The Kingdom Land Read Online Free PDF Page B

and help me get my life together.
    â€œ God, I know You exist. I don’t know
if You know I exist, but if You do… I need Your help. I don’t have
any right to ask anything from You, and I know I’ve probably been
running from You. I don’t know. I know I haven’t wanted to face
You. I don’t want to be left alone again. Please don’t turn your
back on me. I know I’ve turned my back on You, but, Lord, don’t do
the same to me. At this point I don’t know anything, but I know I
need You. Please, please, please, touch me with Your life. I have
been told You care about every person. That You care about us so
much that You sent Your Son Jesus to save us. I need You. I have
nowhere else to go. I don’t know what to do. I need You, please
hear me and touch me with Your arms.
    â€œ I can’t expect You to hear me. I
haven’t done anything to make You want to hear me, but if You are
as big and as loving as they say, please touch me. It has been so
long since I have felt anyone hold me. I don’t know if anyone ever
has. Please, please, hold me. I don’t want to live in another
dream, but if You’re really here, hold me. Send Your Son to me. I
want to know Jesus.”
    Erik was silent. His eyes searched
the silent sky for a moment. Then he looked down. “Whom am I
talking to?” Erik asked himself, “ You’d
think I’d learned about empty hopes.” He
suddenly burst into tears. There had been times in the past that a
single tear had come to Erik’s eyes, but this was not a single
tear. Streams of tears flowed down his cheeks and through the cuts
of the previous beating. They were tears that would not stop. His
sobs became so heavy his whole body shook as if it were chilled by
a Montana winter’s night.
    And it continued. He cried and cried and sobbed, but
as he did it seemed as if his tears were cleansing him. That pain
within his stomach was gone. The entity of loneliness was not
present. He felt warm, comforted. Something had happened. Something
was different. He had been touched. He didn’t know how, but he knew
he was different. He had seen that promise of what he could be, was
intended to be, within him. He had been touched not by a dream, but
by something much more real. He knew at that moment he had been
touched. God had touched him. He also knew this was not an
undefined entity. This was Christ who had died on the cross and
still lives.
    Finally, he let go of the steering wheel and lay on
the seat. He quickly fell asleep after the long evening of the bar
fight and the fight within himself. His sleep carried no
dreams.
    Â 
    Â 
    Â 

Chapter Four
    Â 
    Â 
    A s he woke,
the pain in his back from the cramped seat and previous fight
jolted throughout his body. He struggled to sit up in amidst the
tools and junk that covered the seat. The sun was just beginning to
envelop the land, but its heat couldn’t yet be felt. His face felt
tight as he gingerly felt the scabs from the fight begin to form.
None of this was the center of his attention. Something else had
happened last night, and he was different.
    He smiled when he saw the broken
clock on the dashboard with the hour hand pointing straight up and
the minute hand broken off. Well,
everything’s back to normal. Laura was just another in a long
string of broken dreams.
    He began to take inventory. He is
still hurt from the cuts, but he felt there was nothing serious. He
was more interested in something beside his body. Was happened? Am I crazy or desperate? Was I
really touched—touched by God? These
thoughts came quickly. The reality hadn’t changed in front of him.
The prairie land with its short coarse grass still surrounded him.
His jaw still throbbed with pain, but something was
different.
    As Erik sat in that old Chevy pickup he knew things
were different. He needed things to be different. Erik knew God had
answered. There had been too many times in