Here is an excerpt from the story I'm working on....it's all I've written so far, and is probably the beginning. I don't have a title yet.


I walked in my front door, exhausted from work. I wasn't physically tired; it was emotional....experiential.....relational........anything encompassed within the radius of dealing with employees that never did what I wanted....that was the fatigue I was feeling. I was looking forward to my chair. The vision of my evening hadn't yet extended beyond the cushy confines of my soft yet stolid inanimate companion. It never talked back to me, or wouldn't do what I commanded it to; I knew that when I pulled the lever, the footrest would swing promptly up, whisking my tired legs up off the floor to defy gravity in midair, where I could rest them as long as I wished. There's no prolonged negotiation with my chair. There's no challenging of my authority. There is no marginally contained expression of resentment nearing hatred. There are no indiscernable, muttered comments. There are no furtive conversations in remote hallways, or nervous glances here and there as concurring feelings are voiced, agreed upon, disparaging jokes exchanged and spread. There are no sudden movements as I round corners, abrupt silences and awkward stares. There are no girls, too young and too attractive, or young men, too athletic and funny and cool. There is no one at all, no thing at all, in my chair. There is me, and there is my chair, doing exactly what I want when I want it to be done.

Of course, there is also the television, that obligatory American luxury, the bane of the obese and the lazy; its noise permeates the room as I recline in my chair, random people and events and emotions and music and colors and people, flitting across the screen; so many people, in the world, in this city, in my store, in my head, in my heart, on my television, doing whatever it is that people seem to feel needs doing. A man murdered his wife yesterday, and his two children, and himself; murdered himself, now what's the deal with that? It doesn't make sense to me, or to the appropriately appalled newscaster telling the story with just the right mixture of human emotion and robotic detachment.

None of this makes sense to him, these things he reads, day after day, night after night. We do what we think we need to, and if we can't, we do something else that cancels the previous need in what we deem an acceptable manner. It might make sense only to us, but that's enough, if we're desperate enough, to compel us to take action.

This man, Robert Galloway, who killed himself and his children and his wife; I'm sure it seemed like a great idea to him at the moment he did what he did. "Goodbye, cruel world," or some such nonsensical rationalization. "I can't deal with this family, this affliction of companionship God inflicted upon me, and I can't deal with this world, this cruel, cruel, race of humans He seems to think are so great. I can't make them happy here, in this place, but they are mine; my responsibility, my burden, mine! I can't, though, I can't, I can't I can't....." I think he cried, at first, when he killed his youngest child. There's no turning back after that. A man who has made up his mind to destroy his world will not leave himself a failsafe once he has taken that fatal step off the edge of the precipice, the plunge into the eternal abyss. I think he killed his youngest first, with heartfelt tears in his eyes.

"Stop."

My own voice startles me, mired as I was in these dark thoughts, but they are not mine; they were his, Robert Galloway's, and he's gone. His life defeated him, and he ended it; his thoughts should die with him. There's no place for them here anymore. I turn off the TV. The abrupt silence in the room helps me to silence my unnecessary contemplation of another man's atrocities. A memory of a Sunday School lesson pops into my head unannounced. There is a section in one of Paul's letters to the Corinthians that tells us how God will never tempt us beyond anything we can't handle.

So much for that.

I cringe at my blasphemy. It's easy to feel isolated and in control of the situation when I'm alone in my house, in my chair with the footrest up. But God's omniscience is hard to get around.

Sorry about that, I think to myself; well, to God, per my intention.....but to myself. I've always thought that God's omnipresence is a little harder to grasp than the fact that He knows everything. Of course God knows everything, it almost goes without saying, at least for me. As humans, I think our natural concept of God — however fallacious in may in its nature be — will still always consist of a mysterious being who can sense our thoughts, know what we're going to do and say before we even think it, who can conjure a firestorm big enough to destroy a city, etc. We all have our presuppositions concerning our concept of God, but almost invariably, across different denominations or even religions, the concept will contain some version of the idea that He knows pretty much everything.

But omnipresence is different. So God is everywhere, yeah, I get that, but what does that mean, exactly? Is He a gigantic, odorless, formless spirit that is so large He encompasses the world? Does He have billions and billions of invisible bodies He inhabits that constantly roam around everywhere? But does He also exist in space, and all throughout the universe? Is there life out there, for that matter? Does God care about aliens more than He cares about us?

"Stop."

For the second time in less than ten minutes, I catch myself off guard by speaking aloud. I hate that I have to talk to myself to keep my thoughts in check. Attending church as a child, where my father was pastor, I can recall wondering what would happen to me if I ever so much as thought anything about God that wasn't......right. I'm vaguely confident that I thought I would automatically go to hell if I ever had a negative thought towards God, at all. He's perfect, after all; how could I ever have a negative thought about Him? As children will often do, I failed to consider that in that equation, there is a perfect being, God, and an imperfect being, me. The object of my thoughts will never be worthy of anything but the utmost respect, adoration, and worship.

But the brain is made of my stupid human tissue, and it's as imperfect as the day God Himself created it. But I am created in His image. Do I even want to be? Blasphemy!

My mental recoil is less pronounced this time. I haven't been to church in years. My father, the pastor, died seven years ago, and my commitment to church died with him. Almost instantly, too; amazing. I faithfully attended virtually every Sunday for 35 years, but I was never committed to church. I was committed to doing what my father wanted me to do, and when his forever disapproving eyes were no longer around to disapprove of my commitment, which I limited to attendance, that limited commitment evaporated almost immediately. That's how I honored my father's memory, with three months of halfhearted, inconsistent church attendance.

I'm so transparent.

My thoughts are silent for a moment after that. In my relative old age, I rarely feel in control of what I'm thinking anymore. They wander all over the spectrum of sanity, wandering over that ethereal border into that which makes very little sense more and more, it seems. Most of the time, I think I just avoid thinking about anything that matters. It's what I do to get by. Because I need to.




Anyway, that's all I have right now. I had more, but it was saved solely on my computer that crashed, a mistake I will not make again. Now, it's saved on my new computer, on my external hard drive, and on the Internet, as I've posted it here.

It'll get more encouraging. It's a story of redemption and of the sovereignty of God. I'm thinking something along the lines of Redemption of a Cynic, for a title, but something less clunky. Anyway, let me know what you think!