Left Behind With a Mustard Seed

She never wore a cross. Instead, Faith wore a golden heart-shaped locket, with a single mustard seed inside. It was a gift from her grandmother, who always loved the parable of the mustard seed. When her grandmother died, Faith had carefully opened the locket and added a tiny, curled up lock of her grandmother's hair.

Everyone knew Faith never, ever took off her locket. It was clear that SOMEONE she knew was with her when she'd had her accident. She didn't know what kind of accident it was, but she was still wearing the locket when she woke up in some kind of hospital. It took her a long time to move her hand that far, but the first thing she did was check her neck. There was her grandmother's locket, safe and sound.

"Well, welcome back," said a sweet voice somewhere in the room.

A smiling face every bit as sweet as the voice floated into view above her bed. Faith tried to smile back. She hoped she had. Her face felt weak. "What happened?" she managed to ask.

"Our records had a bit of a glitch a few years ago, but it looks like you've been in a coma for five years," the pretty nurse told her.

"My family?" Faith asked. "Can you tell my family I'm awake?"

Now the nurse got the strangest look on her face. "I'm afraid that's going to be rather difficult. When you're feeling a bit stronger, we're going to have to get you caught up on everything that's been happening in the last five years."

The room was warm, and bright, and comfortable. Faith never thought she'd enjoy something as simple as walking into a room and sitting in a chair so much. A man and a woman walked in, identified themselves as Richard and Chris and asked if she was ready to take a drive.

"Where are we going?" Faith asked.

"Around," they answered vaguely. "We thought you'd like to see the world outside of your care facility."

The vehicle that they ushered her into was sleek, and black, and shiny, and silent. The doors silently parted to admit them, and silently closed behind them. Then it silently manuevered, without a driver, onto the road, which was filled with other silent vehicles.

"Am I still on Earth?" Faith cried in alarm. Everything she could see was clean, and quiet. The pedestrians she could see all seemed to be human, but there was something distinctly not right about everything she could see. It was too....perfect.

"Yes," her companions hastened to reassure her. "But there's been some significant changes since you've been in a coma. You see..." the two of them looked at each other, then back at her. "Very soon after your accident, The Rapture happened. At least, that's what what we're calling it. As far as we can tell, every Believer, in every faith, seems to have disappeared."

Faith's hands grasped her locket. "My family, my entire family is gone?"

Chris reached out to touch her sympathetically on the arm. "Possibly. Now that you're awake we can check on all your relatives much more easily. Can you think of anyone in your family who was not religious?"

Faith shook her head. "The family that prays together, stays together," she quoted.

Faith stared out the window of their magical vehical. They were passing what used to be the big Methodist church downtown. There was a big sign on the front that said, "Free Psychiatric Center."

"All the faithful weren't taken," she said, pointing at the sign on the church. "The Methodists are offering free counseling."

"It's not the Methodists," Richard told her. "All the churches are empty, so we've been using the empty spaces to help take care of everyone still here. People lost family members in the Rapture, the government makes sure they can get help if they need it."

"The government has taken over all churches?" Faith was horrified.

"Not always the government. Many churches have been turned into housing. There's no such thing as a homeless person anymore. Many have been turned into crisis shelters for dealing with domestic disputes. Some have been turned into mental institutions, some have been turned into job placement agencies, some have become schools, some have become places for retraining the police force. There's been so little crime and so little violence since The Rapture, many of the police that are still here are looking for other jobs."

They were now driving through what used to be the bad area on the west side of town. The battered old houses were gone, replaced by pretty homes encircling a large green park. A little white girl, a little black boy, and three other children in varying shades of brown were laughing and playing together on large new playground equipment, while their parents were sitting nearby, also laughing and talking together.

Faith was staring at everything around her. "But without churches to remind us of God's love, how can everyone be so happy?"

Chris and Richard looked at each other and shrugged. "You have to realize, we're still here to talk to you because we don't believe in God. We don't believe in war, we believe that all people should be treated the same, regardless of color, or sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Everyone else still on Earth is going to be somewhere on the same spectrum. So for five years, there's been no one to force women to have unwanted children, no one to tell lies for political gain, no one pitting one part of the population against another part of the population. No one making laws guaranteeing that rich people stay rich and poor people stay poor. And maybe most importantly, no one to block scientific advances."

Faith was now staring at the sign on the front of her own church. "Abortion clinic and stem cell research facility!" she read, appalled.

"Oh, yes, I forgot about that," Chris said. "So many churches have been turned into research laboratories. There's no one to stop scientific research, so there have been some amazing breakthroughs. I think the treatment that was able to bring you out of your coma came from the stem cell research done at this lab."

"No!" Faith cried, clutching at her locket for comfort. "Is that why I wasn't taken with everyone else? Because you damned me by tainting me with the result of sinful research?"

"The mass disappearances happened five years ago," Richard pointed out. "Your treatment was only developed a few weeks ago."

"Then why am I still here?" Faith demanded to know. "I shouldn't be here. I should have been taken with everyone else."

"Well, first of all, just because we are calling it The Rapture doesn't mean that's really what happened," Chris answered. "Maybe it was all just a big alien abduction. That's what a lot of people like to call it. We can't say we've developed a really good way to account for all the people on the planet who have gone missing. It took us years to realize the strong correlation between religiosity and disappearance. But it's not perfectly conclusive yet."

"All I can think of is, either your faith isn't as strong as you say it is, or your god made a mistake."

It was hard for Faith to find a place to pray. The churches and chapels had all been converted into places where other activities happened. But it wasn't terribly hard to find a place to be alone.

A park near the hospital had a pretty, secluded little garden in one corner. She dropped to her knees and folded her hands.

"What are you doing?" a small voice interrupted her thoughts only a few moments later.

"I'm praying," she explained.

"Why?" A little girl, probably about 8 years old, looked at her curiously. She was holding the hand of a little boy, who was maybe 6.

"I'm asking God to forgive me."

The little girl looked at her with some sympathy. "What did you do wrong?"

Faith sighed. "I don't know."

Now her companion looked confused. "Then why are you in trouble?"

"I don't know that either. That's why I have to pray for forgiveness," Faith explained.

"How do you pray for forgiveness?" the little boy now asked.

"Like this," Faith explained. She folded her hands and closed her eyes. "Forgive me, oh my Lord, for all my sins that make me unworthy in thine eyes."

The two children were full of questions. "What's a Lord?" the little boy was asking, while the little girl asked, "Why does a sin make you unworthy?"

"A Lord is someone who must be obeyed. Like your parents, only much more powerful. Absolutely everybody must obey him, because he's very, very powerful," she said.

"Like the President!" the little boy exclaimed. "I'm going to be President when I grow up. Momma says I charm everyone I talk to, so I'm going to be the President or a rock star."

"No, the Lord is the Lord for all time. We didn't choose him. He made us, so we have to obey him."

The little girl gave her a skeptical look. "That sounds like tyranny to me."

Faith rushed to assure her, "Oh, it's not like that at all. The Lord is a loving God."

"Then why are you in trouble, but you don't know what you're in trouble for?" the little boy asked her. "At least when I'm in trouble, I know why."

"He's in trouble ALL the time," his sister told her candidly. "If your Mr. Lord person is so loving, why are you in trouble? You seem awfully nice. I don't think you did anything that should get you in trouble. And it's not fair if you're in trouble but you don't know what you did wrong. He should just tell you what you did wrong, so you can make it right again."

"That's why I'm praying," Faith explained patiently. "I need to ask him for a sign so that I know what to do."

"What's a sign?" the little boy asked. "Like a street sign?"

"Kind of," Faith answered.

"Why doesn't he just come here and talk to you?" the girl asked.

"It doesn't work that way," she was trying to remember how her Sunday school teachers explained things when she was their age.

"Well, I don't think your Lord guy is very nice," the boy was frowning. "You should just tell him you're quitting this job and go find a better one."

"Someone who is more fair to you," his sister agreed. "This guy isn't very fair to you."

"You don't understand," Faith thought she had better start over. "God isn't my boss, he's my - he watches out for me and keeps me safe."

"Well, if you're safe, why do you think you're in trouble? Maybe you're not really in trouble," the girl speculated.

"Mom says I've got too much imagination," her brother added. "Maybe that's your problem, too."

A voice called in the distance. "That's our mom. Gotta go. Bye!" The children ran away.

Faith wanted to ask the children to stay, to explain God to them. They were so young, they had never heard of the Word of God.

She froze. There wasn't a person on Earth who believed in God. Her hand reached up, and clutched at her locket.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like a grain of mustard seed. Faith suddenly realized she knew why she was still on Earth! Reaching up, she unclasped the chain from around her neck. She held the little gold heart in the palm of her hand. It had been part of her as long as she could remember. With a fingernail, she pried apart the two halves, and then sank to the ground in dispair.

Her grandmother's hair was curled up, as silvery gray as the day she died, tucked in one half of the heart.

But - there was no mustard seed inside.