Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: START (02/25/16)
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TITLE: Biography of a Sin | Previous Challenge Entry
By Pat Small
03/01/16 -
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“Me too,” Madison agreed, pushing the pause button. “ I could use a snack too. Meet me in the kitchen.”
Madison opened the refrigerator door and grabbed a couple of cokes. “This mango salsa Mom found is delicious. Hey, will you grab a bag of tortilla chips from the pantry, Linds?”
“Gladly.”
Padding back to Madison’s bedroom, they stopped in the living room to say goodnight to her parents. “Good night, girls. Don’t stay up too late.”
“Okay. See you in the morning.”
They plopped down on the bed, tucked their legs beneath them, the chips and salsa in the middle. “Have you met that new girl, Fabiana? The guys all act like she’s Liz Taylor reincarnated,” Lindsay commented.
“I know. So what if she has a great figure. She’s a ‘you know what’.”
“The other day in class Ms. Whitaker had her read a paragraph in Spanish, and then acted like she was the smartest thing to hit Middletown. I could read like that too if my mother was Hispanic, I bet.”
“Yeah, her mother probably sang lullabies to her in Spanish,” Madison agreed.
“Well, she’d just better stay away from Caleb. Just because he doesn’t know I exist doesn’t mean he’s fair game for her to slink around,” Lindsay opined.
“Forget her. Let’s get back to our movie. Johnny Depp will take your mind off Caleb for a few minutes,” Madison laughed.
That brief conversation was the beginning. A few days later, Mr. Frank paired the Liz Taylor look-alike with the aforementioned Caleb for a chemistry lab. Little did he know he was putting kindling wood on a smoldering fire.
“Madison, did you see how she looked at Caleb like he was Louis Pasteur and had just discovered how to pasteurize milk? I hate her.”
“Yeah, and I noticed when she handed him the beaker he acted like she had accomplished a marvelous feat,” Madison responded. “If this kind of junk keeps up, we may have to teach her a lesson.”
“I don’t want to get in trouble, but I don’t know. Something needs to happen.”
Almost without realizing what was happening, the girls began a social media blitz, tweeting and messaging. They threatened and called her names. They posted hateful innuendos. The more vitriol they tapped out on their keypads, the more it festered in their minds. Their petty jealousy became a consuming fire in their bellies.
Fabiana tried to avoid them. She didn’t respond to their tweets or messages. It didn’t matter. The sin had been conceived, and was being nurtured.
James 1:13-15 tells us, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.” (ESV).
That is how it started in the Garden. The serpent placed a thought in Eve’s mind. She pondered it, discussed it with him, and the desire grew. The promised end justified the means. Thousands of years later, his tactics are still working.
So, it progressed. Every time they saw Fabiana, their anger grew. One day the fire raged out of control. “The next time she comes down the hall alone you push her towards me, and I’ll push her back,” Lindsay suggested. “She’ll retaliate; we can say she started it. We were only defending ourselves.”
“Sounds like a plan. Let’s do it.” Soon, the opportunity arose. Satan made it easy.
“What do you want? Leave me alone,” Fabiana screamed as they pushed her. She wrapped her arms around her head as the slaps came.
“Shut up you s___. We know what you are,” they yelled breathlessly. They kicked her when she fell, and pulled her back up by her long, black hair, slapping and punching mercilessly. Words they didn’t know they knew hung in the air.
“Stop! Lindsay, Madison, stop it!” Ms. Whitaker broke up the altercation. “You two get yourselves to the office immediately. I’ll be right there as soon as I make sure Fabiana is alright.”
Of course, they received appropriate penalties, but the shame was almost worse than the punishment. Hopefully, they learned the truth of Proverbs 23:7a: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” (KJV).
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If it helps, my personal reflection upon the scripture exposition in the middle was that it came just as the story had risen from a walk to a trot and was promising a gallop. I felt that the lesson might've been better at the end, as it seemed to interrupt the flow a bit.
However, others might disagree...and in either case, it was a good illustration of the principle.
Great story and message.
Blessings~