The Lost Image: An Allegory

The Lost Image said, “Darkness, darkness! The nighttime devours me! Where is the light I so solemnly seek?”

A lost image, empty of light, stumbled about a shadowed and winding hallway, repeating these words to himself over and over again as the hands drew closer to his neck.

The hands held a singular point of light within their palms, detached from a form like the shapeless wind when it moves the soul.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5 [ESV]).

He looked forward and backward, and even to the roof of the heavens, but nothing prepared him for the dungeon of experience, trial and flame enshrouded by the clever tricks of jet-black enticements.

There had been nothing all around him—no exits, no windows, and not even any proper bars, so the prison remained just out of reach and comfort. He simply could not elude it.

Not a hint of light anywhere, only perpetual black seamlessly woven throughout the hallway that didn’t seem to end, save for the hands that were more like trailing thoughts between perfect moments caught in a freeze frame. Was the hallway marked by truth? Or marred by things in the grand circuit of cosmic pulses as stars fell too far for light?

Endless void and voided end.

“So many questions. Too many questions. When were the lessons ever presented?”

Insanity from the blue of October iced the roses in his veins. Even though he could not see, the Lost Image carried on through its dark depths. “Stuck in a rut of my own making, these words solve naught, only forsaking.” His voice echoed down the hallway, falling on the deafening and soundless lack, a darkness that could be felt in the silence of yesterday caught between the hours.

 “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt’” (Exodus 10:21 [ESV]).

“Is his umbra all there is?”

The Lost Image murmured to himself as he continued to wade his way through the void.

Alone before isolation and dispelled before formation.

As he trudged on, a trail of words flew on the wings of the eternal engine. “I am the Name, the Name! Hear ye, wisdom of days!”

Identity stopped dead in his tracks.

“The name, You say? You came, I prayed.”

The voice remained as subtle as a dandelion kiss in the summer breeze. Offset from obscure as the mouthpiece of kings.

“The source of elation to many I mend. The core of creation until the days’ end.”

“The Name? The Name? What is your Name? Disdain, my pain, what will I gain?”

Identity found himself in the gaze of the falling skies, enraptured by the stellar trails of the end of gloaming sights. From a wandering image to a man, at last he had found the true promised land.

“Yahweh, Yahweh, they call me I Am. Revealed for you to trust in My plan.”

The Lost Image formed from the breath of the mighty.

Found his Identity, in words of arising.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me, though he die, yet shall he live’” (John 11:25 [ESV]).