A "Glimpse" of that Crucified Criminal who Believed

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Two criminals crucified with Jesus
Luke 23:32,39-43

TWO CRIMINALS WERE ALSO LED out with him for execution…
     One of the criminals hanging there covered him with abuse, and said, “Aren’t you Christ? Why don’t you save yourself—and us?”
     But the other one checked him with the words, “Aren’t you afraid of God even when you’re getting the same punishment as he is? And it’s fair enough for us, for we’ve only got what we deserve, but this man never did anything wrong in his life.”
     Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
     And Jesus answered, “I tell you truly, this day you will be with me in paradise.”

Later that evening…

TOWARDS THE END, he would cast his glance to the left—to the now-empty cross of the teacher—and his struggling breaths would continually offer up last words. He offered up his last words perhaps one hundred times that evening. (They had broken his legs an hour or two before this.) When he turned his gaze, his darting glimpse a fragmentary impression of the scene, he would snatch another look at that empty cross; consider it. From the horizontal downward, the vertical was a river’s delta of dried blood. Its color veined and spider-webbed its way down to the earth. The earth below had a black puddle; blood drops all around. The empty cross seemed to tell a story he didn’t fully understand.
     The flesh of his hands and arms was beginning to tear from the full weight of his body hanging—his broken legs sagged, twisted, beneath him. Each and every breath was shallower; agony. He could hear the groans of his former partner-in-crime, farther past.
     When the end came, it came, mercifully, quickly.
     The breaths became exhausting, exhausted.
     He could feel his head start swaying forward and to the right.
     His neck now held no power to hold it up…


    And when he “awoke,” he was walking through a grand overwhelming door (more like a gateway), all of gold, entering into an impossibly cavernous interior space. He was vaguely aware of infinitudes of forms—huge glorious figures and radiant-faced individuals—watching him: but he focused all his attentions on continuing forward.


     For there—up ahead—up a three-stepped stairway ending in a molten golden dais—was the Throne of Heaven and--
 
     Him.
 
     The happy thief, for the second time that day, spoke aloud his name:
 
     “Jesus!”
 
     And the man on the Throne smiled and said to him: “Now didn’t I tell you?”