Ashley Beach-Author and Storyteller

In the Gospels, it talks about the veil in the temple being torn in two the moment Jesus exhaled his last breath on the cross. The veil was a thick, heavy cloth that separated the Holy of Holies in the temple, the place where God physically came down. It was meant to keep everyone from entering the Holy of Holies because it was such a sacred place and you couldn’t enter the presence of God unless you were sanctified and holy yourself. The high priests were the only ones allowed to enter this sacred place and had to make sure they were right with God before they could enter and go before God on behalf of the people. They even tied a rope around the priest in case he didn’t happen to be right with God and he died or was cast down in the presence of God because the people knew they could not enter the sacred chamber, so if something happened to the priest, they could pull him out with the rope instead of entering the holy place and being struck down themselves.

Hearing these words may sound strange or like this God is a cruel or unjust God. God is completely holy and perfect. One concept people struggle with is the holiness of God and the fallen and sinful state of man. I tried to explain this as best as I could in my fourth book, Beauty Revealed, and paint a picture of what our relationship to a holy God looks like. The Mage’s Son shares a story with the main character towards the end about the Great Mage that hand-crafted and created everything on the earth, breathing his living breath into every living thing in the world. Amidst his creation, he formed the first king and queen of the earth from the dust of the earth and lived in perfect harmony and relationship with them in the breathtaking garden he had made especially for them. A fallen star who had tried to take the Great Mage’s power and make himself more powerful than the Great Mage was furious when he had been dismissed from the Mage’s realm of beauty and light and swore vengeance on anything and everything that possessed light or a reflection of the Mage’s beauty. When he saw how like the Mage the first king and queen were, he despised them and what they represented, so he wanted to destroy their beauty and sever their connection to the Great Mage. He tempted them to open a box in the Garden that he said contained great power and would make them like the Great Mage himself. They doubted the Great Mage’s love and provision and gave into their selfish desires to be like the Great Mage and they opened the box. Once the box was opened, a great darkness was released into the earth. The king and queen knew immediately that what they had done was wrong and they felt immediate shame and guilt at having opened the box. Because the Great Mage was Light itself, He could no longer dwell with the special people he had personally created and the king and queen could no longer dwell with him or live in perfect harmony with him or each other.

As the Mage’s Son is telling the main character this story in Beauty Revealed, she asks him why the box was placed in the Garden at all if it only contained darkness and would separate all generations from the Great Mage. The Mage’s Son asked her some questions about her family and how she would feel if her parents and brother and people only loved her because she was a princess or because they had no other choice. He explained that in the same way, the Great Mage wanted mankind to have a choice in loving him in return, so he placed the box in the Garden, and they chose the box over the perfect beauty and love he had already freely given them.

This is the best way I could think of to explain what Christians refer to as the Fall in the Bible. The moment Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit and were immediately sentenced to eternal separation from God on a spiritual level as well as physical death. Brokenness and sickness and disease and anger and evil intentions entered the world and man’s hearts that day and the world was suddenly separated from its creator God. Because God is pure and Light itself–without darkness– He could no longer dwell with us and we could no longer dwell with Him. He knew what we would choose from the start and despite everything He gave us–unconditional love and everlasting relationship–He knew our inclination would be to choose what made us happy. He knew our hearts would always seek that which isn’t fulfilling or truly satisfying in a feeble attempt to fill the void of the separation we now experienced from God. By His grace, He also knew what would have to happen to bring us back to Him before Adam and Eve even made that decision. He set forth a plan from the beginning to send His only Son into the world to live and dwell among us as a full human being, and pay the ultimate price of a perfect blood sacrifice on the cross for our sins. When Jesus gave up His spirit into His Father’s hands, the veil was torn, and it was torn in a way that only a supernatural phenomenon could tear it. This thick, heavy veil that separated God from man was torn from the top to the bottom, making it impossible for man to tear it, and it was made out of such thick material, that it would have been impossible for man to tear it either. When that veil was torn, the separation between God and man was also torn in two. The way for man to get back to God and that perfect relationship he had with Him in the beginning was repaired because of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross.

In my second book, Beauty Redeemed, I reference the veil between the Dark realm and the Spring realm. It is said that the equinoxes and solstices are times of year when the “veils” between the spiritual realm and the physical realm are at their thinnest, so I incorporated that into my Spring Equinox Chronicle. Luscian, the Lord of Darkness and my Satan character, is bound to the Dark realm. He can traverse outside of it, but only for limited amounts of time. He has always been drawn to the beauty of the princess of the Spring realm and is determined to bring the princess into his realm before the morning of the Spring Equinox so that she is unable to cross back over once the veil has returned to it’s normal thickness between the Dark realm and Spring realm. Julianna is indeed taken to the Dark realm after some time in the manor house (read my other post about he manor house to see the spiritual meaning of that) and the Spring and Winter realms rally together to fight Luscian on the eve of the Spring Equinox. It is an epic battle between Dark and Light, and one I hope you enjoy reading about in Beauty Redeemed, but at the end of the battle, the Mage’s Son tells the king of the Spring realm of another battle still raging in the depths of the Dark realm.

Julianna struggles against her ties to darkness the entire book and you see how unworthy she feels to be a princess of Light when she struggles with dark thoughts so often. She is rescued from the Dark realm once, but is soon returned by one of Luscian’s henchmen and she must fight to leave the Dark realm on her own. One thing about the Dark realm, it takes the blood sacrifice of someone who loves you to grant you passage out of the Dark realm, so it is impossible to leave without it. In one part of this scene, Julianna is trapped by the dark thoughts of her downfalls and mistakes she has made and how the only place she can dwell in is the Dark realm. Miraculously, other thoughts start to enter her mind and remind her of how much her family loves her and the truth of the beauty within her, so she slowly takes a stand against the swirling darkness that’s vying for her attention, and makes her way towards the veil. When she reaches the veil, she still must fight against the lies Luscian is telling her, and the truths the Mage’s Son is trying to tell her. With the help of the Mage’s Son, Julianna is finally able to step across the line of the veil — a line you may notice is described as a crimson line that covers the entrance to the realm of death and darkness and was made crimson by a powerful sacrifice many years before.

Crossing the line between the realm of darkness and the realm of Light can be one of the hardest decisions we can ever make in our lives. Satan works overtime to twist our thoughts and hearts and fill them with the lies that this is the life we were meant to live and nothing and no one can save us. His fate is sealed and he will never have a chance to live in the realm of Light ever again, so he wants to take as many souls with him as he can. He takes our focus off of God and His love for us and tempts us with things that we long for — love, fortune, fame, acceptance, friendship, and on and on. A lot of times we give into those things or dwell in those broken lives because we are convinced we don’t have any other choice. We live in darkness and give ourselves over to that fate because we desire that more than the light and freedom found in Christ or we just don’t believe we can be granted a life of freedom. There is hope in Christ. Christ’s death covered the line between the realm of darkness and the realm of light all those years ago and grants passage to any who wish to return to the realm of light. His resurrection overcame death and gives us a chance at eternal life in God’s heavenly realm. It is a gift free of charge and one He longs for you to accept so His relationship can be restored with you. But, we have to choose to accept that gift or continue to live our lives in the darkness.

It can be a very hard decision to leave that life behind. 2 Corinthians tells us that we are a new creation when we put our faith and trust in God and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The old is past away and the new has begun. We are also told to put off our old selves and put on the new life that has been given to us in Christ. Easier said than done. Paul also talks about how even though he longs to do good and live his life for Christ, he still does what is wrong and what his flesh desires. It is a difficult, but life-changing, decision to stand up to the darkness and step out of the realm of darkness. Julianna’s struggle at the end of Beauty Redeemed is very similar to what our struggle with sin and darkness looks like. Whenever we try to leave that place of broken rejection and emptiness, Satan tries all the harder to pull us back down and convince us that we can’t leave. Julianna must fight against the lies in her own mind and make the decision to step towards the veil, just as we must do. When she reached the veil, Luscian still tries to hold onto her and remind her of the darkness within. But, just as the Mage’s Son is more powerful than Luscian in The Solstice Chronicles, Christ is also more powerful than Satan. He already died on the cross and paid the debt for our lives that we could not pay. Our lives have been covered by the powerful, cleansing blood of Jesus Christ and His resurrection rendered sin and death powerless over each and every one of us. We just have to believe in that power and the truth of that power and step across the veil.

I have faced this struggle many times throughout my life. I feel much like Julianna many times, living a life in a Christian home and Christian school and going to church all the time making it like Julianna dwelling in the kingdom of Light her whole life. But the internal struggle with darkness can be a nasty thorn in one’s side. There are things I’ve dealt and struggled with for so much of my life it has become a part of me. Those places are familiar and you find an odd sense of acceptance and love there, but it’s not a true love. It’s a false love and fulfillment and one that only leads to death. When something has been a part of you for so long, it takes on the sense of killing a part of yourself or saying goodbye to half of your being when faced with the decision to continue to dwell in darkness or step out into the light. You know the life you’re living in isn’t worth it and it will only bring destruction or unhappiness to your life and you feel called and drawn to the light, but you still desire the darkness and the temporary highs you get from living that life, so you struggle to let go of it forever. You can’t live in both places, my friends. The Bible not only says that you can’t serve two masters, meaning you can’t live in both sin and freedom in Christ, I know from personal experience that you can’t dwell in both places. One life will suffer and ultimately disappear into nothing or be left very weak and barely alive and the other will continue to grow stronger and take a stronger hold of your life. If you truly want to live in the Light, you are going to have to turn your back on the darkness, turn your back on your old self, remove that old life like dirty unwearable clothing and put on the new robes of redemption. I am talking to myself more than anyone else in saying these words and believe me, I know it is not easy to say goodbye to that part of yourself and step out into the realm of Light. But, I also know it is beyond worth it. So many who have stepped out of the darkness and said goodbye to their old lives of darkness are living lives so completely changed and altered, it can only be the sanctifying presence of Jesus in their lives that could have made the change. Just as the veil in the temple could have only been torn by the hand of God Himself, life-altering change like that only comes from being in the presence of God Almighty.

My prayer for you as you read this post or read my books or anything I post, that you will see God and His love for you. I share things both in my blogs and videos, and especially in my books, because they are personal things I have gone through in my life. I know what it is to be trapped in the realm of darkness or feel unloved or unworthy of being loved. I have faced hardships that have grown my faith but I have also faced circumstances that have shaken my faith to it’s core and forced me to take a hard look at what my faith was based in. I write and share things from my story as a way to give others hope and encouragement when they are facing unimaginable circumstances. I write these stories to show the incredible strength that comes from facing extremely hard things when founded in the light of God’s grace and love. I write to show the true beauty that lies in every heart and longs to be awakened and reunited with the Creator that crafted it. This is my prayer for myself, for you, for everyone — that you will find hope and encouragement and know that you are not the only one going through these hard things. Find the beauty in your story and let God’s love shine through your life. You don’t know whose life you will change because you let God change yours.