Page 25 of Unveiled Tamar’s Story (Mysteries & Wonders of the Bible #1)

H is muscles were stiff from standing so long in one place, but Valerius wasn’t about to declare he’d take another round of scouting the garden. Night had given way to the first soft gray of pre-dawn, and soon enough they’d be released from their duties altogether.

The women who followed Jesus would arrive with their jars of ointments and oils. Valerius and his men would open the tomb. They’d go and make their report.

He repeated the litany as he’d been doing all night—a silent reminder that the night would end, heavy and strange as it had felt. The world’s silence would surely break. Even if it broke in the raining down of fire and brimstone, the stillness that had his every nerve on edge would be over.

Albus and Caeso felt the strangeness too, he could tell.

The calm attention they’d had at the beginning of the night, the one they always had, had given way to hunched shoulders and jerking motions as they sought out sounds that simply weren’t there but should have been.

He knew they would be eager to be done with this assignment.

He wasn’t sure he’d ever be done with it though.

Something about standing here, outside his master’s tomb, made him think that the heavy sorrow had sunk into his very bones.

He’d carry it around with him forever, missing the face he’d only ever seen at a great distance or twisted in agony.

He would always strain for the words that had resonated so deeply in his heart.

He would walk through this life wondering how to cling to the light that had been stolen from it.

Then real sound met his ears—a shuffling of feet, sandals on stone. He turned his head to the right just as Albus and Caeso did, sucking in a breath of alarm when he saw the figure stumble from the tomb’s opening.

“Halt!” Albus shouted, his spear at the ready.

Tamar froze.

Uncountable thoughts skipped through Valerius’s mind.

He would tell Albus to stand down. He would say she had every right to be in that cave, however odd it might seem.

If only she’d still been in the Roman clothes!

But that would have looked even stranger.

Yet now, dressed in the garments the temple guard had described to them, more or less, his men would know exactly who she was.

Would they care? Would they disobey him?

Would his authority crumble because of this stranger his family had decided to befriend?

Before any of those thoughts could turn into words, before Tamar could do more than turn her head their way, before Albus could move, light flashed around them. Settled.

It wasn’t the sun—the sun hadn’t quite crested the horizon. Besides, this light was brighter than the sun. Closer. More focused. It came from behind him, or perhaps above him, from all around him.

It felt like fire, not on his skin but in his soul.

He tried to move, to shout, to spin around when the earth seemed to heave under him, but he couldn’t. Every limb had locked into place, and he couldn’t decide if he felt too heavy or too light—disconnected from his body or too mired in it. His eyes could still see though. His ears could still hear.

The fire didn’t consume him. Didn’t burn him up. It…lit him. Restored him, parts of him he hadn’t known were withered. He felt it at work in every bone, every sinew, every thought.

Ancient hurts, grudges against his siblings, spats with his childhood friends—gone.

Regrets over things done or not done —gone.

Fears that he’d fail as a father, as a husband—gone.

Memories of words he shouldn’t have spoken, hurts he gave to others—gone.

None could withstand the light of the fire, not while it blazed over him and in him and through him.

Gradually, either his eyes adjusted to the light or it faded enough to let him see through it.

He saw Tamar, locked into place like a statue, just as he was.

He saw Albus, at the edge of his vision, every inch as still.

Caeso must be too. He could have sworn he sensed his men’s thoughts—or perhaps his own echoed too loudly in his mind. What is this?

He knew. It was the Lord. What he didn’t know was whether this was the end of the world or something else. Would this flash travel over the whole earth? Would it consume Mariana, Livia, Felix, Gaius? Would it shoot across the Mediterranean and find his siblings, his parents, in Rome?

Would it merely cleanse them all, or would it consume them?

The light focused, solidified, dimmed, and he realized he was looking not at a column of fire or brilliance, but at a man. He stood in a white garment, still radiating light, walking past Valerius and between Albus and Caeso, as if he’d come from the tomb.

Another moment, and he could see the man’s profile as he turned onto the garden path. It was familiar…yet not. No human face had ever radiated like that. But when the man smiled into the early morning, Valerius knew Him.

Jesus .

He would have shouted it, but his throat was still paralyzed. He would have wept, but his eyes couldn’t form tears.

Cool air blew against his neck as the rumbling increased.

The shaking beneath his feet intensified, and he couldn’t brace against it.

He watched as Albus and Caeso tumbled like statues in an earthquake, watched it from the strange perspective of falling with them—they remained always upright in his view, but the earth went sideways.

He felt no pain as he struck the ground.

Instead, it seemed to welcome him, cradle him.

The thudding of his heart told him that it was the stone that had moved, that had shaken them down—the stone that had sealed the tomb.

It was rolling, even though the only three men who had been here and capable of moving it were all turned to rock themselves.

He heard a soft whoosh , caught another glimmer of light in his periphery, and could have sworn this new light had wings.

An angel? He’d heard the stories of them, of course, and read the description of the ones carved into the ark, with their wings arched over the mercy seat. But just as many stories in Scripture described them as men, awesome but still sometimes mistaken as human.

Was he seeing one now, with his own eyes? Was that arm, lit from within, the arm of one of God’s own messengers?

The tomb’s stone creaked to a halt, and Jesus paused on the path, turning His head as if listening.

Had he been capable of it, Valerius would have frowned. Jesus had somehow gotten out of the tomb while the stone was still in place. Why, then, had the angel moved the stone afterward?

Even as he thought about the question, Jesus vanished from view. Valerius sensed the angel moving but couldn’t tell where he went. He waited, expecting the paralysis to release him, expecting control over his muscles to return.

It didn’t.

Panic tried to chase away the peace, but it was like raindrops battering a stone wall. Nothing could penetrate the wall of light that had encased him, it seemed. He waited, his ears picking up new sounds from the path.

Footsteps. Several sets of them, the light sound signaling women as clearly as the quiet voices did.

He couldn’t make out the words yet, but he could tell that tears clogged the throat of at least one speaker, and more quiet weeping underscored the voices.

At least three women, then. He had a feeling they would be some of those who had gathered beneath the cross on Friday, the women who hadn’t abandoned their Lord even when His disciples scattered.

Valerius strained against the light. He couldn’t see it anymore, but still he felt it, felt it cradling him, holding him like a swaddling blanket. He wanted to move though, to greet the women, to shout that Jesus wasn’t there.

He could only hold his place, still as a statue.

From his sideways vantage point, he could see one set of feet break away from the others and run toward the tomb.

If he strained his eyes, he could make out a feminine garment, coming into better focus as she skidded into view, stopping there before the open tomb.

The first rays of the sun finally shot over the landscape, and it must have pierced her. She gasped, desperation saturating the sound, and then she spun around. “He is gone! Someone has—someone has stolen Him away!”

Something crashed to the ground, and the scent of oil wafted to his nose—a lamp. These women would have set out well before daylight to be arriving here now, and they’d have needed a lamp to guide their way.

Another female voice, sounding older than the first, said, “Quick, Magdalene. You run to Jerusalem to tell Peter and John. We will tell the others at your family’s home. Someone will know what to do.” Urgency laced her words.

“Yes. Yes, I…I will.” He heard her footsteps, far faster than before, running back down the path.

The other steps didn’t retreat again though.

He watched as several pairs of feet moved toward him, past him, clearly skirting him in confusion.

They passed into the cave and came to a halt.

He could imagine them looking around, searching for some explanation.

What did they see? Was the angel still there? Visible?

A moment later, he had his answer. A voice rang out, deep but clear as a bell, and it could belong to no one but the one whose shining arm he’d seen before.

“Do not be afraid,” he said, and the greeting settled like a comforting touch on Valerius’s heart.

The women must have been frightened—how could they not be?

The stone was rolled away, the tomb empty, their Lord gone, and then a brilliant figure greeted them.

“I know that you are seeking Jesus, who was crucified,” the voice continued. “But why would you seek the living among the dead? He is not here. He is risen.”

Gasps echoed out of the tomb. Valerius would have smiled had he been able.