Of Whispers and Daggers ✓ [TLRQ #2]

Afterword

Being surrounded by death has a way of making you question life.

Leavi spends much of this book hoping there is some higher power out there, some direction to fate. Aster questions what the point of life is since, as he says, "the world is selfishness and hate, and then we die." Idyne takes justice into her own hands, believing there is no one else out there who will. Obviously, this is a fantasy novel, and what questions the characters have about their world, we'll leave the following books to answer—if there are indeed answers to be had in Avadel.

But out here, in the real world, we do have the answers to these questions. Another book already gave them to us: the Bible. And this book wasn't just written by fallible humans like me and Aria. It was written by a God whose promises always come true, whose prophecies unfold just as predicted, whose hands crafted both the beginning of time and the end. He made the world and everything in it—including us. That higher power Leavi is looking for that has everything under control? That's the God of the Bible, the Creator of the universe.

When He made the first man, Adam, He gave him only one rule. Adam broke it. Since then, all of us have been breaking God's perfect rules: we have hated each other, lied about each other, hurt each other, lusted after each other. We have cursed the name of the God who made us. By turning our backs on the only One who knows what goodness is, we have turned the world into selfishness and hate. We have rebelled and made ourselves the enemies of God.

But though we hated God and ruined His creation, He loved us and wanted to restore it. Still, saving anything takes sacrifice.

The all-powerful God let himself be born as a human named Jesus. His mother was a virgin, so the law-breaking nature that's infected every man since Adam? It didn't infect him. Both truly God and truly man, Jesus lived a perfect life, never breaking one of God's laws. During His time on earth, He declared that the kingdom of God had arrived and that all the people who had broken God's laws should stop rebelling and follow Jesus. He would be their only chance of salvation—not whatever good things they thought they could do, not how holy they thought they were. Only Him.

Because Idyne is wrong—there is a perfect Judge that delivers true justice. Every crime against humanity and every crime against God will be punished exactly as is right. We can have hope in this; no murderer will be set free because he did something else right. The good doesn't outweigh the bad. Someone has to pay the price for every law broken.

Someone has to pay the price for every law we've broken.

Without Jesus, we would pay that price, and we'd pay it for eternity because we broke the laws of an eternal God. But God loved us so much, He wanted to fix the relationship we broke. Jesus, though He had done nothing wrong, died a criminal's death to pay the price for my sin—and the sin of anyone else who puts their trust in Him. He took the punishment we deserve.

Then, three days after Jesus died, God raised Him from the dead. Lots of people saw the resurrected Jesus: not just his closest students, but crowds of hundreds of people. Jesus defeated both sin and death, and one day, all the people that turn away from their lawbreaking and trust Him instead will live with Him eternally. In God's eternal kingdom, there will be no more sin, no more death, no more rebellion, and no more need for punishment. The world will be perfect again, just like it was when He created it.

If you've never heard this news before or never trusted in it, we pray you do now. Outside of God, we're just like Leavi, just like Aster, and just like Idyne: lost, hurting, and hopeless. But when our trust is in God, the perfect Creator of the universe, we know that no matter what may happen, we are safe in His loving hands. We pray for that kind of peace for you—the true kind of peace that can only come from a restored relationship with the God that made you.

"[Righteousness] will be credited to us who believe in Him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered over because of our wrongdoings, and was raised because of our justification. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom 4:24 - 5:1)

With love,
Laine and Aria