Previous Challenge Entry (Level 2 – Intermediate)
Topic: HUNGRY (01/09/20)
-
TITLE: The Gift | Previous Challenge Entry
By Holly Short
01/16/20 -
LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE
SEND A PRIVATE COMMENT
ADD TO MY FAVORITES
Dishing up our plates helped ease the tension and offered necessary points of communication.
“Please pass the mashed potatoes.”
“Do you want light meat or dark?”
I wedged a pat of butter into the crack of a giant dinner roll and tried to relax my shoulders. From across the table I studied him further.
He wore my husband’s lips, although wider from genetics and thinner from hunger. The same with his frame. All these familiar contours, parts that testified, “I belong,” on a man who had lived his life on the outskirts of family and four solid walls for the past thirty years.
We ate quickly. Our son, unaffected by the awkwardness, climbed into his daddy’s lap to get a closer look at this uncle he had never met.
My brother-in-law turned towards him and I watched as his homeless eyes filled with recognition when he saw his own two, too big hands on our toddler.
“You’ve got some mitts on you!”
He splayed his fingers out wide, no longer hiding the stains that fed his addictions, and slid his palms across the table. Hands that had stolen to fill a belly and a vein now hungered for something that could only be given.
Softening, I thought of my own sin-stained hands and of Jesus who had taken them in his, unashamed, and called me, “Sister.”1
I watched as the empty-eyed man at our table took hold of the gift our son so freely offered and, for just a moment, he was full.2
1 Hebrews 2:11 (NIV) author's paraphrase
2 This is a work of non-fiction.
The opinions expressed by authors may not necessarily reflect the opinion of FaithWriters.com.
If you died today, are you absolutely certain that you would go to heaven? You can be right now. CLICK HERE
JOIN US at FaithWriters for Free. Grow as a Writer and Spread the Gospel.
Blessings~
Blessings~