Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Violation (04/04/24)
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TITLE: The Day Midnight Struck in the Garden of Eden | Previous Challenge Entry
By Philippa Geaney
04/11/24 -
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that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.’
Hebrews 4:16
Three hundred years ago, Monsoir Charles Perrault’s pen and ink danced a little maid across his page and into the arms of her Prince.
Today, Josie McBride waltzed the same little Cinderella into the hearts of her preschool audience. They sat transfixed, listening to the story of a broken, lonely maid saved from a wicked usurper and chosen by a handsome prince to be his love.
If they’d heard it before, they gave no clue.
Round-eyed, and still, they listened intently.
Josie McBride knew the complexities of the human heart, her class of four and five-year-olds gave her access front and center to its entanglements every day.
Halfway through the story, she flipped the storybook over to the cover. Was it possible Monsoir Perrault’s tale echoed the plight of every human heart? That woven into this author’s DNA strands, he’d managed to transcribe a tale echoing the cry of the heart for love and deliverance from the catastrophic transgression?
Of every tree of the garden, you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat, for in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.
The children were waiting, and she returned to where Cinderella’s carriage, with its plumed and prancing horses, carried her to the ball.
Soon, the boy's interest wavered, and one or two drifted off to pursue the hope of catching a mouse for its equine potential.
Josie supposed the girls also knew that Ella of the Cinders could do nothing but obey the cruel demands of her manipulative stepmother and that she would weep quietly without hope of appearing before the royal family at the ball.
She continued while thinking that nothing had changed. Even in the twenty-first century, every heart still knew – yearned for - the intimacy of an unknown love.
But how to find that love?
A Scripture rose from her heart.
For since the creation of the world, His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.
Even so, when we were children, under the elements of the world,
when the fulness of time had come, God sent forth His Son:
‘Miss, you’ve stopped reading. Pl-l-ease!’
Josie blinked, refocused, and read on until the search for the Prince’s lost love was found.
Her boys, ready to move, jumped up and started waving swords, intent on rescuing a damsel in distress, while the little girls stood to twirl and prance about in make-believe gowns and glass slippers.
Josie smiled at the obvious contrast of gender. At five, they had not connected the author’s possible analogy to man’s violation towards God in the Garden of Eden, nor the loss and grace-filled restoration of relationship and favor with the Father, King of Kings.
Monsoir Perrault probably hadn’t either.
Josie filed the book away in the child-height bookcase and turned to join the
little band of dancers.
‘But we have a hope,’ she whispered to herself. ‘A Prince, a Royal Son, has come to redeem and take us boldly and confidently into the Throne Room. Forever.
Genesis 2:16-17. Romans 1: 20. Galatians 4: 3-4. Heb.4:16
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