Fortress of his Solitude

Leave me alone.

Crying from within, he yelled out as loud as he could. No one would ever hear him yelling, not because the cafeteria was just full of noise and chatting of poeple who couldn't care more about him, but because he never yelled out loud. He shouted and shouted, only in his heart for his very self from within to hear.

Perhaps he thought he could handle things better now that he has learnt his lesson. Perhaps he has learned to wait upon the Lord and seek His kingdom first. Perhaps now that He was called into the ministries, he would be more focused on serving God.

He was serving God, but it became such struggle, such pain, such a burden.

He was struggling from within. His struggle was with his studies. He recently flunked an economics paper and scraped through with a miserable 'pass' for his accounts. He thought he's going to fail the upcoming calculus paper, and he said, why bother studying if all that's going to happen is just another failure?

His struggle was with a girl. He never learn his lessons. From afar he would watch his favourite girl yacking and laughing with other people. Again he wanted to be that guy that could always make her laugh. But I'm just not that guy.

And he was devastated. He wasn't getting what he wanted the most. He didn't achieve what he set his heart out to do.

Dejected and defeated, he walked back to his classroom on the thrid floor and stared blankly into the open skies. Wondering what would be coming next, he saw something he never saw before.

It was a beautiful bird that glided across the skies in front of his very eyes. At first sight he thought that it was a dove. White feathers that blanketed its small and yet sturdy body, as it gracefully made its way through half the horizon of his vision it was just at such ease and worry-free. He started to envy the dove, wishing that he could be just like that dove. Living a life of no problems, no troubles and no tears.

Then he suddenly stopped wishing. He saw the bird flapping its wings, revealing the lower part of its wings. He gasped at what he saw next.

Black.

The bottom part of its wings were black. He rubbed his eyes, thinking that it was just an optical illusion or it was the late nights that caused the hallucination or such, but he couldn't have mistaken after seeing it again. It was black at the bottom indeed. Not just at the wings, but the whole body.

From the bottom, people who looked above would have saw the black part of the bird and thought it was a crow.

Looking below from above, they would have saw the snow body of the bird and said it was a dove.

He realised that God was speaking to him with this bird.

A rare species of the bird it may be, but God's will is indeed a rare sight. People from below may never see the dove He gives to us, but it is indeed a dove. For what Man sees from the bottom up is a crow, a curse, a problem or a catastrophe; but beyond the crow that Man only sees is a gift that God Himself has sent from above, for what He sees and has in His great mind is not a crow, but a dove.

Struck with remorse, he prayed and repented. He knew that for him to be able to see His great plans and the dove of his life, he had to stand from where God stood and look down from above.

Maybe he could never get there. Maybe he will never ever be in such position, but that never did matter anymore. All that truly mattered was that now, he will never be alone without a friend or a companion, for in the fortress of his solitude, he cried out for help in despair, and God being the friend of the times and trials heard, and sent him what he needed most.



As published in Lifextreme blog