George listened to Anton say, Those in Hell want to be there. This convinced George that Anton hung onto reality by only a looney link since why would anyone ever want to be in a place like that?
When George died and went to Hell he became a prominent commander in Satan’s army commissioned to nuke the daylights out of Heaven. By contrast when Anton died he went to Heaven.
George exhausted himself throughout his eternity attacking Heaven in every which way he could imagine with extreme prejudice. However, Heaven being what it is, Anton noticed none of it.
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Denise offers the prompt word “link” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
I got the idea that I put in Anton’s mouth that those in Hell wanted to be there from the following passage in The Great Divorce.
There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. (C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, page 75)
Ryan paced the floor complaining about Timothy whom he paraded for judgement through his mind. His indignation was so rationally air-tight that he built a dam of condemnation out of it.
Then a miracle happened. Ryan had a vision of how much the Lord loved Timothy in spite of every accusation Ryan could concoct against him.
When Ryan’s own repentance breached the dam, he didn’t know what overcame him. His heart was flooded with joy.
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Denise offers the prompt word “vision” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Hoping to balance his wobbling view of reality Timothy read the message inside his fortune cookie. Given his expectations for something prophetic he felt cheated when all he read was
Have a nice day.
Self-diagnosed with the rare condition of being intellectually superior to everyone else, he vowed, as punishment to cookie makers everywhere, to never again eat, let alone read the messages within, their cookies.
However, like all of his previous resolutions, this one collapsed a week or so later when he got a taste for Chinese food and found a plastic wrapped cookie in his takeout bag. Figuring “the universe”, as he liked to depersonalize reality, was too dumb, or nonexistent, to care whether he kept his vows, he broke open the cookie to extract the hidden message. Regardless what was actually written on the slip of paper, all he remembered of the message he read was
If you aren’t grateful for a nice day, Timothy, how can you expect to receive a blessed one?
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Denise offers the prompt word “balance” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
In sorrow Naomi felt the need to turn away from Moab to find what was left for her in Bethlehem after the death of her husband and her two sons. Ruth, the widow of one of her sons, refused to let her go alone, telling her, Where you go, I will go, and where you stay, I will stay, and your people will be my people, and your God will be my God, and where you die, I will die.
In Bethlehem Ruth gleaned from the fields of an older man, Boaz, not knowing he was a near kinsman of Naomi’s deceased husband. After negotiations with another kinsman Boaz redeemed the land belonging to Naomi and married Ruth so she could bear children to raise up the name of her deceased husband upon his inheritance.
As a result of this union, Ruth, a Moabite woman, bore a son and called him Obed. From Obed would come Jesse and from Jesse would come David, the singer of psalms, mighty in battle and a future king, and from David would come, generations later, Jesus, the promised Messiah.
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Denise offers the prompt word “turn” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. For what really happened see the short book of Ruth.
Romans 10:13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Matilda had a problem with her right hand that prevented her from closing her five fingers into a fist to pound it against the side table signaling the power of her displeasure when watching the news on TV. Her husband took her to doctors who listened to her give them a piece of her mind because they clearly had no clue what was wrong with her and one even discretely slipped her husband the name of an exorcist.
When a healer visited a local church her husband figured that a healer was a good enough proxy for an exorcist and encouraged Matilda to stand in line with others needing something or other. Since there were many in line the healer had time to only touch her forehead, as he did all the rest, and move on which annoyed Matilda because she expected a bit more than that. Besides, those on either side of her were jumping with joy that their ailments, likely candy-induced toothaches or well-deserved headaches, were suddenly gone while she was no better off than before.
Mumbling she left the church raising her hand against her husband with a fully clenched fist and letting him have it as he noticed, “Matilda, you’re hand is healed!” which would have been a happy ending to this tale except by the time they got home to test her recovery by giving the table a good wallop she could no longer clench her fist.
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Denise offers the prompt word “power” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
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Breakthrough – A Follow-up Six Sentence Story
Some may be concerned about Matilda.
After her failed healing, after her hand refused to clench into a fist, she began to laugh. Her husband laughed as well. Suddenly she had no desire to clench her fists. As the power of the breakthrough fell upon her she wondered why she ever did.
Bart dreamed that a rich man gave him the combination to the lock on his storeroom and told him to take all the gold and jewelry he could carry out. Joyfully he stuffed his pockets.
When a child approached with his hands out the rich man told him to give something to the child, but Bart said, “No, I have to fill my own barn!”
Nonetheless Bart obeyed the rich man giving the child the tiniest gold coin he had crammed away somewhere which turned into a loaf of bread and a fish in the child’s hands. Others seeing what happened rushed to receive something as well.
After Bart opened his eyes from his dream to the morning light and the sound of birds and put on his threadbare clothes to leave the shelter he recalled that his pockets in that dream remained mysteriously full no matter how fast the rivers of living water welled up from within him to give everything away.
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Denise offers this prompt word “combination” for this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
John 7:37-38 37 In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. 38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
In the good old days the Ninevites were a wicked bunch. The Lord told Jonah to tell them to either repent or be severely punished which sent Jonah off on a boat in the opposite direction, because he knew, like everyone else, except perhaps the Lord, that Nineveh did not deserve an opportunity to repent.
When the Lord roughed up the waves to destructive levels below the boat Jonah was fleeing on, the reluctant crew threw him overboard at his own request so the sea would calm. A fish sent by the Lord scooped him into its mouth and held him in a disgusting state of indigestion for three days and three nights until the Lord finally let the fish relieve its bellyache by vomiting its cargo onto the shore. Then the Lord asked Jonah once again to tell the Ninevites to repent lest He destroy them.
Jonah recited the bare text of the Lord’s message hoping no one in Nineveh would listen, but the grotesque stench coming from his direction only confirmed the conspiracy theories about a fish and a boat and, since no one in Nineveh wanted whatever happened to him to happen to them, they all repented.
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Denise offers the prompt word “text” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. For what really happened see the short book of Jonah. Jonah son of Amittai was a prophet during the reign of Jeroboam II: 2 Kings 14:25.
Except for possibly Jehu, for whom she dolled herself up in a desperate seduction play, no one annoyed Jezebel as much as Elijah. In spite of the Lord confirming him over her prophets by sending fire from heaven only on his sacrifices, when Jezebel sent Elijah a death threat he fled so far away that only the Lord’s still, small voice could bring him back.
At that point his usefulness was compromised. To his credit, Elijah did accept his replacement, Elisha, even though Elisha wanted a double portion of what he had. Elisha inherited Elijah’s assigned tasks of acknowledging Hazael as king over Syria whom Elisha saw would become a butcher and anointing by proxy the headstrong Jehu as king over Israel who would pump out judgement upon the whole clan of Jezebel.
If only Jezebel had the wits to realize that manipulation through lies could last only as long as the true Lord (not her Baal) constrained the pressure cooker filled with hatred from exploding, things might have turned out differently and the dogs would not have had a bloody mess for dinner at the gates of Jezreel.
1 Kings 19:9-13 (Young’s Literal Translation, 1898) 9 And he cometh in there, unto the cave, and lodgeth there, and lo, the word of Jehovah [is] unto him, and saith to him, `What — to thee, here, Elijah?’ 10 And he saith, `I have been very zealous for Jehovah, God of Hosts, for the sons of Israel have forsaken Thy covenant — Thine altars they have thrown down, and Thy prophets they have slain by the sword, and I am left, I, by myself, and they seek my life — to take it.’ 11 And He saith, `Go out, and thou hast stood in the mount before Jehovah.’ And lo, Jehovah is passing by, and a wind — great and strong — is rending mountains, and shivering rocks before Jehovah: — not in the wind [is] Jehovah; and after the wind a shaking: — not in the shaking [is] Jehovah; 12 and after the shaking a fire: — not in the fire [is] Jehovah; and after the fire a voice still small; 13 and it cometh to pass, at Elijah’s hearing [it], that he wrappeth his face in his robe, and goeth out, and standeth at the opening of the cave, and lo, unto him [is] a voice, and it saith, `What — to thee, here, Elijah?’
The angel proclaimed that she would bear the Child.
She wondered how this could be since she was a virgin. The angel explained how, but the most convincing explanation was that God could do anything and this is what He wanted to do. If she resisted it would affirm that nothing mattered except what was of no importance, but she had no desire to resist.
Suddenly pregnant anticipating she would soon be nursing Him with milk and protecting Him with her own life, if need be, she went to see her aging cousin Elisabeth to whom the impossible had also occurred.
Luke 1:28 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.
Luke 1:46-55 46 And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, 47 And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. 48 For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. 49 For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. 50 And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. 51 He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. 52 He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. 53 He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. 54 He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; 55 As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever.
In the parody of parochial schools that Nathaniel was writing he had Sister Mary Martha, his own third grade teacher, say, “No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get rid of Jesus.” With his tongue in his own cheek he made her stumble like a strawman through an account of the Resurrection, a belief he himself had become too smart to take seriously.
However, as he recalled the smoothness of her face, ancient from the perspective of a ten-year old, he now saw the face of someone less than half his own mid-sixties age as he let her ramble on about how the followers of Jesus would rise to sing His praises even as they were killed. Putting two and two together he calculated that she must have been recently out of her teens, close in age to his granddaughter. He found an online obituary which reported that she served at the school for fifty-five years until the very day of her death at the age of 75.
Perhaps it was due to the notice of her death or to his realization of her age when she taught him or perhaps it was simply due to him returning to his early love for her, but whatever it was, Nathaniel decided to pitch what he wrote about his former teacher and he never touched the parody again.
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Denise offers the prompt word “pitch” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories.
Catholic Eternal Rest Prayer Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord, and let Your perpetual light shine upon them. May their souls and the souls of all the faithful departed rest in peace. Amen. Revelation 2:4 Nevertheless I have somewhat against thee, because thou hast left thy first love.
Poetry, Short Prose and Walking 