While Three Ascended

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became bright as light (Matthew 17:1–2).

He took the three up the mountain.
Peter, James, John—always the three.
We didn’t ask why. We’d stopped asking.
We watched them disappear into the mist
and tried not to notice the familiar sting.

What do nine disciples talk about
when the inner circle climbs without them?
We busied ourselves, mended nets,
pretended not to look up at the peak.

Then the father came,
dragging his convulsing son—
foam at the mouth, that terrible keening.

We’d done this before.
Jesus gave us authority over unclean spirits.
But the words felt hollow,
as if I were speaking into a void.
The boy kept seizing.

I looked up once at the shrouded peak.
The father’s eyes began to drain of hope.
“Where is Jesus?” he asked.
And Jesus was on the mountain.

Then they descended.

Something was different,
something in how they moved,
how they held the light—
they’d been somewhere
the rest of us had never been.

The father ran to Jesus:
“I brought him to your disciples,
but they could not cure him.”

We stood there. It was true.

Jesus healed the boy instantly.

Later, privately, we asked:
“Why could we not cast it out?”

“Because of your little faith.”

The words landed like stones.

When the Greeks came
asking to see Jesus,
they found me first.

“Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”

I could have told them I wasn’t one of the three,
that there were disciples who saw things I never saw,
who stood on mountains I never climbed.

Instead, I said what I’d always said:
“Come and see.”

Not because I’d seen what Peter saw.
Not because I stood on Tabor
when the heavens opened.

But because the invitation
doesn’t belong to those who witnessed glory.

It belongs to all of us
who keep speaking it anyway—
who say “Come and see”
from the base of the mountain,
from the place of failure,
from the valley where faith feels small.

The invitation is not the vision.
The valley has its own authority.

Someone must speak
for all of us who were left behind,
who never saw the radiance
but followed anyway.

Come and see.

Not because I have seen everything.
But because I have seen enough.