In her book Treasures in Dark Places, Leanna Cinquanta shares a powerful, haunting story of an encounter she had with Jesus Christ. It’s worth recounting here because she came face to face with the suffering Messiah so clearly revealed to us in the prophecy of the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53:
Face-to-Face A new year had begun—1986. March arrived, attended by melting snow and warmer breezes after six months of Minnesota deep freeze. Cocky as ever, I aimed to enjoy another summer of mischief and pushing limits. But my plans were about to be invaded. The downstairs of our bi-level apartment behind the airplane shop consisted of kitchen, living room and Mom and Dad’s bedroom.
Upstairs were two rooms. Mom’s sewing machine and my art materials occupied one. The other, situated nearest the stairwell, served as my bedroom. In my room a narrow walkway separated my bed from a cot where my friends slept when they stayed overnight. The night of March 27 began like every other.
After an uneventful day at school, I had pitched my backpack on the couch, grabbed a cookie and made a beeline for the barn to ride my horse. After supper, I burned through my homework then studied horsemanship books till bedtime. Around five o’clock in the morning I awoke. Premature rays of light filtering through the window sufficed to reveal slightly more than shadows in the room. Teenagers love to sleep late, but the responsibility of feeding the horses had molded into me a habit of rising at 7 a.m. Nevertheless, 5 a.m. was too early.
Turning over on my back, I stared indignantly at the ceiling. Sleep had departed for good. Two long hours of tossing and turning lay ahead. Prone to the typical teenaged negativism when life didn’t cater to my wishes, I breathed a swear word and muttered, “This sucks. Why did I wake up so early?” “THERE’S SOMEONE IN THE GUEST BED.”
A voice had spoken out of the darkness! An audible voice! “Who is in my room?” A man’s voice? Oh my gosh! Someone had gotten into my room! Terror shrieked through my bones, immobilizing me, freezing my heart. No, I was not dreaming! A moment earlier I might have still been drowsy, but now I was fully and widely awake. I flipped over onto my stomach, and my saucer-wide eyes strained into the blackness—the far corner of the room from whence the voice emanated. No figure. No movement.
But it was so dark, anyone could be there. Anything. Would someone—or something—emerge from the shadows? I waited, fists knotted with the blankets, my heart not daring to beat. When nothing moved or appeared, the words I had heard began to register. . . . The voice had informed me, “There’s someone in the guest bed.” Almost too frightened to look, I found my eyes turning toward the bed barely a foot removed from mine. What I saw injected a shot of adrenaline. Before I could think, I was cowering back against the wall ready to scream.
There was a hump under the blankets! My heart jackhammered in my throat. A thousand terrors tumbled over themselves as I realized again . . . This is not a dream! This is real! Questions swirled. Who is in my room? How did a strange person sneak into our house? Did we forget to lock the door? What might this person do to me? The figure lay motionless, as if asleep. What is it? I thought. Human? Not human? I had on occasion watched a scary movie, and now visions of monsters crawling out from under people’s beds rushed at me in dreadful imagery.
Raw terror sucked my skin corpselike and clammy. A scream pushed up into my throat, obliging release. I had to do something. I could not remain passively sitting here on this bed. Eyes riveted on the mysterious sleeping figure, I began to creep over the front end of my bed toward the door of the room. The bedsprings squeaked. I froze, eyes riveted on the hump in the guest bed. No movement. I placed one foot on the floor, then the other. Gingerly I stood. The floorboards creaked. I froze again, certain that whatever was in the bed would come roaring to life.
Step by step I inched my way across the room to the light switch. I stood there with my hand on the switch. If I turned the light on, the sleeper would awake. That possibility was too scary. I didn’t turn on the light. The logical action I suppose would have been to go downstairs and rouse my parents. Instead, after standing there for a long, tense moment, I found myself slinking back to my bed. Taking great care to make no sound, I climbed back over the front of the bed and pulled the covers up so I could pretend to be sleeping.
There I cowered, waiting and watching. The figure moved. Swallowing another urge to scream, I stayed still. He sat up on the side of the bed. There my fear ended. The person was Jesus! Artists picture Jesus as a stately Caucasian blond or brunette, head and shoulders above the rabble, with blue eyes, a spotless white robe and a halo over His head. That is not how I saw Him. Being of Jewish descent, He was average in stature with black hair and olive skin. But I could not tell whether He was handsome or homely because of the state in which I saw Him.
Right before my eyes, I saw Jesus in His time of suffering. His face was bloody and bruised and His eyes blackened from repeated beatings. Blood caked His hair and trickled from wounds on His head. His clothes were tattered and blood-soaked. According to history, Jesus was beaten 39 times with a bone-laced whip. This instrument of torture had shredded not only the garment, but also His flesh.
With vehemence far eclipsing my former terror, now a revelation exploded through my being, igniting every sinew and synapse. Truth like an injection shot into my soul. Questions were obliterated and three grand and indisputable facts blazed neon-bright in my vision:
GOD EXISTS.
JESUS IS REAL.
THE BIBLE IS THE WORD OF GOD.
In that moment I knew that were I the only person in the world, He would have suffered this for me. He endured this for every person, no matter how good or bad. This knowledge exceeded a mental persuasion.
A surgical implantation had been sutured into my soul, a laser operation straight from the supernatural realm. Usually, if you do wrong and hurt someone, the person is angry with you. But in the bruised and scarred face of Jesus, there was no condemnation, no anger, but pure forgiveness and compassion. I could endure only a brief look in His face. My mind swooned.
Every muscle felt like water. I am . . . in the presence of God. God in the form of a man . . . and He has suffered terribly to purchase my freedom! The reality of it swirled in my mind and my body went limp. I fell on my face on my bed, weeping. The intensity of that moment is unexplainable and beyond words.
My tears arose not so much from anguish as from awe and reverence, the single possible response for a mortal when found in the presence of the Holy One. But they were also tears of grief that such divine beauty had to be so marred for my pardon. Then something happened that drove the experience still deeper. He touched me.
He reached out His hand and laid it on my right shoulder. “My child, don’t cry.” His voice was gentle but strong. My arms trembled as they lifted my torso from the bed. It’s too much for me, I thought. I cannot look into His eyes again. But I knew I must. Like magnets, they drew me. He had more to show me, more to impart.
In His countenance, so tortured and yet so selfless, I beheld a love that no human can imagine. But enthroned upon that love, a still higher revelation now pierced my soul. His sufferings’ accomplishments exceeded personal pardon. A victorious light shone from His battered face, an aura of triumph and glory, the persona of One who has conquered all and now reigns supreme. The suffering He had endured constituted the price to rescue the world.
I was witnessing the battle scars necessary to break the power of evil. In a communication superseding words, buoyed up with a joyous lilt like the song of angels, I heard Him declare, I’ve broken the power of darkness. The citizens can be set free forever. Then His love was flowing into me, washing over me, waves of splendour engulfing my soul.
Placing my left hand on His while it rested on my shoulder, I felt the hole, where His wrist had been nailed to the cross. This is not a dream! My mind swooned again with the repeating fact. This is real. I am not asleep. This is real. I am face-to-face with God! Awe and reverence once more overcame me. I gazed upon the One who had suffered for our freedom, the One who conquered death.
For love, He had subjected Himself to this unfathomable suffering—love for me, to ransom my life. I gazed into the eyes of a being who embodied self-sacrificing beauty, a being for whom no word but one could suffice. . . . He was . . . holy. The weight of it overpowered me. Unable to contain or bear up under the glory of His presence and the dreadfulness of His pain, I again fell facedown on my bed weeping.
Golden rays kissed my tousled locks. Daylight! As if ejected off my mattress, I found myself on my feet. Knees shaking, I stood between the two beds. The whole encounter rushed back before my eyes. Mottled bright spots of sun beaming through tree branches outside the window illumined the guest bed.
It was neat and perfectly made. It bore no visible sign of the presence who had lain there a few hours earlier. But for me, the bed was now sacred. I feared to touch it. Something was different. Something had changed. For a long, strange moment I stood gawking about the room, not daring to move a muscle. Against the wall stood my dresser, deep chestnut-varnished oak with great round mirror above.
There were my three Breyer horses, the only childhood treasures I had managed to confiscate the night we had picked up and left Arizona. My half-finished mural of a great black steed still leaped over the mirror and the paintbrushes lay atop a nearby stool, awaiting my next bout of artistic inspiration. “I am alive.” I dared to draw a tremorous breath. “And this is my room. I am on Planet Earth.”
But I felt so other, so strange, like a worm that goes to sleep in its cocoon and wakes up a butterfly. Like my operating system had been rebuilt and reprogrammed. With these thoughts another terror crept over me. Had I undergone a physical transformation? Had I become something or someone else?
The image of Alice in Wonderland drifted into my mind, and I impulsively touched my body, examined my hands, my arms. “Flesh. Alive. Me.” I dared another breath. But what about my face? With terrified eyes I stared across the room at the mirror. A few paces would reveal the dread answer. My legs trembled. What would I see in the mirror? Had I metamorphosed into another person, or—creature? Sick with fear I summoned enough courage to step in front of the mirror. Whew! I still looked like me.
But I didn’t feel like me. I felt sparkly inside, a crystal vase from the dishwasher squeaky clean. I must have eaten breakfast because if I hadn’t my parents would have inquired as to my manner of illness, but I could not tell whether I ate cereal or pancakes or eggs. During those few minutes downstairs I learned, to my further awe, that today was Good Friday. I had seen Him on the very day when followers of Jesus commemorate His death. Throughout my uneasy time in the presence of normal humans, I kept checking my body and worrying. I felt like a light bulb, as if the brightness
brightness within was glowing through my skin. Surely others could see it. What if my parents exclaimed, “You look different!” What would I answer? If I had attempted to speak I would have stammered. The world reeled. I feared to walk, certain my steps would resemble a plastered wino. I have to get away! my mind cried. Let me find a place alone, secluded, and attempt to process this.
Withdrawing to my room, I opened my paint cans, climbed on my stool and dabbled at the mural. Downstairs, Mom had the radio on, as was her habit while cooking. She usually played a Christian station, which I had trained myself to ignore. But now my paintbrush froze in midstroke when Petra’s “The Coloring Song” wafted through the air and into my ears. The lyrics vividly described how the blood had flowed down the face of Jesus, God’s own Son. “The only one that can give us life,”
He shed His blood to make my sins white as snow. A jolt like electricity buckled my knees and I toppled from the stool. The words of the song paralleled what I had seen, and the reality of it hit me with the force of a tsunami—God is real. Jesus is real. He is fearsomely and wonderfully real, and I saw Him face-to-face.
I had been allowed to witness Him in the throes of the greatest act of love ever performed in the history of the cosmos, the act that defies nature, and confounds reason—the cross.
When I read this in Leanna’s book, I believed this to be a genuine and real appearance of Jesus Christ, who is alive and still reveals Himself. The same Jesus who appeared to Leanna in tattered glory in her bedroom on a cold Minnesota morning in 1986 desires to reveal Himself to you and me in a deeper, more intimate and more remarkable way.
Jesus visits us not to harm us but to reveal the depth of His indescribable love. The question is: Will you allow Him to reveal Himself to you?
