Challenging: Day 10

Word Count: 60,020

Summary of Events:

Nicholas — glad to be living in his own house again — got up and headed to an appointment with his lawyer to discuss their plan of action for the custody hearings. At about a quarter to eleven in the morning Jennifer finally convinced herself to get up and out of bed, had a salad for breakfast, and left her dad's house just because she didn't want to think about how badly her life was sucking. Gabrielle was reading the newspaper and was inspired by the community church directory in the paper to call one of the other pastors for a second opinion. Pastor Ken Renneberg, whom she called, arranged to visit her once the funeral he was officiating was over. Gabrielle explained everything to him and he started giving her some information that really interested her and made her feel better, however their visit was cut short by the fact that she needed to go get Jeremiah from school.

Excerpt of the Day:

""I am disappointed at what he's done, but he recognizes that he's done it, he feels bad, and I doubt he would ever intend to do such a thing again," Gabrielle said. "And I think he would do whatever he could to keep himself from doing something like that again."

Pastor Renneberg nodded and flipped in his Bible. "Additionally, if you look in the New Testament, specifically in Jesus' teachings, He says that the only reason God gave them the ability to divorce was because they demanded it of Him. They wanted to have the right to divorce and so He gave it to them. This is affirmed by what is said in Genesis, right at the end of chapter two — written by the hand of Moses just the same as Deuteronomy was — in verse twenty four: 'Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.'"

Gabrielle nodded, quite pleased to see Pastor Renneberg using his Bible too.

"Now, as you know you're not literally one flesh, but in the consummation of your marriage — which can be proven by anyone due to the presence of children — you know each other to depths beyond what you know any other person," Pastor Renneberg said. "In fact, marriage — like many things that God has made — is a likeness, albeit imperfect, of what God's relationship with mankind is, with the man representing God and the woman representing mankind — or at least the church specifically."

"And God doesn't leave us because we've sinned," Gabrielle said. "Pastor Scott gave that as an additional reason why I should leave."

"Exactly," Pastor Renneberg agreed. "Reading through the Bible gives solid, irrefutable proof and testimony of the great lengths God went to for the sake of giving us the ability to return to His presence. The fact that we even exist right now is proof that God will not — and has not — given up on us because we've sinned. He had the power when Adam and Eve sinned to throw everything He'd made in the proverbial garbage can and do it all again, but He didn't, instead He orchestrated a massive multi-millennial plan of such daring, complex audacity we couldn't possibly imagine to give us the right to be in His presence — a right we shouldn't even have."

Gabrielle nodded, maybe she was making up for missing Sunday service anyways, this was rapturously interesting.

"And we, as Christians, are called to be like Jesus, who is fully God," Pastor Renneberg continued. "Therefore, if God went to such great lengths to show us His love when He didn't have to, then we should do similar — being as we can't by any means do exactly the same, nor are we as perfect as He is anyways.""