The Disappearing
A possible experience of the Rapture based on the reference made by Jesus in Matthew 24:38-41
This short narrative gives a brief glimpse of a possible experience of the Rapture - by one taken and one left behind and it is based on the reference made by Jesus in Matthew 24:39-41
Marcie tugged on the new Reebok running shoes; she had worn them for two days to help break them in. Now the moment of truth had come. She would wear them on her two-mile run through the neighborhood, along the side streets, and, finally, onto the high school track before lapping several times, then returning to her apartment. Her toes, on the outside of the little ones, were sore from the breaking-in walks. There was no telling what a jog of two miles would do to them… She tightened the laces on the right shoe and began to make the loops for the final tie-down when her phone sounded. It was a text message from Clarissa. She picked up the device from the bed and read from the screen. “Meet you at corner of Lamb and Montclair in 10” Marcie typed: “Ten it is!” She smiled slightly, thinking how the evening ritual—running and sweating—was never drudgery when her best friend jogged alongside.
They were both in good shape and could carry on at least a cursory conversation while putting in their minutes of what was otherwise—running by herself—akin to torture. Both women had graduated recently from the university and landed jobs as junior high teachers, although at different schools. She taught seventh-grade English and Clarissa eighth-grade pre-algebra. She waved a hand with raised eyebrows and an expansive grin when she saw the tall, African-American woman waving back. They met and hugged, their usual greeting. They called themselves the “Spectrum Sisters”—Marcie, with light-blonde hair and blue eyes, and Clarissa, with brown eyes, black hair, and beautiful, ebony features that landed her modeling jobs from time to time—because they claimed to encompass the entire spectrum of the rainbow. “Jesus made this day just for you and me,” Clarissa said brightly. “Well, I don’t know about that, Clare,” Marcie responded. “But, however it was made, I’ll take it.” Anyone else who kept bringing up Jesus and religious talk would be off her friends list in a heartbeat.
Marcie was a product of the progressive world of facts, not faith. She believed in change through activism and politics, not through the teachings in some dusty old book. However, she had made exceptions for her beloved friend since they were thirteen. Clarissa’s incessant talk of Jesus, salvation, and God’s love for her was just something to put up with, and she gladly did. This was her sister in every way possible but biologically, politically…and religiously. “I want you to go to Heaven, Marcie,” Clarissa would often say to her, sometimes with a big smile on her face and other times with a tear trickling from a corner of an eye. “If there is a Heaven,” she would sometimes respond, “I’ll make it. I’m a good girl, ain’t I?” The faulty English answers from the English teacher made Clarissa laugh. However, Marcie could see the concern deeply pooled in her friend’s soulful eyes. “Shall we race today?” Clarissa said, pumping her long, model’s legs up and down as if to challenge her. “No. I don’t feel like beating you again today,” Marcie said. “Let’s just jog-talk ’til we’re all jog-talked out.” “Okay with me, girlfriend,” Clarissa said with a laugh. “You know I’ve got lots to say!”
They both turned to begin their run. Marcie turned her head slightly to speak in Clarissa’s direction after striding forward a few steps. What she saw horrified her. Her friend instantaneously disappeared into nothingness. The face disappeared as if her beloved Clarissa had never been there.
Marcie’s eyes widened, while in the next instant she looked at her surroundings. She still couldn’t comprehend what had happened. No Clarissa! She tripped while shuffling to turn to look around the area. Her feet were caught up in something. She looked, and then bent down to grasp the cloth that her shoes were tangled in. She examined the material at eye level. It looked to be—it was!—Clarissa’s running shirt.
She looked around the street. Her mouth agape in shock, she retrieved the athletic shorts Clarissa had been wearing. The shoes…they were strewn in the direction they had begun their run. The socks were still streaming out of each shoe. She picked up every piece of her friend’s remaining apparel from the pavement. Lastly, she reached to pinch between her thumb and index finger the tiny gold necklace with the cross pendant Clarissa never took off.
A thought thundered through her remembrance. Clarissa always said the necklace and cross were to remind her of what Jesus did for her…He had died on the cross to save her soul. She also said it was to remind her to tell others about Christ’s saving power and His love for all. The cross, still held together by its clasp, glistened between her fingers while she was remembering. Jesus was coming back one day, Clarissa had always told her. Something about a “Disappearing” of some sort that would happen.
Tears of confusion began to stream down her cheeks. Fear gripped her as she began hearing the sounds of car-honking in the distance. It wasn’t just one car, but, by the sound of it, dozens…as if everyone had suddenly run into trees or other immovable objects at the same time. Shock moving through her emotions, she couldn’t shake those haunting words echoing in her mind…Jesus was coming back one day.
What was the word? she thought. The vanishing prophesied by the Bible that would one day happen? Clarissa had been, as she put it, “saved,” after reading a series of books. What were they? Left Behind. That was the books, a series of stories about people disappearing or something. Clarissa said she had been saved while reading those stories. Marcie had laughed at her friend for believing that fiction could somehow come to life. Clarissa had said that she didn’t believe in the fiction, but in the facts in the Bible.
Clarissa’s words were rolling through her mind as she stumbled back toward her apartment. The tranquility of the early evening was now shattered, she suddenly noticed. Sirens pierced the air while she moved up the steps of her building. She looked at the darkening sky and saw that night would come early this day. Just then, her neighbor, not much older than herself, burst out of her front door, crying…screaming the words while she ran up to Marcie. “My baby! Somebody has taken my baby!” *****
One moment, Clarissa had started running with Marcie, and the next, she heard what she thought was a trumpet and a shout. She hadn’t even had time to mentally process it before she was flying up through the air as if she had stepped on the head of a rocket taking off. “Oh, my! This is it!” she shouted. She knew what it was, and felt her body changing instantly, effortlessly, and painlessly. She couldn’t explain it, but power surged through her, from her fingertips to her hair. It felt like she was being forged out of a bolt of lightning.
She glanced down the moment she began moving upwards and saw her friend frozen in a mid-stride jogging step as if time had stopped for her. She glanced in both directions and saw countless others rising upwards as she was. They all looked like lightning bolts shooting up in the direction opposite their normal course. She no longer had time to register that thought, though, before she saw Him. Jesus. High above her, completely encapsulated in pulsating waves of energy and what she thought resembled a kaleidoscope of unfathomable light, was Jesus, surrounded by thousands of angels.
Not only were there lights and colors she didn’t even know existed, but she heard a chorus of angelic singing, beautiful music, beyond words. It wasn’t like the sound of a church choir, but it was like legions of singers whose voices swam perfectly in harmony, yet, offered different songs simultaneously. Their words were interweaving into a continuous crescendo of praise.
As they were moving towards Him, He was moving towards them. Millions upon millions were ahead of her, already meeting our Lord in the stratosphere, high above the earth’s atmosphere. Clarissa held her breath, thinking she may not get oxygen at this height, but then she realized that she didn’t need to breathe. Neither did she feel cold, or pressure, or any of the manifestations of the old laws of nature, which would have killed a normal person who wasn’t wearing any protective gear.
She glanced back one last time to earth and could, amazingly, still see her friend below. She offered one last prayer for her Marcie, in the hope that she might still be redeemed in the days, weeks, months, and years that followed.