Forgotten Name
In which He Returns to an Empty World
A thousand years from now, you and I are dead. The world’s been run over by heat and radiation, and the shores have disappeared. Towns are full of ghosts. The only ones who remain are Lilac and Simon.
Lilac is pregnant, and in six months the world may begin again, somewhere west, somewhere by the mountains— a new garden of Eden for the ones who love the Lord. Except Jesus isn’t a name that either of them have heard before.
You see, a thousand years have passed. The pages of the Bible have rotted under mass, the gospel melted over by the sweltering of the sun.
Lilac and Simon trudged through the graves of tree stumps and blackened branches crumbling under smoke, through the rest of all that used to be and may never be again.
At the top of a hill, they stopped for a rest. Lilac felt her stomach and Simon saw the flash of light, a burning through the sky.
Crashing into Earth, not too far away, a man wakes up and shakes head, rubs his eyes and smiles wide. He calls out to them, but they stand there in shock.
They introduce themselves and profess they come in peace, but the man who’s here already knows such things. He’s seen it all before. His hands are sturdy, ready-made for help.
They shake hands, they smile. He says, “My name is Jesus. You may have heard of me before.”
But Lilac and Simon, so blind they were, faith and understanding lost with time and mother nature. They look on in confusion. Words failed them.
Poor, lonely Jesus. He had come all this way and suffered so greatly just to hear them ask, “Who?”
Poor, lonely Jesus. The plan had stayed the same and yet now he’s just a forgotten name.
But somewhere in the west, somewhere in the mountains, Lilac and Simon left the broken Earth behind and traveled toward something better. They followed the stranger who fell from the sky, ready to fill the cup of an empty world.
Lilac and Simon, their baby too, through smoke and fear and clouds and shame, through pain and loss and sorrow, sang.
Upon their lips, a single name remained.