it. As the mornings passed, Novius stayed a few moments longer. John explained vaguely that he was exiled for trusting Christ. Novius related that he had accompanied his family of traders around Mediterranean. “Everywhere I listened to the philosophers who strolled the city bazaars. Asked questions. Read their writings. Not enough,” he shook his head. “Little concern for others.” John, however, had blessed his jailer whom he had every reason to fear as his torturer.
“Yet you’re now a soldier,” John said as a question.
“I must hurry back,” Novius said with a rush. He returned the next dawn immediately continuing their conversation as if confessing, “I despaired, and in a fit of hopelessness, I enlisted. I gambled that a life of activity, even violence — instead of thinking — would satisfy me. It hasn’t. Stuck on a penal island. A prison guard on a dot in the ocean.”
Over the days to come John asked if Novius’s extra time with him would cause problems with his centurion. “No,” Novius said. “The centurion drinks later every night and sleeps later every morning.” That’s when John informed him of his great work and his need for writing material. Within a few days Novius brought him a sharpened feather, a half vial of ink and a handful of papyrus scraps on which John could scratch a few sentences. A week later, Novius’s scrounging produced a trove of papyrus documents: agendas of meetings, bills, receipts, letters of all kinds. He held out a handful, the breeze fluttering them.
“This is amazing,” John said. “Where did you get them?”
“Centurion commanded that everything left by the last centurion be tossed.”
They laughed together and Novius descended to camp.
John labored to record his visions on the margins and between the lines of these documents. As he wrote over the original words, it was as though God’s new world was displacing the old one.
In the moments that the two were together John learned more of Novius’s life. “Enlistment is 25 years. I owe the emperor 21 more. It’s like a prison sentence.” When he left, he said, “I’d like to hear what you’re writing.”
“Fine,” John smiled. He’d thought about doing so; yet, Novius served the empire which John’s Revelation portrayed as the greatest enemy. Still, face to face with this young man who aided his life’s mission, he trusted that Christ would accept Novius if he believed.
The next day John stood erect and spoke forcefully. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”
Novius was stupefied. He gazed at John and finally asked, “What does that mean?”
John said, “What Christ’s entire revelation means — in its simplest and most personal — that you and I as prisoners share the promise to all Christ’s believers. Somehow in God’s time and way we’ll both be freed from Roman domination.”
Novius nodded as though he understood, but he didn’t. He returned to the trail shaking his head and climbed down pondering John’s words. Yet, he decided to trust John’s faith in Christ even if he didn’t fully grasp John’s message. Day by day he listened eagerly to a few sentences more about Jesus and his church. In the years to come his comprehension of the Christian faith grew far beyond John’s promise that first day. He always considered that day as the moment time began again. It would always be the first day of his new life.
Preaching point: God’s fortifying message to desperate people at a desperate time and place.
* * *
Everything Under Heaven
by Peter Andrew Smith
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Mike flinched as the nurse put the needle into his arm. He hated this. He hated everything about it. She hung the bottle and tapped a few buttons on the intravenous drip. Mike felt a warm sensation start through his arm.
“That’s just the saline,” the nurse explained. “After the line is flushed, I’ll start this round of chemotherapy for you.”
Mike nodded.
“It will take a couple of hours and if you have any side effects- headache, nausea, a burning sensation, or anything else out of the ordinary please ring your buzzer and let one of us know. Ok?”
“Sure.”
The nurse quickly changed the bags and he watched as the liquid dripped into the line and his arm. He leaned back and closed his eyes. This was going to be the longest two hours of his life. He opened his eyes and the clock that had barely moved. This was going to be an eternity.
“First time?” a voice asked from beside him.
Mike looked over at an older man being hooked up for his treatment. “Is it that obvious?”
The man shook his head. “No, I just haven’t seen you here before and most of us have a set schedule. I’m Greg.”
“Mike.” Mike looked up at the chemotherapy bottles. “I’d say nice to meet you but well....”
“Yeah, I’d like to be anywhere else too.” Greg laughed. “However, it is better than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Not being here and getting sicker.”
Mike thought about that for a moment and slowly nodded. “I guess so. How are things going?”
“Not too bad.” Greg shrugged. “I’m tired and useless but at least they found something to keep my nausea under control.”
Mike nodded. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How do you get through this?” Mike waved the arm not hooked up. “I mean how do you find the strength to come here every week and put up with the side effects and the not knowing if it’s going to work?”
“I think everyone who comes through those doors has to find an answer to those questions.”
“Is there even an answer?”
“If you end up coming through those doors then there must be.” Greg rubbed his chin. “Do you read the Bible?”
“Probably not as much as I should but yes, I’ve read the Bible and sometimes go to church.”
“There’s a part in Ecclesiastes that takes about all the things that can happen in life which starts by talking about there being a time for everything under heaven. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, I remember that one.” Mike frowned. “I’m not sure what that has to do with what we’re going through though.”
“Well, there are lots of seasons in life and the truth is that nothing lasts forever, not even what we’re going through.”
“I just hope the next season is better than this one.”
Greg chuckled. “I hear you on that and have the same hope.”
Mike thought for a few moments. “What if it isn’t different though, or what if it is worse? Is there anything in there about that?”
Greg smiled. “I think there is because the passage tells us that all those things happen under heaven. Which means that all the things we’re told about God- forgiveness, grace, mercy, love and the promise of salvation- is there even when life is at its worst.”
Mike looked up at the bottle dripping into the intravenous line. “I wish I felt some of that today.”
“Really? I dread coming to this place, but the truth is that I usually find what I need to keep going even if I forget to ask for it in prayer. God is good that way.”
Mike thought about the sleepless night he had and how his heart had raced as he came through the doors of the clinic. He looked around at the nurses who had been so patient and calming, thought about the friends and family who had texted him and told him they would be thinking and praying for him, and then found himself looking at the stranger helping him sort out where he was and where he was going in this difficult time.
“I guess I have felt some of what you’re talking about.” Mike paused. “You know what? I think I can get through this.”
Greg smiled. “That’s the spirit! And you know what?”
“What?”
“Before you know it the nurse will be back because we’re almost done.”
Mike looked at the bottle and the clock and saw he was almost finished his first treatment. He realized that even though he hadn’t asked or done anything to deserve it, that God had not abandoned him during this difficult time. He offered a quick prayer of thanks and then looked at his new friend.
“Greg?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Greg smiled. “No problem. You realize though next week we’re going to have to talk about another subject to pass the time.”
Mike laughed as he looked at his favorite sport team’s logo on the front of Greg’s shirt. “Something tells me we’ll find lots to talk about.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 3, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“Cave Arrest” by David O. Bales
“Everything Under Heaven” by Peter Andrew Smith
Cave Arrest
by David O. Bales
Revelation 21:1-6a
The ocean wind punched John and swirled his robe around his legs. He leaned into the gusts. The weakness of his illness made him stumble; but he caught himself and stepped from his rocky hole east toward the morning’s growing light. Some mornings he had to stand here for an hour outside his craggy prison.
“Only once,” the centurion had shouted at him. The squad of four soldiers had dragged John up the hill which he had little hope of ever descending. In front of the cave that would be John’s prison the centurion, angered by having to climb so difficult a cliff, yelled, “Only once I’ll tell you. You disobey and your exile will end in death. Every morning you must be out of the cave as the sun peeks over the sea. You then will wait right here.” He stepped to the lip of the crag which was the highest on Patmos. “The soldiers can look up and eyeball you.”
From the shore to his cave was a quarter mile. Yes, from the shore the soldiers could spot him. Then daily he stood waiting while someone, usually a laborer from the farms, was compelled to climb the trail. In some places the ascent was almost straight up, like following a snake toward heaven. With a basket tied on his back the man delivered a plugged jug of water and a lidded pot of cold, soggy vegetables to John.
For two days, he’d been too ill to exit his cave. As threatened, no food arrived. Finally, this morning he managed to step from his cave and remain standing as some poor sod climbed, bringing water and a vat of scantily boiled, fibrous vegetables.
John’s physical suffering was bad enough; but his great age and near starvation were destroying his memory. His revelations of heaven had revived his strength; but he now discovered every morning, as he endured the wait for his daily meal, that his elderly memory leaked like flour through a roughly woven bag. He tried to recover the visions and their sequence. He was desperate not to forget the words. He knew he’d never forget the voices.
His situation felt like a double defeat by Rome. First to be exiled here and now to worry that heaven’s precious visions might slip from his grasp.
Daily he shuffled corner to corner around his unwalled prison compound. He prayed and concentrated on remembering the visions. What else to do with the small space of his exile that was paced out by the centurion? One hundred steps in each direction. At that boundary lay his invisible prison walls. Not house arrest. He called it “cave arrest.” So, most of the day he praised God and prayed for his seven congregations, for the success of the gospel, and for his memory. Each dawn for a year found him more desperate.
This morning he squinted into the salty wind that blew his beard up beside his neck. Seagulls swooped near him as if to snatch the food he hadn’t yet received. He gazed toward the shoreline to the tents of the Roman prison detachment. When the wind was right, he sometimes heard the soldiers’ voices, like voices between fishing boats across Galilee Lake. His meal from below approached slowly. He didn’t recognize the person. The man was clearly not a farmer. He was a Roman soldier — a wicker basket crisscrossed with ropes wobbled on his back. Was this a new punishment approaching him?
John peered over the precipitous edge and onto the top of the young man’s head as he approached the last tricky footholds. Red hair, long and tossed around in the wind. He watched the man’s face appear over the rim. He was panting. He grasped a rock to pull himself up while the woven basket teetered on his back. He untied the basket and opened it. Then he turned his eyes to the thin, stinky old man whose white hair flew in the wind like a halo.
Those who’d brought food and water before snatched the empties and dashed back down. This soldier in his early twenties spent a few heartbeats looking at John. As the soldier hesitated, John did what he’d never done before. He said, “God bless you.”
The freckled faced young man nodded, stuffed away the empties, tied up the basket and left; but he returned the next morning. Again, John said, “God bless you,” and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Novius,” he said, and his reddish face blushed.
“My name’s John.”
Novius grabbed yesterday’s containers and was off. This first human contact in months was like medicine. John was happy to be able to bless someone, even if he were one of the enemy forces. The stringy wet vegetables tasted better this morning.
“Novius, you’re here again,” John said the following dawn.
The young man smiled, “Yes,” he said as he handed John his water and meal. He hesitated, anticipating John’s blessing.
John said, “God bless you, Novius.” They stood silently for a moment and John asked, “Why do you have this duty? Punishment for something?”
“No. I asked for it.”
John tipped his head to the side in question.
“Keeps me away from the centurion’s curses a while longer.” He chuckled and hurried down the trail.
That was the beginning of the answer to John’s prayers and, as it turned out, to Novius’s also. John wanted to preserve heaven’s message. Novius was seeking faith, even if he didn’t know it. As the mornings passed, Novius stayed a few moments longer. John explained vaguely that he was exiled for trusting Christ. Novius related that he had accompanied his family of traders around Mediterranean. “Everywhere I listened to the philosophers who strolled the city bazaars. Asked questions. Read their writings. Not enough,” he shook his head. “Little concern for others.” John, however, had blessed his jailer whom he had every reason to fear as his torturer.
“Yet you’re now a soldier,” John said as a question.
“I must hurry back,” Novius said with a rush. He returned the next dawn immediately continuing their conversation as if confessing, “I despaired, and in a fit of hopelessness, I enlisted. I gambled that a life of activity, even violence — instead of thinking — would satisfy me. It hasn’t. Stuck on a penal island. A prison guard on a dot in the ocean.”
Over the days to come John asked if Novius’s extra time with him would cause problems with his centurion. “No,” Novius said. “The centurion drinks later every night and sleeps later every morning.” That’s when John informed him of his great work and his need for writing material. Within a few days Novius brought him a sharpened feather, a half vial of ink and a handful of papyrus scraps on which John could scratch a few sentences. A week later, Novius’s scrounging produced a trove of papyrus documents: agendas of meetings, bills, receipts, letters of all kinds. He held out a handful, the breeze fluttering them.
“This is amazing,” John said. “Where did you get them?”
“Centurion commanded that everything left by the last centurion be tossed.”
They laughed together and Novius descended to camp.
John labored to record his visions on the margins and between the lines of these documents. As he wrote over the original words, it was as though God’s new world was displacing the old one.
In the moments that the two were together John learned more of Novius’s life. “Enlistment is 25 years. I owe the emperor 21 more. It’s like a prison sentence.” When he left, he said, “I’d like to hear what you’re writing.”
“Fine,” John smiled. He’d thought about doing so; yet, Novius served the empire which John’s Revelation portrayed as the greatest enemy. Still, face to face with this young man who aided his life’s mission, he trusted that Christ would accept Novius if he believed.
The next day John stood erect and spoke forcefully. “Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.”
Novius was stupefied. He gazed at John and finally asked, “What does that mean?”
John said, “What Christ’s entire revelation means — in its simplest and most personal — that you and I as prisoners share the promise to all Christ’s believers. Somehow in God’s time and way we’ll both be freed from Roman domination.”
Novius nodded as though he understood, but he didn’t. He returned to the trail shaking his head and climbed down pondering John’s words. Yet, he decided to trust John’s faith in Christ even if he didn’t fully grasp John’s message. Day by day he listened eagerly to a few sentences more about Jesus and his church. In the years to come his comprehension of the Christian faith grew far beyond John’s promise that first day. He always considered that day as the moment time began again. It would always be the first day of his new life.
Preaching point: God’s fortifying message to desperate people at a desperate time and place.
* * *
Everything Under Heaven
by Peter Andrew Smith
Ecclesiastes 3:1-13
Mike flinched as the nurse put the needle into his arm. He hated this. He hated everything about it. She hung the bottle and tapped a few buttons on the intravenous drip. Mike felt a warm sensation start through his arm.
“That’s just the saline,” the nurse explained. “After the line is flushed, I’ll start this round of chemotherapy for you.”
Mike nodded.
“It will take a couple of hours and if you have any side effects- headache, nausea, a burning sensation, or anything else out of the ordinary please ring your buzzer and let one of us know. Ok?”
“Sure.”
The nurse quickly changed the bags and he watched as the liquid dripped into the line and his arm. He leaned back and closed his eyes. This was going to be the longest two hours of his life. He opened his eyes and the clock that had barely moved. This was going to be an eternity.
“First time?” a voice asked from beside him.
Mike looked over at an older man being hooked up for his treatment. “Is it that obvious?”
The man shook his head. “No, I just haven’t seen you here before and most of us have a set schedule. I’m Greg.”
“Mike.” Mike looked up at the chemotherapy bottles. “I’d say nice to meet you but well....”
“Yeah, I’d like to be anywhere else too.” Greg laughed. “However, it is better than the alternative.”
“Which is?”
“Not being here and getting sicker.”
Mike thought about that for a moment and slowly nodded. “I guess so. How are things going?”
“Not too bad.” Greg shrugged. “I’m tired and useless but at least they found something to keep my nausea under control.”
Mike nodded. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“How do you get through this?” Mike waved the arm not hooked up. “I mean how do you find the strength to come here every week and put up with the side effects and the not knowing if it’s going to work?”
“I think everyone who comes through those doors has to find an answer to those questions.”
“Is there even an answer?”
“If you end up coming through those doors then there must be.” Greg rubbed his chin. “Do you read the Bible?”
“Probably not as much as I should but yes, I’ve read the Bible and sometimes go to church.”
“There’s a part in Ecclesiastes that takes about all the things that can happen in life which starts by talking about there being a time for everything under heaven. Do you know the one I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, I remember that one.” Mike frowned. “I’m not sure what that has to do with what we’re going through though.”
“Well, there are lots of seasons in life and the truth is that nothing lasts forever, not even what we’re going through.”
“I just hope the next season is better than this one.”
Greg chuckled. “I hear you on that and have the same hope.”
Mike thought for a few moments. “What if it isn’t different though, or what if it is worse? Is there anything in there about that?”
Greg smiled. “I think there is because the passage tells us that all those things happen under heaven. Which means that all the things we’re told about God- forgiveness, grace, mercy, love and the promise of salvation- is there even when life is at its worst.”
Mike looked up at the bottle dripping into the intravenous line. “I wish I felt some of that today.”
“Really? I dread coming to this place, but the truth is that I usually find what I need to keep going even if I forget to ask for it in prayer. God is good that way.”
Mike thought about the sleepless night he had and how his heart had raced as he came through the doors of the clinic. He looked around at the nurses who had been so patient and calming, thought about the friends and family who had texted him and told him they would be thinking and praying for him, and then found himself looking at the stranger helping him sort out where he was and where he was going in this difficult time.
“I guess I have felt some of what you’re talking about.” Mike paused. “You know what? I think I can get through this.”
Greg smiled. “That’s the spirit! And you know what?”
“What?”
“Before you know it the nurse will be back because we’re almost done.”
Mike looked at the bottle and the clock and saw he was almost finished his first treatment. He realized that even though he hadn’t asked or done anything to deserve it, that God had not abandoned him during this difficult time. He offered a quick prayer of thanks and then looked at his new friend.
“Greg?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
Greg smiled. “No problem. You realize though next week we’re going to have to talk about another subject to pass the time.”
Mike laughed as he looked at his favorite sport team’s logo on the front of Greg’s shirt. “Something tells me we’ll find lots to talk about.”
*****************************************
StoryShare, January 3, 2021 issue.
Copyright 2021 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
