Tag: #sixsentencestories

Beatriz’ sister told her that she could get her six-year-old son healed from his stomach pains that often left him wincing and crying for a mere $70. The bill from the hospital had already reached thousands of dollars with no hope that her son would ever get better.

Beatriz had no doubt that what her sister offered would work since she knew many who were healed through those means. However, she also knew there would be hidden costs living under the charm of a deceitful lullaby.

Within two months her son breathed his last and was buried in the church cemetery attended by friends who had prayed for them seemingly without success. However, right up to her own death forty years later Beatriz was grateful for those prayers which gave her the strength to reject her sister’s screaming, blaming and hell-bound insistence that she exchange her and her son’s souls for temporary relief.

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

Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.

Proverbs 31:30 (NASB)

Johnny didn’t trust anyone because he knew they were a lot like himself and knowing himself he knew better. He didn’t think there was anything wrong with his own behavior because when dogs ate dogs the rats better watch out.

After all, wasn’t it the point of the game, the purpose of life, to get more stuff than the other guy before one died? He just didn’t like it when someone pulled a fast one on him and wasn’t fair.

Surveying his wealth Johnny was proud of all he had been able to accumulate before he died. However, on the final day of his life, too weak to chase them off, he watched dogs fight over his treasures and rats clean up the crumbs.

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

Jeff looked at the cracked mug he found among his father’s possessions after the funeral. He recalled how its glaze brought to his mind calm waters under a blue sky when he saw his father drinking from it.

Wondering why his father had not thrown it away as useless junk long ago Jeff took the mug home and set it on his desk to hold pens. Decades later that’s more or less where it still sat charged with the duty of caring for odds and ends.

As Jeff reached his own last days he explicitly put the mug on a list of items that his son would inherit with an explanation that although the mug no longer served its original purpose it was something his grandfather drank from. Besides, it still made a great place to put pens and it had a beautiful glaze like calm waters under a blue sky.

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

When I think of junk I think of the junkyard of Gehenna and the yearning that we, broken as we are, should all have to be saved, salvaged, born again, so we may be found useful once more.

As a popular guide Steve told his clientele what they wanted to hear about the history of the island, its famous sandy beaches, its monarchy (or rather dictatorship), and the concentration camps. Things went well for him until he himself stopped believing the narratives he told others.

His doubts began when construction workers discovered mass graves followed by the leaked results of forensic analyses. His suspicions were confirmed when the graves suddenly disappeared and every major news outlet reported over and over again that the graves never existed nor had any “forensic analysis” ever, ever, been conducted implicating the royal house.

Since he was merely a tourist guide Steve felt safe including his suspicions, albeit in a hushed tone, during the narrations he gave of the island figuring he ought to slip the truth through the cracks if he could. When he lost clientele he suspected he must have crossed someone’s line in the shifty island sand, but that no longer bothered him.

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

Pharaoh’s annoyance increased when his magicians, one after the other, and then his wise men could not come up with a satisfying interpretation of his dream where seven thin cattle ate seven fat cattle. After the chief butler remembered how Joseph, a foreigner and prisoner, once calmed his own anxieties with dream interpretations that later came true Pharaoh ordered that Joseph be brought to him.

Joseph told Pharaoh that his dream meant he should set a discerning man over Egypt to reserve a fifth of the produce from seven years of plenty, represented by the fat cattle, so the people would have food to eat during the later seven years of famine, represented by the thin cattle. The interpretation pleased Pharaoh as well as many of Pharaoh’s top courtiers who saw themselves being chosen to lead the project.

Joseph’s humility in crediting his own God rather than himself for any dream interpretation he gave impressed Pharaoh. Not trusting his own courtiers he set Joseph in charge.

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Denise offers the prompt word “reserve” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. This is a partial retelling of Genesis 40-41.

When George saw his simple-minded companion, Bart, go through the narrow entrance way showing George how to squeeze in if he bowed down a bit (actually quite a bit) George realized he wouldn’t fit, at least not with all the baggage he had. After yelling at Bart to come back, calling him an idiot for going through that hole in the wall, and seeing its door close George gave up on his companion as lost.

Later in the evening George saw Bart through a bright window at the very wedding feast they were both originally planning to attend. He went back and found the door banging on it after he, George, of all good and worthy people, was refused admission by the doorkeeper.

His complaints turned into weepy indignation which George alternated with teeth gnashing, a futile rebellion at this point. The fire burning inside him synchronized with the growing darkness as he uttered ineffective curses against those at the wedding feast, a feast he declared he wouldn’t attend now if they paid him.

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Denise offers the prompt word “lost” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of Luke 13.

Greg told his three friends sitting with him in a booth for lunch that he had peeked out from under a cultural blanket of deception, a demonic snow job, that had covered him for decades. They listened politely amused by the stuff he came up with knowing he’d be over with his revelations shortly.

It’s not that he had been right often before. Generally he got things wrong especially when he offered health tips for losing weight. But he seemed pretty sure about what he had seen.

That they thought he was nuts only confirmed Greg’s suspicions, which he tactically kept to himself for the moment, that the cultural deception he experienced had disarmed them as well.

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

Jeff knew from personal experience that he was not only up against human beings although they were the evident ones attacking in the field so much as their demonic manipulators. It was still possible for those human adversaries to flip and become allies, but no chance at all for the demons to do so.

The manipulated, however, didn’t believe in demons and pursued Jeff with extreme prejudice.

If it were as easy as taking a red pill Jeff would have taken one himself when he was under their influence. Today if someone offered him such a pill he’d wonder whether it contained the very witchcraft that caused the war in the first place. As he put on his armour that morning, his last morning as it turned out, he was grateful that he was still found useful in spite of all he had done wrong.

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Denise offers the prompt word “armour” to be used in this week’s Six Sentence Stories. I was thinking of Ephesians 6, but you are welcome to imagine these manipulators as zombies, aliens, rogue robots, or some other symbol of the demonic.

Joe tossed the letter into the box not as a keepsake but as one of those things he didn’t have time to sort through at the moment. More than two decades later while cleaning the basement he noticed the box and went through its contents. He found his father’s letter at the bottom. Reading it for the first time he realized his father was not scolding him in spite of their disagreements but rather offering him assistance should he need anything during that tense period when he decided to move away from the family home.

Having a rebellious son now of his own Joe understood what must have been going through his father’s mind. Although he and his family reconciled shortly after his move, it wasn’t until he read his father’s letter that he began wondering just how much of his past was lived under misconceptions of what was actually going on.

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

Tom could not see how to get from where he was to where he wanted to be. Nor did anyone have a suggestion outside of praying that he get well soon.

In desperation he resigned himself to whatever would happen hoping he could get his house in order before it did.

While sitting outside in the warm summer air Tom’s appetite returned and his death influenced fantasies left him. Within an hour and without any evident treatment to credit with the change he suddenly found himself where he didn’t think it was any longer possible for him to be. He got better.

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