Chapter 12
The End of Us
I awoke to my mother knocking on my bedroom door. “Son, there’s a girl on the phone for you!” I looked at my clock radio and nearly moaned, as it was only 6:30.
“I’ll be right there,” I answered her, getting up groggily, reaching for my robe and draping it around myself.
“I don’t know about a girl who calls at 6:30 on a Saturday morning. She must not know my son very well,” my mom said as I opened my bedroom door and headed towards the kitchen where we kept the phone. I didn’t say anything.
“Hello.”
“Joshua…” It was Yvonne.
“Yvonne, you made it home!”
“No thanks to you. Where did you go? What happened?”
I explained what went on from the time I left her, to Bishop Matthew, and then the hospital. She prodded me for more details but for some reason I was holding back. “That’s about it,” I explained innocently. “I left in my car and the Bishop left in his.”
“I see,” she said. “I’m just surprised that a bishop would help someone who threw themselves on the mercy of the congregation. They’re suppose to sit back and watch at that point.”
“Maybe the Spirit moved him,” I said mockingly, for what most of ‘the church’ calls the Spirit moving them, seems more like a circus act instead of an act of God.
“The Spirit doesn’t break the church rules,” she said. “The Bishops aren’t suppose to do anything after the defendant throws himself on the congregations Holy Mercy!”
“What if that ‘Holy Mercy’ nearly kills another?”
“Well, church rules say even then!”
“What happened to thou shall not kill?” I asked.
“That’s not for ‘church mercies’,” she answered me. “The congregation is Spirit filled and does the will of God!”
“Pelting another with hymnals is the will of God?”
“It must have been,” she answered, not too convincingly.
“Well, I think the bishop was the Spirit filled one and the ‘Holy merciful’ congregation was full of something else!”
“But the Spirit doesn’t break rules,” she said, sounding a bit frustrated.
“What if it were a lousy rule?” I asked. “No one’s perfect you know. Maybe when the church made up this rule it made sense then, but in certain circumstances it doesn’t.” She was silent for a moment.
“You don’t understand. If you were a member you’d…”
“What? Throw hymnals?” She was silent again.
“Look Yvonne. I’m not a member as you put it. I don’t have what you call ‘Spirit’ but what I do have is a sense of judgement and from that sense, I found that what Bishop Matthew did was God’s will and what the rest did was their own will.”
“You don’t understand,” she started again. “If you’d only read more on the church history maybe it’d make sense to you. Bishop Matthew was wrong and I bet he talks to the congregation tomorrow and apologizes.” This time I was silent.
“Well, I guess you aren’t joining the church are you?”
I almost laughed but managed to answer. “Well, not right now.”
“I see…”
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t go out. I still like you.” I told her.
“I can’t be unevenly yoked,” she stated. “But we can be friends.”
“Friends we are then,” I said, smiling to myself.
“Well, bye Josh.”
“Bye Yvonne…” She hung up and I headed back to bed.
“What was so important?” My mom asked, at the same time trying to clean dried blood off of my jacket.
“Nothing much,” I answered. “She called to end our relationship.”
YOU ARE READING
Childlike
SpiritualJoshua Nun starts his first year in college with hopes of adventure, education and finding a girlfriend. Much to his surprise he meets not one but three ladies, all who want to help him find God. Joshua, with help from his friends, manages to travel...
