Shadows on the wall dance in syncopated rhythms with the flickering of lamps I have spread before me.

I have several, you see. My eyes are failing somewhat and the light they provide enable me to the write with legibility, if not with clarity. The shadows have become friends. They seem alive and energized with silent force, watching me write words that speak of him. It is about all there is left that I can do. Once I held forth in preaching and teaching. Once men listened to me instruct them of him. Some were important men, supposedly. Governors. Senators. Others appointed to high office by Rome. But no more. I speak no more. I am applauded and appreciated by crowds--no more.

I confess to you that I am not bitter. I can say that without rancor and in honesty with myself. Admittedly, I often long for another platform, especially when I hear others speak, some better, most worse than I did. I am ashamed to say that I am truly fond of the plaudits, of the well-wishers, of the expressions of gratitude. But they are gone now and it is not constructive to linger among such memories, not to speak of useless.

I have a new profession now: word craft. I love to find just the precise word to express meaning, feeling, intelligence. I want my reader to enjoy the pleasure they bring. Just reading the word itself will produce a quality of pleasure or pain. And if by God's eternal grace they breed closeness with him, then I have chosen well. I know, because I read and reread these words myself, desiring to choose an even better word, a more eloquent phrase, a paragraph potentate. In this reading and rereading, I often weep.

The words I write tell of him. There are no words, in any language, equal to this task. Words written of him are holy, set apart from the usual concourse of words. And as this scribbling chronicles the hours he moved among us, I deeply sense that it is not I who scratches away beneath the shadows in some lonely vigil, but some Other. Whether my sensing has any connection with reality or not, I do not know. He has not chosen to let me know that I speak for him. But I can tell you this: from the day I first met him, from that day until my last breath--I am his servant, if he will have me. If not, then I spend my life wishing to possess what I am denied.

I clearly am not selected to be among his choicest servants, although I knew him from the beginning. From the day I saw with my own eyes the feathered embodiment of the Spirit light upon him, I knew that I must follow him. I knew then that I would rather cease to exist than be without him. It is an amazing consternation to me that such devotion can be affirmed or disenfranchised by casting lots. But so it was. And so it is. So now in these fading days, I comfort myself with words.

-- Joseph, bar Sabbas, called Justus