I killed a girl

I killed a girl last year. But I’m not sorry.

She was trespassing on my property, uninvited. I own 10 wooded acres on the outskirts of town, and I have the perimeter clearly marked with “No Trespassing” signs.

She was one of those orphans that have been wandering the streets and living under bridges ever since the orphanage burned down last year. Filthy little creatures. They’re so covered in mud that you can barely tell they’re human. They don’t talk, they just stare at you. They stalk decent people, and steal from our garbage, and sometimes our pantries. I heard Mrs. McCullough found a half dozen of them living behind her garage last winter, taking food from her dogs. The little things disgust me. Their matted hair, riddled with bald patches and welts.

I had taken precautions, you know. When I left my property, I always wore proper protection. A big hooded cloak, that is, so the children couldn’t get a look at my face, and follow me home. It’s always better if you don’t make eye contact.

I had a right to kill her. You can’t deny that she was intruding onto private property. The law says I have a right to defend what’s rightfully mine, and I had the signs posted. It doesn’t matter that she couldn’t read. That is of no consequence. Ignorance of the law is no excuse.

After all, she was threatening to interfere with my lifestyle. She was looking at me with those haunting eyes, and I knew I was beginning to feel obligated to let her sleep inside. Then I’d have to clean her up. And feed her. She wouldn’t have left. Before long I’d practically have to take care of her like a daughter. Then what?

It’s expensive, that’s what. I wouldn’t be able to take my yearly trip to Cancun. And Mrs. McCullough and the neighbors think it’s disgraceful to let one of those creatures crawl around your house. Janet felt all benevolent right after the orphanage burned, and now look at her—house overrun by a dozen of them. Cooking for them, cleaning them, teaching them. She never leaves that filthy house. No, I’m not ready to have a kid, and I won’t have one forced on me. That’s why I had to kill her quick, while my head was clear, and I could make the decision that was right for me.

Janet says those orphans have a “right to life.” She says killing children is wrong. But I don’t like the way she puts it. I don’t think they’re really “children”—I mean, they don’t have names or families. They don’t even communicate, they just stare. Maybe they don’t even think. They’re entirely helpless and unable to contribute to society. I prefer to call them “potential children,” or just “hominids,” because their emaciated bodies only vaguely resemble proper children. To be a real child, you have to be wanted.

Come to think of it, maybe not even “hominids,” because I am a passionate member of PETA, and I would object to the killing of an orangutang on my property. (An orangutang wouldn’t threaten my lifestyle.) So maybe the potential girl was just more of a “thing.” Yes. I didn’t really “kill” then – I just removed an unwanted thing.

And I didn’t even do the removing myself. I had a doctor remove it. He went out to where she—sorry, it—was hiding, behind the shed, and suctioned its brains out. It was a clean procedure, and I didn’t even see it at all, once it was dead.

Sometimes I get these flashbacks of its eyes. I shouldn’t have looked at it for so long before I called the doctor. That was a mistake. That’s why I wear proper protection when I’m in town. But I did see them. And its eyes make me wonder. If I had let her stay on my property, could I have raised her to be a real child? Maybe I could have fed her, and taught her to be a lady. Maybe she could have had a name. Maybe she would have been good for me.

No. I don’t think about that. I’m happy with my life. Those thoughts just make me feel some sort of pang in my heart, like I made a mistake. I told myself I wouldn’t go there anymore. Never mind.

I’m not sorry that I—had it removed. I’m fine.

Melvin and Feer

There once were two gentlemen known by the names
Of Richard P. Melvin and Phineas Feer.
Richard, a banker, had money and fame
And lived in a waterfront house with a pier
But Phineas, a chimney sweep, hadn’t the same
He barely scraped by after taxes each year

One day, Richard realized “All that I’ve gained
Still isn’t enough”
So he took a rope and chair
and hung himself

That very day, Phineas despaired
that he had never made himself a name
So he took too many pills
And ended his shame

Now what they knew not I will tell, lend your ear
The pursuit of material things is all vain
So to us who are left between Melvin and Feer
Let us look not henceforth to the trophies of man
Nor in man himself, even, for wife and dear child
Will not themselves sate the desire inside

I know of only one satisfaction
That which rich and poor seek
The grace of God

Cursed

Suddenly, what the man had felt lurking, looming, as if behind a door—it exploded open. Cursed. A thousand powers of dark magic wrapped around him like suffocating smoke. Every voodoo spell and every demon that makes poor souls tremble at night—they all gathered to suffocate him. The serpent slithered round him and tightened around his lifeblood connection until his soul somehow lost consciousness. The shaft of light from heaven closed. The abyss opened its mouth beneath him, salivating in hunger.

Despair.

He was frightened. For once he was defenseless. “It is futile,” whispered the flicking tongue with delight. The man wailed, for unlike their former encounter, this time he knew it was true. He was like Samson, bereft of his only source of strength. His pillar, gone. His last strand of connection to the paradise. The derision and dishonor were too much to bear.

Cursed.

He looked at the dark clouds, silently brooding, but no dove came down. “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased” – no more. What he would have given even for rain! Even rain was sent down from his father as a sign of mercy. But the sky did not move.
The abyss rose around him.

Falling.

Still pinned to the tree, he felt himself sucked down into a grotto. He was in some tombish wasteland, with not even a wind to whisper to him. The last pinprick of light shrank away above him. The man was alone in darkness, with no one but himself, if even that. He began to feel it. Not pain, for he was numb to it. Stripes were superfluous now. No, this was worse.
Alone.
Outside.
Apart.
Distant.
Isolated.
Excommunicated.
Avoided.
Forgotten.
Abandoned.
Left.
Rejected.
Neglected.
The splinters of the tree were bitter poison as they dug into his back, reminding him of the prophecy. Christ became a curse for us. (Galatians 3:13)

Seeds sprouted after

Ride a jeepney two hours into the beautiful green-clad mountains outside Butuan City, and you’ll reach a covered basketball court that serves as the community center for a small village. A group of medical missionaries were holding a clinic in the middle of the concrete pavilion one morning in late June. They had been welcomed that morning by the village captain and his assistant, who said, “I have lived here all my life, and this is the first time a medical clinic has come to our village.” Jordan and Sam, two college students, took temperatures and blood pressure, then gave everyone a number and sent them to some benches to wait until they were called.

Pastor Antonio leaned on a table near the benches. He was a brown-skinned Filipino with a thick and powerful build, and deep grooves that time had etched into his face. He had once been in the rebel army, but now his hardened face had a sublime tranquility in it, as he taught the people sitting on the benches about the Gospel. Behind Antonio was a large banner with pictures illustrating Bible stories that outlined the Gospel, the Gospel that changed his life and took him from military to ministry. He pointed to the box that depicted a cross on a hill, and addressed the small crowd in deep-voiced Cebuano. I knew what he was saying.

A few minutes later, Pastor Antonio called me over. “I want you to share your testimony,” he said. There was a new group of patients waiting at the benches. I agreed, exited at the opportunity and a little nervous. I told my story, about how I had been raised in the church, how I had wrestled with my father’s atheism, how I had fallen into secret sins that taught me God’s patient love, how I had resolved to hold no part of my life back from my King, how Christ was my only good. Pastor Antonio translated after every few sentences, so I had plenty of pauses to think about what to say. The mothers and children looked at my intently as I urged them to seek God and find him good, as I had. I prayed, and it was over. We passed out some tracts, smiling at the families.

I repeated my testimony to two or three other groups of patients. At three o’clock, the medical mission wrapped up, and we took the bone-rattling jeepney ride back down the mountain road. “Lord,” I prayed, “I’ve been faithful to tell who you are to me. I’ve done all I can, but no one responded openly. Please bring fruit out of it in your own time.”

Pastor Antonio had a daughter who had just given birth and was in the hospital with complications. She was taking heavy antibiotics to fight infection. About a week after the medical clinic, I went to the hospital in Butuan City to visit Antonio and his daughter, marveling at dank corridors that would have appalled most medical professionals back home. As I sat beside his daughter’s hospital bed and talked with him and our friend Rudy, Antonio pointed a finger at me and said something in Cebuano. I didn’t quite catch it, but Rudy translated.

“He says God used your testimony to bring people to salvation. Three people from the medical clinic last week came to Pastor Antonio here in the hospital and asked how to join our church.”

“Wait, they came here?” I asked. The trip to Butuan City was not something casually done for most rural residents.

“Yes, they sought him out in the hospital. There were two women and a man,” said Rudy.

“Praise God!” I said, unable to keep back a smile. Are you serious God? Thank you so much!

Antonio had referred the three villagers to Pastor Allen, a pastor in a neighboring area who came to the village to do social work. He was the closest permanent minister to them, so we put the task of follow-up with these people in his hands – and in God’s.

I walked away from the hospital reeling in delight. God had surely used what I had said, together with what Pastor Antonio had spoken, to stir the hearts of those people. I was sure their faith was genuine. They had gone to such great lengths to find Antonio, a symbol of their search for the Truth.

God had used me, the media guy who took pictures, to be part of communicating the life-changing message of the gospel to these people. God had altered eternal souls, and he had done it through me. Even days after I had left the field, seeds sprouted. Praise be to God, who stirs hearts beyond our sight or knowledge.

Waiting for a Jeepney

It was 9:30 am, already blistering hot, as I sat at the Shell gas station in Butuan City. I glanced at my watch again and squinted down the road – the last jeepney was supposed to have come by 9:00. I was supposed to be on a jeepney out to the village of MJ Santos, where I would meet up with the Nehemiah Team stationed there, but since jeepneys are the only public transportation that goes that far into the mountains, I faced spending most of the day waiting.

A man waved at me from a cluster of men and motorbikes near the road. “Do you live in MJ Santos?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied. He must have noticed my Nehemiah Teams t-shirt. White people are rare in Butuan. “I will give you a ride for 100 pesos. Forty-five minutes,” he offered. Jeepneys cost 40 pesos, but they took an hour and a half. It seemed like my best option at this point. “Okay,” I said, and got on behind him. Another Filipino sat behind me and one sat between the handlebars sideways (four total), and we set off.

As the road turned from paved to “under construction” to dirt and began to wind upward into the mountains, the man lifted his visor and leaned back to talk to me above the strenuous sputter of the motorbike engine. “My name is Rey. I live in MJ,” he said. “Cool. Do you have a farm there?” I asked. We swapped some small talk. Rey was a part-time motorbike driver and had a garden and a store (simply a roadside kiosk annexed to the home). A few moments passed in silence, and Rey leaned back to me again.

“Do you and your friends know the Bible?” Rey must have known a little about the Nehemiah Team in MJ.

“Yes, we study the Bible. It’s a big part of our lives,” I said eagerly.

“I would like to learn about the Bible,” said Rey, “I used to be a bad man, but I do not want to be a bad man anymore. I want to change. I want to learn about the Bible.”

“Would you like for me and my friends to teach you the Bible?” I asked, jumping at the opportunity.

“Yes. I will show you where my house is, okay, on our way back?”

“Sure! Take me by your house, and my friends and I will come by later.”

Rey’s house was right beside the only road that goes through MJ. At five o’clock I went back with Andrew from the Ag team, and our translator Bong, although Rey spoke some basic English. Rey’s house was a single room walled with bamboo and roofed with thatch. His wife was sitting in the adjacent store with their baby daughter (and another one on the way). We sat down on the floor of the house and showed him the first chapter of John in a Cebuano translation of the Bible. “This is the first time I’ve studied the Bible,” he said, gazing at the pages. My turn came and I told him a story I called “A Snake Problem,” describing Moses and the Bronze Serpent, then leading into the Fall of Man (with its serpent) and ending with the statement, “We each have the venom of sin in us, and Christ is our antidote.” Hearing the story, Rey said again, “I used to be involved in some bad things, and I see how its affecting my marriage, and I want to change.” We prayed with him and said goodnight so he could eat dinner, promising to return. Rey had been very receptive! As Andrew, Bong and I walked back along the dusty road at dusk, I prayed aloud, “God, take hold of Rey! He’s searching for you so much, don’t let him go. Open his eyes.”

I had to leave the next day, to visit another missions team in Malaybalay, to the south, but Andrew went back soon after and gave Rey a Cebuano audio recording of the New Testament.

The team went back to Rey’s house about a week later to follow up. “Yes,” Rey said matter-of-factly, “I’ve been listening to the audio Bible before I go to bed. I’ve trusted Jesus to be my savior.” Unsure of such a sure response, they probed a little, asking questions about what that meant. Rey answered every question spot-on. It seemed as though everything had quite naturally fallen into place in his heart. Hayley and Kristen, the girls from the team, later visited Rey’s wife, and she too made a commitment of faith.

Rey had been waiting for someone who could tell him about Christ, who could teach him about the Bible. He was aware of his need, and he was searching for the answer. His heart was primed for the gospel, and all it took was someone to come within his reach. While I was waiting on a jeepney to arrive, he was waiting on a messenger of the gospel to arrive. How many others are waiting, longing deep in their souls for something (or Someone) more, and yet have no one to tell them His name?

The girl with the silk sash

When I saw the girl with the silk sash I ruled myself out. She was probably a prom queen or someone like that, in a society above mine. She approached the doors from one side, my friend Will and I from the other, but we reached the door before her and the other girl. I entered and avoided glancing in her direction.

They came up behind us in the ticket line, and I let a glance slip. I did a double take–she was beautiful. But she also saw me look at her, no doubt. Never mind her, though, just never mind.

Will and me watched the first dance and got accustomed to the atmosphere from the outside ring, leaning on the four-foot wall. I noticed her on the other side, mingling carefree. But never mind. I devoted more effort to ignoring her.

The dance floor cleared to prepare for the next dance, then couples began to gather along the length of the floor. Will said we’d better find partners for the next one, and I agreed. Suddenly, a girl ran up to him and said, “Hey, Will. A friend of mine needs your help.” So he was whisked off to a partner. He came to the dances a lot, though, and this was my first time. I didn’t know a single person here…had to find a partner. The girl with the sash! A burst of excitement caught fire in my veins. But with it came fear like acid. I cowered back, pretending to look at a text message. She was right over there. No…no…, I kept telling myself, hesitating on the brink. What was it that froze me until the violin struck up and it was too late?

The dance floor was full and the outside ring was nearly empty. It seemed like just me and the two girls. I tried to play it cool, to look busy. Could she and the other girl sense me, pacing awkwardly back and forth? She wore a black dress, and I a matching black shirt. Now my mind was consumed by them. I will ask her to dance the next, I thought, my anxiety building with every moment I waited. She was the most beautiful girl in the hall. I should have just approached her then. But still I delayed, waiting for the perfect opportunity.

The dance was over, now was my time. But I bought an instant more by talking to Will—perhaps she would see my friends and I would seem better in her eyes. “Have you found a partner yet?” he asked. “I’m just about to go get one,” I told him. I rounded the entrance from the dance floor back into the outer ring and saw her. But Will was leaning over the wall to talk to her. A smile, a nod. “Oh…you’re going to dance with her?” I asked as he walked past to meet her on the outside. “Yeah,” he grinned. It was that easy. I opened my mouth, but just smiled and managed to mumble, “Cool.” She laid the sash aside. Her first dance was his. I danced with her friend, the second girl.

Later I finally danced with the girl in black. What delight when her smile was toward me. Desire, of a strange kind, appeared that night in me. It evades words—the poets would say that is a good sign. Even if it comes to naught, that night I was alive; all else but her was lost for the while, and afterward my heart buzzed with it. Talking with her, even simply looking and thinking about her, dredged up deep emotion, lingering in my senses like sugar on the teeth. And yet later, it was Will who received her letter, not I.

Note To Self. Remember the fatality of Hamlet’s and my hesitation. Remember the foolishness of false humility. It’s not about if it will work out or not. Looking to the future is trying to control my world and profit from the relationship. What does it mean to love in Christ a girl who you barely know? It means to be free to relate to her openly, without secret reservation or subconscious regard to my appearances. (That is be self-preservation and self-focus.)

Remember, feet, and next time be quick. Tongue, be brave. Self, pursue your desire and do not delay, for fear is doubting the God at your shoulder and that he is willing to delight you. If my life is held safe by another, I will show that I trust him by making myself vulnerable to hurt and failure. If my competence is in God, I will not protect myself from embarrassment. Following my desires is simply running in His fields of freedom. And this running free is trusting in the keeper of the field. In the end It will turn into His glory. So next time, go after the girl in the black dress and the silk sash.

Metal in the leaves

The child scuttled ahead along the path, gravel crunching under his tiny shoes. Suddenly something shiny glimmered in the woods to the left. He turned and froze for an instant, watching. There it was, behind a log. It flashed again—metal caught sunlight. What was it? The child plunged off the path into the knee-high brown leaves, rustling towards the strange object.
“Ben! Stop right there! That’s gonna hurt you!”
The child looked over his shoulder. His father stood behind him on the path, their picnic lunch slung over his shoulder in a green satchel. His father’s face was wrinkled in fear. His hand stretched toward the child, frozen in anxiety, as if the child was a vase about to fall from a shelf.
“Ben, stay out of the leaves. Don’t go near that thing. Come back over here on the path,” his father pleaded. His voice was heavy with danger.
Why should he? the child thought. I want to see what it is. How does he know it’s bad? I want to see. A burst of defiant passion ignited the child’s blood, and he began to turn back toward the sunken metal.
But then, at the last instant, he made eye contact with his father. In the dark eyes he felt a deep affection, a true concern—so true that it made the trees around him seem like a doubtful dream. Then he knew that his father loved him. He could sense that his father knew something beyond his comprehension, distant yet certain. There must be real danger in that piece of metal. The depth of the dark eyes overcame him and quenched the fire of his rebellious exhilaration.
The child sighed and trudged out of the leaves. The gravel crunched under his feet again, and his father stood over him. He dropped the green satchel and scooped him up in his arms. Oh, the warm tight squeeze felt good! The child pressed his face against his father’s shoulder. He was glad now he had not kept going in the leaves.
His father picked up the green bag and started walking down the path. As his head rose and fell with his father’s steps, the child glanced back over the shoulder. Now, from this height, he saw the metal more clearly. The jagged teeth of a bear trap glimmered in the sun.

By the word of your lips I have kept myself from the ways of the violent.
—Psalm 17:4