There wasn't any particular reason I should have stopped on the road that day. I walk down it every other day without hesitating. I know it as well as that inscrutable mouse seems to know every bit of my master's home. As much as I am at a loss to determine the whereabouts of that ashy-brown creature, I am even more unable to describe precisely what made me stop that day. I remember shifting my delicately woven basket from one hip to the other as my sandaled feet resigned from sending the dry dust in choking swirls across my path. I stopped and stared at a man traveling easily in the opposite direction.
I know I'm just a servant. I don't know why I stopped. I shouldn't have looked at him...but I couldn't help it.
It wasn't that he was handsome. I had spent countless hours with my master's daughter at her window, admiring the soldiers who passed by day after day, their dark eyes flickering suspiciously back and forth and their gleaming armor shining with each ray of the sun. He wasn't like any of those soldiers. He was just...normal. He had simple clothes, a bit of dirt under his fingernails, and callouses on his feet. He had no feature worthy of capturing the eyes of those who acknowledged him. He was just...human. A normal human, plain and simple...
His eyes were different though. They were dark, like those of any other Jew. But they were different somehow. Maybe that was what stopped me that day. I looked into his eyes as I paused in the road. He looked into mine, and he smiled at me—faintly and simply. I think the smile was more in his eyes than it was on his face. Those eyes had so much in them—such gentleness, such joy, such love, a twinge of sorrow, a glimmer of contentment. They seemed to burn right through me, as if he knew everything about me in a single glance, but there was no hostility there, no strange motives. I didn't—couldn't—fear his penetrating gaze. I should have followed him.
But my master needed me. When the man had left the street, I continued on my way. Duty calls.
I heard that he died last week. Crucified, I think. They say he broke some law of his people, claiming to be their king. I nearly laughed when I heard that. He looked nothing like a king.
I wonder what was in his eyes that day. I still remember his gaze as if he were looking at me now. Even while dying, I can't imagine those dark depths filled with anything but love and joy, gentleness and peace—more sorrow, perhaps, and pain, undoubtedly—but otherwise the same as when I saw him in the road.
This morning, I finally learned why his eyes were so remarkable, so catching while the rest of his features were so plain. The reason why he looked so human is that he was much, much more than that.
You see, those gentle hands with the dirty fingernails were nailed to a gruesome cross. His calloused feet shared their fate. His loving eyes were blurred by his thorn-pierced brow, and his simple smile was twisted for a bit to reflect the pain that his body bore. He died that day, and those beautiful eyes were closed. It seemed like the end.
But the grave only held him for three days. His eyes, burning with unparalleled love and unfathomable joy, were open again. They'll be open forever.
I guess He was a king. He wasn't the king we thought He would be. He died. And even when He rose again, He didn't bother building a kingdom. He just encouraged His followers to do what He did, to live a life of love for God and man—a life of pure unselfishness and sacrificial love.
He never was what we expected. But, as it turns out, He's everything we actually needed.
