This is another installment in a series that has been adapted from my 11-part CD teaching series on A. W. Tozer’s spiritual classic, The Pursuit of God.
Once upon a time there were two, equally beautiful, identical twin sisters. As they grew into young womanhood, each girl found the man of her dreams, the one she wanted to marry. Coincidently, each young woman fell in love with a man who was also an identical twin. Both men were equally handsome, equally wealthy, and equally well mannered in every way. It was just like a fairy tale.
The whole town turned out for the double wedding, complete with matching gowns, matching cakes, and matching rings. Everyone agreed that these were the two most perfect marriages the village had ever seen. The twin brides were the envy of every teenage girl and the twin grooms the envy of every teenage boy.
After the honeymoon, the couples moved into identical houses right next door to each other. Being the patriotic sort, the brothers decided to both enlist in the Army and fight for their country. The entire county gave them a spectacular sendoff with flags, a brass band, and words of encouragement. The twin brides nervously kissed their respective husbands goodbye and watched them board the military transport plane.
The brothers fought bravely in battle and the reports from the war were encouraging. Then on the last day of their tour of duty, they were ordered to defend a fuel dump. It was considered light duty. They never actually heard the incoming shell, nor the ensuing explosion that the rocket powered grenade generated. They only remembered being blown high above the ensuing inferno and watching each other fly through the air in slow motion. But in that brief blast, the intense heat melted off every feature of their handsome faces: their noses, their eyelids, their lips, their ears, even their cheeks.
They woke up in an Army hospital burn ward, swathed in bandages and screaming in pain. They endured countless hours being scrubbed in the debridement tanks, being pushed to the limit during physical therapy, being given additional skin grafts, being operated on for vascular or cosmetic repair, and being continuously subjected to sterile dressing changes. Even after all the miraculous work, each man’s face was no longer recognizable. Now their faces were only identical as garish scars.
Finally, the wives were allowed to see their husbands. Alerted to the facial damage, both women painted brave faces on and tentatively crept into the room where their husbands lay in bed. After checking the charts to make sure that they were looking at the correct husband, each slowly approached, their eyes seeing but not believing what they saw. The handsome men they’d kissed goodbye a year earlier were gone and in their place were these twin strangers.
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