Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: Insulted (07/11/24)
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TITLE: The Sanctification of Old St. Nick | Previous Challenge Entry
By Ellen Dodson
07/17/24 -
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“Oh, sweet, sweet LeeAnn. I don’t deserve you,” I mutter as I rub my sore knuckles. “I don’t deserve Him either.”
Even now, if she could, LeeAnn would slip her arms around me and remind me that I’m “a work in progress.” She’s right. There’s been real progress. As a kid, I answered more to expletives and insults than I did my own name. I was smart enough to know that I needed parental affection and acceptance. But because I didn’t get it, I declared war on God in my twenties by worshiping power and myself. Bought a motorcycle, opened a repair shop, and raised hell on the weekends. The image of excitement and masculinity, women flocked to me. Sex, booze, and bikes. I attest, sin is fun for a season.
But, LeeAnn, my childhood friend, ran a bakery next to my shop. At twelve, she informed me that the Lord said we’d marry someday. She wasn’t beautiful by worldly standards, but she mesmerized me with her compassion, joy, and humor–everything
warm in a cold world. While sexier women chased me, I chased her. She loved me, but possessed the kind intimacy with Jesus that indicated she didn’t need me. She refused to be unequally yoked. To get her, I needed to get saved and accompany her to church.
Our routine coffee and cinnamon biscuit breakfasts before opening our shops invited mostly banter but also sobering reminders of Him. Eventually, her biscuits and her unconditional love stirred yearnings for a wholesome reality. Weekend “fun” betrayed me, exposing me as a cowardly little boy rather than a man willing to face God. I was just an empty pretender on the run with other hollow souls.
When LeeAnn and I married three decades later, I was right with the Lord and devoted to my bride. Through her, I learned much about His limitless love and His autobiography, the Bible. But, still, I struggle with the whole old man and new man teachings. Can God really forgive me when the old man keeps reappearing? Why couldn’t I resist the liquor? Or just forgive Arnie’s insults? Why is my pride still easily offended?
Last Sunday, the church, decked in poinsettias, was crowded for Christmas service. A boy, about three, with hazel eyes the size of moons, propped his chin on the back of his pew and fixated on my long white hair and matching beard. I responded with crossed eyes and a silly, toothy grin. He cackled and asked, “What’s your name?”
“Nicholas.”
The boy's eyebrows met his hairline; we overtook him. He pointed to Santa on his coloring book. “You’re St.Nick!”
Though I looked the part as I chuckled and my biscuit belly jiggled, I protested. “Whoa there buddy, let me tell you, I’m no saint.” LeeAnn winked and smiled at the boy while elbowing me, her signal to discontinue my inappropriate confession. Later at home, she squeezed my hand and whispered, “you are a saint, made righteous in Him.”
But, LeeAnn’s not here to encourage me. There’s no Bible in sight. “Holy Spirit, forgive me. Help me.” I weep, lifting my arms, littered in faded, raunchy tattoos, to Him.
My embrace is returned by love much stronger than even LeeAnn’s. He convicts me gently, calling to mind my troubled parents, my vain younger self, and a world of deceived, rebellious souls abusing their Creator’s name in anger or ignorance. We curse and reject Him now just as onlookers did when He offered Himself in the greatest, most torturous act of sacrificial love the world has ever known.
I plummet to my knees, nodding and sobbing vigorously in understanding. I’m an empty vessel for the purest and most powerful love. He fills me, strengthening the new man against temptations yet to come.
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Blessings
Good to be reminded that all saints are "works in progress"
Well done!
The title drew me in and the story kept me to the end. It wasn't what I was expecting at all and I loved every single minute of it.
That's a good woman he found and that is how a Christian godly marriage is supposed to be. As a single thirty-something young lady, it gives me hope.