At the Gate Called Beautiful
By Mary Cox-Bilz

Longing and Madness

Why would a gate near the temple of the ancient city be named Beautiful? Who dared to name a place of longing and madness, Beautiful?

Lying at the entrance to the city of Jerusalem, in his misery the crippled man tore his hair out by the handfuls, threw it on the ground, and hoped the breeze would blow it away. His act didn’t appear to make him feel any better. The longing and madness that shone on his worn face refused to let up.

Another handful! The crippled man’s scalp began to bleed. Dark red rivulets of blood ran through his hair, dribbled into the crevices of his ears, and ran down his neck. Overwhelmed! Nothing worked. Nothing fit. He cried. He sobbed. He shook, and no one acted as if they heard him. 

No one seemed to care. Fear froze his movements, and he slipped again into the shock of longing, and madness….

Trapped. Aeneas, the deformed man could not escape his accursed body. It had no worth. It could not move. It could not play. It could not work. All he could do was lie still and be stared at. Each new day brought to the man a new realization that he was stuck in hell for all his life.

The crowd paid no attention to the crippled man, intent upon their own problems, or talking among themselves about something trite. 
Alexander, a quiet, poverty-stricken man, saw the powerless human being, and felt his shame. Alexander watched the stirring crowd respond to the helpless man with anxious looks and whispers that mirrored their own frightened hearts. Every onlooker understood that they, too, could have been born the same way — handicapped. They acted as if they felt a sense of relief that they had escaped the curse, and they conveyed a slight sense of superiority as well. 
However, many of the people who crowded there seemed to be in pain, too. Alexander thought perhaps they suffered as badly as the helpless man—for everyone who came to pray at the city gate called Beautiful came because they searched for something. 

Alexander felt like throwing up. He sought a quiet little corner in which to sit, far from the crowd. A place where he could hide. Like the paralyzed man, his dirty rags worn thin on his back marked him as powerless, too. Alexander knew exactly how the crippled man felt. 

The poor man looked between the open spaces of the crowd to watch the people enter at the gate called Beautiful. A family of five worked their way through the congested entrance to find a comfortable place to stand close together. 

Behind them three men stood shaking their fists and pointing fingers at each other, probably arguing about the law, with each insisting he was right. 

To the left, a forlorn woman glared into space, while her young fatherless sons grasped at their mother’s dress, fearful of tomorrow. Their father had died from consumption. Alexander knew them well. He grieved for their loss and wished there was something he could do to help, but realized that he had nothing to give. 

Alexander had no family. He lived alone, always begging for food and work. For years the angry man had shook his fist at the heavens and cried to God. “Enough of poverty. ENOUGH!” Yet he heard no answer. 

Cruel reality made his head throb. Until that day Alexander’s head had hung, as his vacant face stared at the ground. Like the crippled man at the gate called Beautiful, and the many others who had come to pray there too, Alexander searched for God—his only hope. 

All of the people partook in this longing and madness for different reasons. Some had twisted bodies, others broken hearts. Some lacked money, some food. But all of them cried out to God for deliverance and wholeness. 

Quiet and still on the outside, hot anger brewed within Alexander. He saw no window to God above. Though the name, God, was part of everyday language, no one he knew had met this God face-to-face. 
Alexander glanced at the crippled man sitting at the entrance of the gate called Beautiful. They both wondered where God was when they needed Him. 

Alexander and his crippled friend watched as richly dressed newcomers walked to the entrance of the temple nearby. “They’re obnoxious! All they want is to be noticed,” the poor men mumbled to themselves in self-pity. A new group of pilgrims with puffed out chests and lofty stares shot glances of derision toward the two men, as if they knew there was no way that they could put on such a show themselves. 

“Dammit! Why God? Why?”

A gray-haired woman from the center courtyard spotted Alexander and walked toward him. She couldn’t wait to find an ear to absorb her aches and pains. 

Annoyed, he got to his feet, turned away and found another spot in which to hide, near a small huddle of individuals at the far end of the city wall. Alexander felt their bitter silence, and he knew they felt his. The sharp blade of hostility dug jagged teeth through all their lives. But a strange sense of comfort flowed between their souls, too, as they shared their misery. 
Suddenly all heads turned toward a stranger entering the gate called Beautiful. Alexander, the crippled man, the know-it-alls, the small group of self-satisfied pilgrims, and all of the rest of the people watched a man— strongly built, and with the work-worn hands of a carpenter move among them.

People flocked around Him. Some bowed down at His feet, waiting to receive a blessing from the man some believed was the Messiah, sent down to them from the invisible God. 

Others questioned His validity and asked for proof. A third group wanted nothing to do with Him and shouted, “GO AWAY. YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE!”

A few courageous people moved closer to the man called Jesus and looked into His eyes. “Are you really the Son of God that we have waited so long to see?” They wanted to believe it was Him. 

Author of At the Gate Called Beautiful, Letters In My Casket and other books,  Mary Cox-Bilz began her writing career shortly after the death of her second husband. A devoted Christian, Mary has a birth defect that left her a quadriplegic. Fiercely independent, she types with a mouth stick and draws with a pen in her mouth. Mary maintains she is not handicapped because she lives her life as she chooses.