Story EmbersStory Embers was run by a group of Christian writers and editors who were committed to glorifying God with excellent craftsmanship. We accepted article, poetry, and short story submissions from a number of Christian storytellers around the world. You can peruse posts from contributing audience members below.
Writers tend to be reluctant to show their work to others. We’ve all hovered our cursors over the send button for longer than necessary. Maybe we even changed our minds and closed the window. Why is this simple act so difficult?
I was twenty-four, my friend, and getting married; we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we passed over the field of poppies that said, “We are the numbers to end all numbers. You can try, but you cannot count us away.”
Here I stand amid the ruins, here I seek for answers through thoughts riddled in confusion, the chaos clinking together like iron fetters. My very thoughts are ringing, forged in silence, chain by chain. Release me, for I am bound.
The time has come to fell the flowers; it’s autumn now, the summer’s bounty waning. Outside I go, in the late morning hours, to do the deed, a buoyant manner feigning. Butterfly and bee fulfill their merry task of going back and forth between each bloom. Do they see me? If so, they do not ask whether I come to bring the garden’s doom.
Mahzar sat cross-legged on the sandy floor and gripped his staff to still his trembling hands. Suluboya’s painted face stared at him from the corner of the tent as if waiting for him to renounce his promotion. “This is the will of the tribe,” he said to the idol. “I did not choose this. Nor did I choose Devrim’s actions.”
When people came from a distant land, they saw a light held in her hand, a rock that stood within the sand, that stood for liberty.
I was built deep and hungry, with a heart that wanted to be filled with so much beauty and emotion and love. I thought that was my gift, my blessing—being able to contain it all.
Broken towers, ripped apart. Life is full of pain; nothing is right. All has been demolished. How did it get this way? Tattered and torn, broken to bits. Was life always pain and suffering?
Baby’s feet are tender, tiny, pink, and sweet; rosebud toes are curled tight, wrinkles soft and deep. Baby’s feet are clumsy, and fumble as she tries. Hands and knees and triumph, then disappointed cries.
Last August, a young man in my church killed himself. He came from a large family, and our community loved him. I decided to chronicle the impact of his death, because a Christian suicide is a troubling situation. If the gospel is a message of hope in the midst of ultimate suffering, what happens when a Christian commits the ultimate hopeless act?
