Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Embarrassed (07/19/07)
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TITLE: Plainly Seen | Previous Challenge Entry
By Glorey Wooldridge
07/20/07 -
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The salesman sitting in the desk across from her (who was wearing shorts) had been watching her closely over the past few weeks. Ann caught him glancing over from time to time and start to say something, only to stop. “What's going on with him?” She wondered.
He was doing it again. She looked at him and decided to get to the bottom of the matter. With irritation in her voice, she stared at him and said, “What?”
He looked at her, glanced at the doorway as if making sure there was no one else around, and spoke. “You're not one of those born againers are you?”
Anne felt as if the wind had been knocked out of her. It was obvious some of her actions had changed over the past few months. Ever since the night she went to a tent meeting in the parking lot of a local store. She hadn't told anyone she had gone, but when the preacher asked if there was someone who would like to ask Jesus into their heart, she found herself moving to the front. God knew the way she was living wasn't working. She had been married three years and was considering giving up.
She wasn't happy and she figured her husband wasn't either. Her parents had divorced when she was a teen and she figured she soon would be too. Now her attitude was changing as she realized God expected marriage to last. Forever. What had been a mediocre attempt to interact with her husband was in the process of becoming a best effort. The results were starting to show. How could she explain faith when she didn't yet understand it herself?
“No!” She heard herself replying quickly. Of course, she had to lie. She could expect to be humiliated and embarrassed if her coworkers knew what was happening in her personal life. She would never hear the end of it. What she didn't expect was the immediate, gut wrenching feeling of sorrow that followed her denial.
She looked down at her feet and was surprised to see leather sandals instead of the loafers she had put on that morning. She heard shouting and the braying and snorting of donkeys. Donkeys? She looked around and realized that the office she had been standing in only moments before had disappeared.
There was dust everywhere. The air around her seem charged with electricity. She heard the crow of a rooster and plainly saw one man stare at another. They were set apart as if they were the only two people in the town, although Ann somehow knew they were not. The noise of the bird seemed to get their attention and one of the men started to wail. His face crumpled as he put his head in his hands and cried. He ran past her sobbing and tripping over his garment. “Wait, wait.” Yelled a voice behind him. Ann watched a woman run after him shouting “You are the man I saw with Jesus. Stop!”
Ann was not sure what all this meant but she figured it had to do with the conversation she had just had. “Oh God, what have I done?” She whispered.
Her vision cleared and she saw that her coworker had walked away from their shared area.
Ann sat down and wondered at what had just happened.
That night she opened the Bible her mother had given her along with a new book. She had stopped at the Christian bookstore on the way home and picked up a concordance. “You look up a word and the reference for the verse should be listed.” The owner told her. Hmmm. Where to start? She looked up the most obvious word, “rooster” and sure enough, there it was. Mark 14:72
She was amazed to read the account of Peter. Peter – the apostle who was so faithful to the Lord. He denied Jesus, just like she had. Now she understood the gravity of what she had done. Tears pooled in her eyes as she slid to her knees to ask for forgiveness and for the strength to set the record straight.
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