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Short Story: New Pathways

“Why are you heading down this path?”

It was a good question. To be honest, Will wasn’t quite sure. The path was well worn–one he’d traveled often whenever he wanted to head down to the river for a swim. But he’d never really stopped to think about why he’d chosen it.

“It’s just the path I take to the river,” he mumbled.

“That doesn’t make it the best path,” Joshua pointed out. “There’s all kinds of dangers on this path: snakes, poisonous plants–I could go on. There’s a much better way to get to the river.”

Joshua pointed as he spoke to a barely visible path in the distance.

“But that path is hardly a path!” Will objected.

“That’s just because you haven’t traveled it much,” Joshua replied. “Make yourself travel it every day instead of this one, and it will become a solid path over time too. Come on, Will. New pathways might be hard to forge at first, but it will be worth it in the end to take the better route.”

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Short Story: Truth Glasses

Darkness—oppressive darkness. It was all Emma could see. No matter which way she looked, there it was staring back at her. Each path she could take led to the same thing: more darkness. What had become of light? Did it even exist anymore?

Perhaps it did, somewhere. Emma knew at the end of her journey there’d be light. But there was no more light on the journey, of that she felt sure.

Emma’s last several miles had been filled with obstacles. Now all she could see were dark shadows stretching out before her.

“It’s just so discouraging,” Emma moaned to her traveling companion, Sarah. “I’m not sure why my father set me on this journey in the first place.”

“Okay, I know it seems discouraging,” Sarah replied. “But you’re not seeing the truth, Emma. Yes, there’s darkness, but there’s light too. There’s night, but there’s also day. You’ve got to put those glasses on.”

“Glasses?” Emma asked listlessly.

“Yes, you know, the ones your father gave you.”

Right—the glasses. Her father had given her glasses to help her see the world as it really was. Emma was pretty sure the glasses wouldn’t change anything—that she was already seeing everything accurately—but she pulled them out and dutifully held them up to her eyes anyway.

Wait—there was light amid what before had seemed only darkness! What a difference it made to look at the situation through the lenses of truth.


“Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:7 (ESV)

“So Jesus said to the Jews who had believed him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.'” John 8:31-32 (ESV)