Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: Beginning and End (06/04/26)
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TITLE: The Circle | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
06/08/26 -
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She scrunched the paper and tossed it toward the trash basket, where six other failures lay outside the bin. She pulled another sheet from the printer.
“You going to try again?” her father asked from the couch.
Disney knit her brows. “Miss Ellis gave us this math assignment to draw a circle so perfect that no one could figure out where it started and where it ended. I can do it.”
She planted her pinky in the middle of the page, anchored the pencil between her thumb and two fingers, and slowly spun the paper with her other hand so that a circular shape appeared. She held it up and smirked. It looked more like a lumpy potato.
“Maybe some hot chocolate with marshmallows would help you focus,” her dad said. “Perfect circles are hard to make. Maybe you can use the front and back of a page before you discard it.”
Disney poked her tongue out from the corner of her mouth, focused, and scratched the pencil slowly around and around. “It looks more like an egg,” she moaned.
Her father glanced over her shoulder and chuckled.
“It’s not funny,” she said.
“It’s kind of funny,” he said. “You’ve made circles that look like pumpkins, potatoes, eggs, and strawberries.”
Disney let out a “humph.” She eyed the marshmallow in her chocolate and licked her lips. “I should just trace around the marshmallow.”
“How would you feel about handing that to Miss Ellis as something you did freehand on your own?”
Disney set her pencil down. “Fine. I quit.”
Her dad stepped toward the discarded paper balls by the trash bin. “May I show you something?”
Disney shrugged.
Her father opened up her failures and set one of the better efforts on the table in front of her. “What is a circle?” he asked. “What makes it different than a square?”
“It’s a shape with no corners,” she said.
“What else?”
“It keeps going and going.”
Her father nodded. “Exactly. When you have a perfect circle, can you tell where it starts or ends?”
She shook her head. “It has no beginning and no end. It goes on forever.”
That reminds me of something,” her dad said.
“What?”
“God!”
Disney blinked. “What does God have to do with circles?”
“Everything in our world has a beginning, doesn’t it? This planet, the stars, the sun, you, me.” He pointed toward the kitchen clock. “We live in time with a beginning and an ending. We get one moment at a time. God is different. He has no beginning and no end.”
“I can’t even imagine that.”
Her father moved to the whiteboard near the refrigerator. He drew a large circle. He adjusted it carefully until the two ends merged seamlessly. “Imagine seeing this circle for the first time and trying to find the exact place where it started.”
Emily stepped closer. “You can’t.”
“Right. You can pick a spot and call it the beginning, but the circle has no obvious starting point.” He tapped the marker against the board. “God’s existence is even more amazing than that. He doesn’t travel around in a loop. He simply is. Always was. Always will be.”
Disney stared hard. The idea was mind-boggling. Bigger than math, or anything she could imagine. “Maybe God’s the only one who can draw a perfect circle,” she said. “I can’t even picture someone with no beginning and no end.”
“Neither can I completely,” her father said. “God is greater than our minds can understand.”
Disney slid back onto her stool and picked up the pencil again. She turned over the paper she had scribbled on. The circle she drew wasn’t perfect, but she didn’t crumple it up. She held it up to her father. “Maybe God draws us as circles that aren’t perfect. Maybe we’re still good for something he has planned for us. Maybe we’re amazing just because, and not because we’re perfect.”
“That’s a good observation,” her dad said.
Disney traced around and around the circle with her finger. No beginning. No ending. Just one continuous line. “Maybe if Miss Ellis says my circle isn’t perfect, I can tell her that I know it’s not perfect, but it reminds me of Someone who is.”
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