Eddie saw his mother, reaching out to him. Her luminous form was bathed in the radiant light of countless stars. Her open arms beckoned like the expansive wings of a guardian angel. Her soft, brown complexion glowed like a teenaged girl’s, while her dancing eyes sparkled like gems from the heavens. Eddie was flooded with a sense of peace and wellbeing as he heard her voice, as sweet and pure as the soloist in a glorious choir, inviting him into the beyond. “Come home, son.” A rush of warmth rolled over him, melting the chains of the cruel present. Reaching out to her, he felt like a lost five-year-old who had just been found.
Eddie rose and floated from his thin, worn, prison mattress, then drifted through the stone walls and razor wire, watching the cons, guards, crazies, and corrupted fade away, like bad memories better forgotten. In the shifting shadows of his dream, Eddie saw the faces of his brother, sisters, friends, kind neighbors, long-forgotten childhood playmates, high school renegades, and smiling service buddies. The people of his past were dressed in fine, new clothes, forming a welcoming line of beaming smiles and hearty laughter.
In the hazy distance, he saw her. She was beautiful. She was vibrant. She was young. Erin Lambert was the very essence of life. Erin Lambert was healed.
“I love you, Erin,” he said.
“I love you, Eddie,” she replied.
Falling deeper into the dream, Eddie switched to standing on a green hillside, overlooking a lush valley. He gazed up into the forgiving eyes of Reverend Richard Garret, the towering minister from the church he’d attended with his mom as a child. Eddie touched the man of God’s golden, silk robe, grasped his immense, powerful hand, and took in his words: “You have risen. It’s a miracle. Hallelujah!”
“Hallelujah!” Eddie responded. “Hallelujah.”
“You’ve been resurrected,” the minister went on. “Your time of grace begins now. Hallelujah!”
Then, he heard a distant proclamation:
“He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit.”
“Yes.”
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
The dream was real. The dream was right. His suffering was gone. The Word had been true all along.
Eddie Nash had found the light.