Category: Prose

Short prose

Transforming Obedience—Six Sentence Story

The promise moved from Eve down through the generations. At each dip along the way the Lord was faithful to break every faithless fall.

Finally, as sure as the rising of the sun but against every natural odd, the promise reached a young virgin whom we know today as Maria or Mary. As a servant of the Lord she spoke the simple, but universe transforming, words of obedience: Be it done unto me according to your word.

And so it was.

Mary gave birth to Jesus in Bethlehem Who would fulfill the promise the Lord made to Eve long, long ago.

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Denise offers the prompt word “dip” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Genesis 3:13-16 KJV – 13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

Gen 4:1 KJV – And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.

Luke 1:38 KJV – And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:46-47 KJV – 46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord,
47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

Even Worthy Stan—Six Sentence Story

When Stan got offended he became offensive. That was when all hell broke loose as he tormented those around him and they reciprocated. Stan poured fuel on the flames with the way he explained how each and every one of them deserved it.

And sometimes the people who deserved it actually did deserve it, but hell being what it is, even worthy Stan was made miserable by all his divisiveness. The thought that good folk, like himself, suffered right along with the bad guys got Stan even more offended.

Eventually people, getting tired, put hell back in its cage where it belonged and God gave them more time to start loving each other unless they really wanted to all get locked up in that cramped cage together.

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Denise offers the prompt word “even” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Breaking Their Fall—Six Sentence Story

Many generations ago Jared told his children how their very first father and mother lived in a garden. He said that there was a snake in that garden who told their ancient mother that, if she wanted to be a god, all she had to do was something the Lord said would cause her to die that very day. Convinced the snake knew more than the Lord did, she disobeyed the Lord and got her husband, witless or not, to do the same.

When the Lord realized that a deception had occurred, He went looking for them, but they were so ashamed, being now woke, that they wanted only to die before He could find them. He found them in time, extended their lives beyond that day and promised that the snake’s masters who usurped dominion over the Earth would be crushed by the woman’s seed.

And that was the first step the Lord took to break our fall, Jared said telling his children as much as he could remember of the parcel of information and explanation which held a sacred promise that his own father and mother had passed on to him years ago.

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Denise offers the prompt word “parcel” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Genesis 2:16-17 KJV – 16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Genesis 3:9-19 KJV – 9 And the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?
10 And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.
11 And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12 And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
13 And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life;
18 Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field;
19 In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Dominion—Six Sentence Story

Less than an hour after the dog broke loose from his chain, after he killed Joe’s chickens and after he hunkered down at the far end of Joe’s isolated, one-room cabin, Joe walked through the cabin’s open door with a repaired chain in his hand. The dog growled and Joe knelt down a few feet from him so their eyes could stare each other down.

Pressing his index finger on the wooden floor, Joe said, “GET YOUR“—and may the gentle reader forgive me for not repeating the unfortunate adjectives Joe chose to describe the dog’s—”ASS OVER HERE!” The dog correctly understood that there were only two choices: either submit or someone was going to die. The dog bowed his head, turned his growl into a whimper and received the chain.

Joe forgave the dog stoking his fur to draw him out of the shadow of transgression as Joe led him out of the cabin back to the dog house.

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Denise offers the prompt word “shadow” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Genesis 1:26 KJV – 26 And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

A Fast With Daily Bread—Six Sentence Story

After watching a documentary warning him about this, that and the other thing, Brian looked for sources to corroborate what he had heard. He quickly realized that what he heard was only partially true. He also wondered for whose benefit the documentary was made.

He heard his heart advise him that a half truth is worse than a whole lie.

And that was when Brian began his fast with daily bread which he had been on now for over a year. The yokes broke, the bonds of wickedness were loosed and the oppressed, including Brian himself, were freed.

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Denise offers the prompt word “benefit” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.

Isaiah 58:6 NKJV – Is this not the fast that I have chosen: To loose the bonds of wickedness, To undo the heavy burdens, To let the oppressed go free, And that you break every yoke?

Bond—Six Sentence Story

One day Jeremy decided to give Samuel a piece of his mind. His mind started off calmly enough, but then it entered the Land of Half-Truths where words were prized more for the pain they caused than for their clarity.

Seeing Samuel’s silence suddenly change into laughter, Jeremy demanded to know: What are you so happy about?

I’m watching that little demon run your mouth.

Realizing it was noticed, the demon fled. With the demon gone the bond of commitment to his own righteousness that guided Jeremy through fantasy land dissipated like a dream he desperately wanted to remember, but no longer could.

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Denise offers the prompt word “bond” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

A view from the Charles Bridge in Prague which has nothing to do with the story except for the contrasting colors.

Judge—Six Sentence Story

Brian made a lot of mistakes which annoyed people who had to put up with him. Although a likeable guy that he annoyed people didn’t bother him so much as his suddenly realizing that what he was doing was actually wrong. Once he understood what he was doing was wrong he had the sense to immediately reject it resolving never to do it again.

However, some of those rejected mistakes would wedge their way back into his life. When that happened he’d have to repent all over again to the annoyance of the perfect ones who had to put up with him.

And that was the story of Brian’s life, a calm and joyful life, but one which annoyed people who for some reason didn’t need repentance.

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Denise offers the prompt word “wedge” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Story.

Matthew 7:1 KJV – Judge not, that ye be not judged.

Matthew 18:21-22 KJV – 21 Then came Peter to him, and said, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? till seven times? 22 Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times: but, Until seventy times seven.

Empty! Hallelujah!—Six Sentence Story

They rolled a stone in front of His tomb. At the request of the religious authorities the stone was sealed and a guard placed by it.

The news was still spreading that He had called forth a man who had been dead for days and that man came out of his tomb. Since He Himself was now dead and lacking any agency to cause trouble, they hoped this would end the resurrection mania that He started.

Twilight darkened into night as the religious authorities wondered how the veil of the temple could have been torn from top to bottom.

Days later when some of His followers went to the tomb they found it opened and empty.

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Denise offers the prompt word “agency” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.

Matthew 12:40 NKJV – 40 “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

John 11:43-44 NKJV – 43 Now when He had said these things, He cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth!” 44 And he who had died came out bound hand and foot with graveclothes, and his face was wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Loose him, and let him go.”

Matthew 27:51 NKJV – 51 Then, behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom…

Matthew 27:62-66 NKJV – 62 On the next day, which followed the Day of Preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees gathered together to Pilate, 63 saying, “Sir, we remember, while He was still alive, how that deceiver said, ‘After three days I will rise.’ 64 “Therefore command that the tomb be made secure until the third day, lest His disciples come by night and steal Him away, and say to the people, ‘He has risen from the dead.’ So the last deception will be worse than the first.” 65 Pilate said to them, “You have a guard; go your way, make it as secure as you know how.” 66 So they went and made the tomb secure, sealing the stone and setting the guard.

The Kingdom of God Has Come Near To You—Six Sentence Story

When Ryan visited his friends one evening he talked to their aunt who sat in a wheelchair with her heart wrapped in a web of bitterness so tightly that love couldn’t escape. Feeling a rush of reckless compassion for them he risked asking her if she’d like a prayer of faith even though he knew she wouldn’t.

Compelled by politeness she agreed sternly informing him that she knew what paralysis was even if he didn’t and he merely responded by saying, I command healing in your body in the name of Jesus. After a pause he spoke directly to the hostility in her eyes, The Kingdom of God has come near to you. When nothing happened, he told her to remember and expect her healing, but if anything was amiss it was his faith and not her lack of it.

Three days later she rose from her chair and walked wanting out of habit not to smile yet overcome with such joy she couldn’t help it.

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Denise offers the prompt “web” for this week’s Six Sentence Story.

James 5:13-15 KJV – 13 Is any among you afflicted? let him pray. Is any merry? let him sing psalms. 14 Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord: 15 And the prayer of faith shall save the sick, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he have committed sins, they shall be forgiven him.

1 Peter 2:24 KJV – Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed.

Natural or Supernatural

In trying to find out how far back the idea of the natural went the search engine offered a link to a paper by a naturalist philosopher, David Papineau, who described philosophers like himself as people who were committed to the belief that reality contained only what is natural, nothing supernatural.

Papineau wrote1,

They [naturalist philosophers] urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit”…

His argument could be easily rejected. All I’d have to do is reject any definition of natural that could exhaust reality. Indeed, I’m more inclined to feel that reality is exhausted by the supernatural rather than the other way around.

A Miraculous Raising From the Dead

Besides Papineau, I was also listening today to Curry Blake give a testimony during his Divine Healing Technician Training lectures. Before he was involved in his healing ministry his first daughter died when she was three and years later another daughter fell over twenty feet onto concrete. He could tell she was dead, but he carried her and then stood her up against the wall commanding her over and over again: In the name of Jesus you will live and not die.

And then she came back.

She said she was hungry. He gave her only a small piece of bread, because her mouth was crushed in the fall. When he took her to the hospital they said she had been dead for 45 minutes.

Blake made an interesting comment (about 52:50 in the video) explaining why he didn’t take his daughter to the hospital when he realized that she was dead:

Now I didn’t rush her to the hospital cause any time you take a dead body to the hospital they take them away from you and you don’t get to be with them anymore. Right? That’s why we don’t see many dead raisings in the States. Soon as somebody dies they take them away and they start cutting on them and taking pieces out and you’re not with them and you can’t get to them again until the funeral. Whereas in other countries they, a lot of times they, keep the body in the house and different things go on and you can get to the body. That’s why there are so many more dead raisings in other countries. You know, we’ve civilized ourselves out of the power of God most of the time.

In my mind I took Blake’s testimony back to Papineau. I had a few questions to ask the naturalist philosopher.

  • If dead bodies are part of a reality that is exhausted by nature can commanding them to live and not die in the name of Jesus bring them back to life?
  • When dead bodies do in fact come back to life, how does that fit into the deterministic natural laws that supposedly rule a universe closed to the supernatural?

He didn’t answer, but then I only asked him in my mind. In my heart I was beginning to see how our philosophical commitments to what we think of as natural keeps us from seeing what is truly real.

Footnotes

1 Papineau, David, “Naturalism”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2023 Edition), Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman (eds.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2023/entries/naturalism/>.