21-The Last Mile
21—THE LAST MILE
AND now, Lord, what wait I for? My hope is in Thee. The shadows of the evening are stretched out. The clouds are heavy on the mountains. Thou touchest the hills and they smoke. But like all the clouds of all my life, these heavy clouds are edged with light; and when I look up to the highest cloud I see there no darkness at all, but light, and light beyond light shining down on the peaceful water.
And the water—for I have said to Thee, “Bid me come unto Thee on the water,” and Thou hast said, “Come”—that water is a pathway of light. I see a narrow break in the brightness because of the cloud overhead, but soon it is bright again, and then there is no more shadow. And far, far, all but lost in light, I see what I think are other hills, the hills of a better country, even an heavenly.
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One evening, as we sat at the end of India on the rocks of Cape Comorin, a little fishing boat sailed into the sunset. It was only a rough thing made of three logs tied together, and its sail was a mere rag, but it was transfigured. To see it so was like seeing the mortal put on immortality, the temporal take on the beauty of the eternal.
Usually, I think, a speck of earth entangled in such glory would show dark against the glory, but that evening, so mighty were the powers of the golden air that all of earth was swallowed up. It was a figure of the true. It held us speechless. As I think of it I hear again the lapping of the waves that filled the silence and see the lighted waters in the afterglow.
But what we call sunset the heavenly people call sunrise, and the Joy of the Lord, and the Morning of God.