Tuesday, June 17, 2008

the sunglasses

The young girl skipped along happily.Her crisp white dress shone in the sunlight.
The chirping of birds mixed with the rustling of leaves in the wind.
As she looked around, the girl admired the freshly cut lawns and beautiful gardens.
She stopped to wipe a scuff mark off her shoe, aware that it might marr her gorgeous surroundings.
"God has given me this beautiful day, this beautiful world," she thought. "I must take extra care to keep myself beautiful for Him."
She stooped and pulled a weed that had been growing along the walkway, pleased that she could do something to help keep God's creation beautiful.
As she walked on a little further, she noticed a pair of sunglasses lying in the grass.
She picked them up, looking around to find their owner. Since no one was nearby, she decided to try them on.
Suddenly, the world around her changed. Oh, the manicured lawns were still there, and the flowers, but she noticed her dress was covered in stains. She hadn't noticed the rusty garbage bins overflowing with filthy garbage. The bird that had been singing was hopping along the ground with a badly mangled wing. The rustling leaves were the few remaining on the dying gnarled trees. Ahead, she could see the walkway simply fell off into a deep ravine. There were one or two other girls with stained dresses trying to put up signs of warning ahead of the ravine, but they kept getting taken down by the others who were busy pulling weeds and mowing the beautiful lawns - none of them paying any attention to the chasm. The girl began to remove the awful glasses, but then, determinedly pushed them back on and ran to help the other girls with the signs, amazed that she had never before seen that she was in the midst of Satan's territory.