Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: ANNOYED (04/05/18)
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TITLE: Hard to Swallow | Previous Challenge Entry
By Rebecca Lunn
04/12/18 -
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My brothers and I are survivors of an earth-shattering event—literally.
Not so long ago, we learned with horror how an angry sinkhole swallowed my father and his two famous friends straight down into the eerie void, then the shuddering crater closed its mouth over them in a jagged, twisted smirk. Since then, ‘Tears have been our food day and night.’
My name is Asaph and my father is Korah. Before the tragedy, I have been writing music with my brother to tune out Father’s heavy breathing whenever he is peeved. Father tries really hard to control himself, but more often than not, his displeasure sucks all the joy out of the air when he comes home. My brother and I would inch slowly out of his way. Behind the tent flaps snuggled inside soft leathery smells, we would entertain ourselves making up melancholy tunes with a crispy click-click beat to drown out Father’s murmuring.
Why oh why, my oh my, are you downcast, oh my soul?
Why oh why, are you-boo-hoo-hoo, so disturbed inside of me, why?
Put your hope-hope-hope in God,
(click-click) my Savior and my God
When can I go and meet with God—
“Okay, we need to work on the rhyming there,” I hissed to my brother who nodded.
“If Father could just stop grumbling for once, then I can think better,” my brother snapped and sighed.
“Now you’re grumbling at his grumbling. Stop it or else you’ll end up an old grump just like him. Focus on something positive,” I winked philosophically and clicked my fingers, “something like, ‘by day the Lord directs his love, at night his song is with me.’”
Father never shouted, never kicked the goats, but his thick eyebrows would twitch like two boxers punching each other as he bleats out his aggravations to Mother night after night.
“Who does Moses think he is? Where’s the promised land of flowing milk and honey? Are we there yet? Just look outside, nothing but a howling waste of dusty days. We’ve been walking on and off since I was thirty; now I am nearly fifty and we are still in the middle of nowhere. By now I should be sitting under my own fig tree and owning a vineyard instead of this…this…” I peeked around with one eye and saw Father choke on his manna pancake.
Uncle Moses and Uncle Aaron were special in my eyes, if not in Father’s. Uncle Moses’ face glows. Everybody says that’s because he talks to God face to face. I think if I ever saw God’s face, I’d glow too. And Uncle Aaron has a special scepter that once morphed into a huge snake, then it changed back into a scepter again.
I turned over in my thin blanket as bright sunbeams pried open my sleepy eyelids.
Father had lifted the door flap and peered outside sniffing at the dry heat.
“I’m out to face down Moses one final time. I'm all for democratic rule; we’re all the children of God. Why should Moses and Aaron be more equal than us, waving their stupid stick to lord over everybody? They really just want us killed in this no-man’s land!” Father’s face hardened in contempt as he stalked off to chair a special Levi’s conference in his tent of meeting.
“Asaph! Go and fill the jar of manna before the sun melts it all,” Mother ordered tiredly.
Quietly, I knelt down just outside our tent to carefully pick up tiny pieces of sweet, white seeds. To this day the daft name manna stuck: “What is it?” Every day for every meal we eat “What z’it?”
Unexpectedly, the ground under me rumbled, then stopped.
What is it? Something does not feel right.
“Asaph! Your brother is coming out to pick extra manna for Sabbath!”
My brother ran out to me, white with fright. “Did you feel that quake? What z’it?”
From a distance, I hear Uncle Moses’ irate shouting… something about a donkey…something about going too far…something about censers and hot coals and fire.
Then I saw it for the first time! The glory of God radiated over the entire community in a mesmerizing glow. I hear screams, shrieks, and a long, loud cracking of parched earth splitting; I smell burning flesh.
That evening, Uncle Moses stood, downcast, at our tent door.
“Son, I’m sorry to inform you about your father.”
I gulped.
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This story of Korah and Asaph is loosely based on the account from the book of Numbers chapter 16.
Psalm 42-50 are written by the sons of Korah.
Scriptural concepts in order of appearance:
Numbers 16:31-33
Psalm 42:3
Psalm 42:5,11
Psalm 42:8
Numbers 16:13-14
Deuteronomy 32:10
Numbers 4:3
Numbers 16:11
Numbers 26:9-11
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Well done...
Blessings~