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Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: The Critique/Review (for writers) (05/06/10)
Line upon line, precept on precept, You crafted a perfect story for me before the world was formed.

Yet the choice, from my first feeble breath, to follow the golden path laid or to go my own way remained.

And like a sheep I strayed, how I strayed.

With the pen of independence firmly gripped in calloused hands, I edited the divine romance You so lovingly wrote. With every thought and deed I scribbled between the lines of love, sometimes erasing Your vision, sometimes tracing the heavenly script, yet always marring the perfect story.

As I reread the past, viewed the choices made, and experienced the bed in which I laid, the desire for a better way than Yours faded. Despair lurked, waiting to spill it’s inky black despondence in my soul, hoping to destroy Your story once and for all.


My idols of independence, self-sufficiency, and the right to my own opinion, all built of mud and refuse, so cleverly overlaid in gold, were hollow comfort to my barren soul.

I turned my face to Heaven. I sought the good Teacher. I desired correction.

You longed to have compassion on me.
You waited to be gracious to me.
From the first syllable of my cry, You heard me.
From the first glance of my tear-filled eye, You answered me.

With gentle correction You showed me the way in which to walk. I followed You.

Each step I took, no matter how hesitant, the tattered manuscript of my decisions transformed into a scroll of life.

The past erased, edited to perfection.

The present being written by hands of service held close by those of my nail-scarred Teacher.

The future, though already written in eternity, is mine to humbly walk out for Your glory.

I have no fear for my critic is my loving Teacher.

Isaiah 30: 18-22
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Member Comments
Member
Date
Marilyn Schnepp 
05/15/10
Although "confusing" all the way through as to whom, when, and where all these things transpired; (At least to this reader) however, it contains poetic and beautiful writing but perhaps I got lost due to a "simple" mind and it was too far above or too deep for my mental capacity. (*.*) The thoughts were very creative in my opinion, even though I couldn't grasp them all. Nicely written.
Brenda Shipman
05/17/10
Well, you really got me with this one; I'm sitting here choking back the tears. The first half of your story describes one of my loved ones right now - totally lost. I mean, you could be writing his story! So this hit very close to home. I loved this: "You longed to have compassion on me. You waited to be gracious to me." Oh, this so perfectly describes the heart of our Father! Then my favorite line: "the tattered manuscript of my decisions transformed into a scroll of life." So beautiful, really, the picture of Rom. 8:28 - and what I pray for my loved one. Thank you for writing this!

Kristi Peifer
05/17/10
"My idols of independence, self-sufficiency, and the right to my own opinion, all built of mud and refuse, so cleverly overlaid in gold, were hollow comfort to my barren soul."

Well said. Thanks for the powerful reminder.