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in reality, would melt in terror.
    Nakdimon himself had felt a sort of terror and awe when he witnessed the miracles and again when he heard Yeshua speak. Here was molten gold confined in the common cauldron of humanity: beautiful, glowing, consuming fire. All that and more in the disguise of a carpenter from Nazareth. Could it be? Could it? A carpenter from Nazareth?
    Nakdimon would take the report back to his uncle, the great rabbi Gamaliel bar Simeon. Gamaliel was one of the few who might be capable of unraveling the perilous enigma of Yeshua without getting burned. He might separate the Glory from the kettle and say, Here is truth!
    One must not be wrong about a matter of such magnitude. If it was true that Yeshua had stepped out from behind a star and descended from the Cloud of Unknowing to bring a gift from Elohim to mankind, then mankind had better not stumble over the gift! And yet that was exactly what the rulers of Israel seemed to be doing. Their plots to discredit Yeshua were legion. False witnesses. Spies. Talk of murder.
    Nakdimon shuddered. He was hopeful and yet also terrified at the potential missteps.
    The wailing of the wind died suddenly like a whining child commanded to be still. Only the sparking embers illuminated the small band of sleepers. A lull descended, as if no cricket or nightbird dared reply.
    Nakdimon sat up and stared at the stars. So many. The air scrubbed clean by the wind. He imagined thrones and corridors, stairways rising up from the darkness into points of exquisite light. Had Yeshua come from some place beyond the edge of all that?
    Pervasive peace. Calm.
    â€œWe had better get it right!”
    â€œPeace! Be still! I Am! Be still and know! I Am!”
    Nakdimon’s traveling companions did not suspect that the enormous man was a member of the council of seventy elders who ruled Israel. He appeared common enough, more like a drover with ordinary clothes, black beard, broad shoulders, and a bullneck.
    It was best they not know his rank, he reasoned. After all, beneath the skin he was no different than they. He had also come far to see and hear Yeshua of Nazareth firsthand.
    He had arrived in Galilee a skeptic.
    Now he believed.
    But what boundaries defined his belief? That Yeshua was a man of extraordinary powers and wisdom couldn’t be denied. But Israel’s history and writings told many stories of such men. None of them was the Anointed One, the Prophet, Priest, and King, the awaited Messiah.
    Was Yeshua that one? Or should they look for another? Yeshua had refused the crown offered to him by an exultant mob.
    Why?
    He had a ready-made army he might have commanded to overpower the currently ruling tyrants of Rome and Herod Antipas. He chose not to.
    Why?
    Instead he had slipped away into the hills. None had seen him since.
    Nakdimon, along with his fellow travelers, had witnessed the feeding of thousands of men, women, and children who had paused on their journey long enough to listen to the Master’s teaching. And yet the loaves and fishes merely temporarily assuaged a physical hunger. Nakdimon’s heart hungered to know more, to hear more!
    And what had Nakdimon taken away from his encounter with Yeshua? Besides the facts of what he had seen with his own eyes? Perhaps it was not what he had taken, but what he had left behind.
    He no longer grieved for his wife, his dear Hadassah. He had let her go, heard her bless his life one last time. It was enough. She was somehow born again. Somewhere else. Living. Smiling. Talking. But no longer here! Yeshua had let Nakdimon glimpse that. And in the certainty that Hadassah was happy and safe, Nakdimon had finally become free to live again.
    Nakdimon stretched his hands out to the embers. How would he tell Gamaliel these things? How could he put this into words?
    No. There are no words!
    All the books in all the world couldn’t hold what Yeshua had done. How could Nakdimon attempt to explain? If only he could offer a