Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Holiday (04/05/12)
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TITLE: Yes Lord. I will believe! | Previous Challenge Entry
By Danielle King
04/12/12 -
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Memories … that soothe hurts; yet unchecked may serve to exacerbate a festering wound. You came back today for a reason, didn’t you?
Scrambling perilously through the dense thicket of vegetation blanketing the ravine, you recalled how it gushed and spilled fresh rainfall, out and onto the beach, to forge a groove in the sands. And shingles, crunching beneath small plimsolls; a fun skid when slippery sea-weed caught you unawares.
Why would you do that? Choose the hard way when there was a perfectly sound flight of steps cut into the cliff face. You always preferred to struggle, collecting treasures along the way; a shiny pebble, a delicately patterned shell, fragments of dinosaur – or so you believed, later to find them worthless trash, weighing you down.
Did you return to recapture a mood, a sense of well-being, security? You know why you came - don’t you!
Today you’re a child again. Today you will solve the mystery. The mystery that you never dared to tell.
The tide is on the turn as you tip-toe barefoot through the brilliantly clear tide-pools, where tiny pin-stripe fish and spidery crabs dart for cover. You taste the salt spray on your lips as the waves explode onto the promontory. You scramble over lichen covered rocks, and on toward the caves.
The caves – ‘Smugglers Caves,’ fascinated you. You knew the story well. It was the truth of them that lured you; the sea tradition of piracy and shipwreck and the recounting of the many hidey-holes along the rocky shores that were once a haven for smugglers of contraband.
Truth excited you. You craved realism, logicality; always seeking for certainty.
Back then, the figure of the man had startled you both. He rested his arms on his knees which were tucked underneath his chin; seemingly oblivious to squealing gulls circling at the prospect of a tasty treat. You were forbidden to be there without supervision. Many times, from the safety of the cliff tops you’d watched the crashing waves at high water rushing into the caves, separating them from the mainland.
But it was the warning about speaking to strangers that rang alarm bells. And, ‘don’t wander off into lonely places.’ But this stranger didn’t speak, nor look your way. He simply gazed out to sea from his vantage point on a rock inside the cave.
Your friend suggested he was the ghost of a smuggler. You put a finger to your lips: “Shhhhh!” You whispered as the goose bumps tingled down your spine. By the end of the day neither of you could piece together any details, nor even recollect what he was wearing. In later years your friend laughed off the childhood fantasies.
But not you! You never doubted what you’d seen. You were drawn, little by little to something beyond your comprehension. Your detailed, clear- cut, logical and meticulous world-view had become detonated and shattered by the stuff of life!
There must be something more!
Now you stand outside the cave, breathless, a little shaky, wondering if you may be verging on insanity. Heaven forbid that you should lose control – YOU, of all people, to lose control and descend into the abyss of madness.
You catch words echoed in the wind: “The truth.” You listen carefully. A wave explodes onto the rocky cliff. “You seek.” The power of the seas speaks to your heart a third time:
“I Am The way and the Truth and the Life.” *
Will you, like a child, simply believe?
*NIV John 14:6
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Nice ending. God Bless~