A Reverend I

By Steve

Thu, 03 Jul 2025
  • 218 reads
2 comments
 

I pray everyday. I pray in the morning at 5. I pray for my congregation. I pray for my family. I pray for all those people who do not know Jesus. I pray to Jesus, asking for understanding. I pray to Jesus, asking for love. Love overwhelms me, then a hole opens up. Then a Shadow comes.

-Why do you pray?

-Are you Satan?

-You know that prayers do not really work. You ever look at a broken clock. It's right twice in 24 hours. The same thing with prayers.

I pray for the voice to go away. For the Shadow to go away. Sometimes it attaches itself to my clothing. Other times, it goes directly into my eyes and moves around inside of me. It does pretty much what it wants to do and appears when it wants to. It belittles me and makes me feel small. What am I to do, Jesus? Please destroy this Shadow that is haunting my life. I want to be good and do what is good. Please, make this Shadow disappear.

-Why would you want me to disappear? I'm the best part of you. I've kept you alive this time. Without me, you'd be NOWHERE! I can even mimick Jesus. Aren't I a freak?

I prayed and prayed again. I asked Jesus to fill me with the Holy Spirit. I asked Jesus to destroy the Evil in me.

-Do you know that Evil spelled backward is Live? Live Paul, Live.

Yes, I needed to live, that was true. Life was suffering for so many people though. Was life evil? Was life worth living? Without Jesus there was no true love, no eternal love.

-How about eternal hate? Hell. Is that love too? All those people who never heard the name of Jesus, condemned to Hell. Is that love too?

 

Certificate 15
Story
Relationships
Spiritual

Comments

Submitted by Jessiibear on

This really stayed with me. That line—“Sometimes it attaches itself to my clothing. Other times, it goes directly into my eyes and moves around inside of me”—hit hard. It captures that eerie, invasive feeling of being haunted by something internal but uninvited.

The ending got me thinking too, especially the bit about “evil” being “live” backwards. It reminded me of this uncomfortable truth I’ve often felt but haven’t always known how to put into words—that living in the world, especially in a way that’s disconnected from spirit or God, can slowly twist you away from what matters most. Not in a loud or obvious way, but subtly, in the distractions, in the chasing of things that don’t last. 

I’m not someone super well-versed in theology either, but it made me think about how easy it is to get tangled in the “now” and forget the bigger picture—forget that this life isn’t the whole story. That maybe what we call life in a secular sense, the way we often live it can, in a way, become something destructive when it draws us away from the soul’s purpose. I don’t know if I’m saying that quite right, but that tension you wrote about between faith, doubt, darkness, and the desire to do good—it all came through really powerfully.

Jess <3

Submitted by Steve on

Glad you liked it.