Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Outlandish (05/19/11)
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TITLE: Close Call | Previous Challenge Entry
By Lois Farrow
05/25/11 -
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Now these churches have taken to putting up little notices and they’re getting to me. There’s one that says JESUS FORGIVES SIN. Well, what’s sin? And what am I supposed to think when I’m emptying the box with a notice like THOU GOD SEEST ME on the wall above my head? Now, I don’t believe in God or anything or anybody I can’t see, but that gives me the spooks, it does, thinking someone may be watching.
Well, one day I asked the minister about it. What’s this all about, I say, pointing to the notice? O yes, he says, God is watching us all the time, and he sees everything we do. That’s not fair, I say, he should just be watching you lot who believe in him, he doesn’t need to bother himself with the likes of me, who don’t believe in him. The minister laughed. Laughed, if you please!
“Mike,” he said, “it doesn’t work like that. God made the world, and all the people in it and he really cares about us all and how we live. Whether or not we believe in Him is beside the point, the fact is that he is there, and he does see us, and he wants to be our friend.”
Well, that’s a pretty outlandish claim; that there’s someone who I can’t see who wants to be my friend. Sounds like Face book. I’ve managed quite well without him, thank you, and I don’t see why I can’t keep going that way.
“Mike,” the minister said. Now that I’d got him going, he didn’t want to stop. “You might think you can LIVE without God, but what about when you die?”
Well, I’ve never given thought to that; I’m only in my thirties so I’ve got plenty of time yet. Maybe I’ll think about it one day when I’m old, I told him.
“Mike,” he said, really getting warmed up. “You’ve done wrong things in your life.” How does he know that? Has he found out about the boxes? Is that what sin is? “Now, God knows you can’t live with him after you die because he is perfect, and you’re not, so you know what he did? He sent his son, Jesus, to die in your place so that you could have all your sins washed away and covered by Jesus death and then you can live with him forever.”
Now this was nothing to do with Face book, this really was outlandish; I’d never heard anything so preposterous in my life, especially that someone I don’t even know thought they had to die in my place. It was too much to think about, so I took off and went on my way.
A few days later I got a real shake up. An out of control car mounted the sidewalk and now here I am in hospital, with far too much time to think.
“Someone was really looking out for you,” said the nurse when I came round. “You should have been dead, but the other guy pushed you out of the way. Your injuries are serious, but you should make a good recovery.”
“What happened to the other guy?”
“He died,” she said. “He saved your life, but didn’t survive himself.”
So now I’m being told that a stranger died when it should have been me? Was someone, like God or something, really looking out for me? Is that what the minister meant? What if I had died? What really is after this life? I’ve always thought there was nothing after death, and that I had plenty of time to think about it, but what if I’m wrong? Perhaps there really is someone called God who is trying to get through to me.
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I'm so glad you got a 2nd place in the beginner's category. Well done.