Creative Writing Prompt #15 Part 3: A Covering Beyond the Mask

 Hey Guys!

I (L.) am back with part 3 of my writing prompt! In case you haven't noticed, I am making this up as I go along and as I type this I don't even know if it be the conclusion. :P I am assuming you all need at least a refresher on Parts 1 and 2, so go ahead and get that here. All parts of the Mask story will come up with the most recent at the top. You can also find them individually on our Writing Prompts page. So here we go...

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To me, being covered had always meant hiding behind a lie. How could my sin be covered without deceit in my spirit? It didn't make sense! But then again God almost never seems to make sense at first glance. I felt so close to hope and yet I still couldn't quite grasp it, so I finally decided to ask for help. I have a leader named  at youth group who knows a lot about the Bible, so I asked if we could talk one day after church the next Sunday. "Sure," she answered, taking a seat on the edge of the stage. "What's on your mind?" I hadn't really planned to explain what was going on; I just wanted to ask her to explain the verse. But I was having such a hard time keeping my mask up with all of these questions swimming around in my head. "I... I read this verse and I don't really understand it." I stammered, flipping my Bible open. "'Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven,'" I read from Psalm 32:1-2. "'Whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the LORD counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit.' How can you cover something up without being deceitful?"

"You know, Romans 4:7-8 actually quotes the first part of that passage." said Sarah, pulling out her phone to look it up "Oh, here we go. 'Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
and whose sins are covered; blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.' Before that Paul was talking about Abraham and how his faith in God was counted as righteousness. He wasn't saved by works, because no one, not even the greatest people in that Bible were good enough. It's not like he hid his sin from God though. In a sense, God hides our sin from Himself in Jesus." She started looking up another verse, and I was wondering how she knew so much about the Bible and why she thought this was making any more sense to me than the original verse. I think so far she had basically said that this verse wasn't really about wearing masks.

"Here is a verse about how God chooses not to see our sin." said my leader. "Jeremiah 31:34 says, 'And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, "Know the LORD," for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.'"

"Isn't that awesome? We have direct access to God because He choses to forget about our sin! He can do that because Jesus already paid the penalty for it. So when it says in Psalms that the person whose sin is covered and has no deceit in their spirit is blessed, it means that they are sinful like everyone else but they don't they to hide it on their own. They let Jesus cover it for them. Make sense?"

"I think so." I answered feeling freedom even closer, giving me anxious courage. "I've been trying to hide it myself, though. Can you help me give it to Jesus?" I asked, close to tears.

"Let's pray." Said Sarah.

 We asked God to help me let go and trust him and it was really uncomfortable, but freedom felt closer every second. I couldn't stop the tears from falling and beginning to weaken my Mask. Sarah held me tight as I asked God to take it and as it began to fall, I started to push it back into place but I knew it wouldn't do any good at this point. I peeled it off and tore it apart. I knew I had a lot of work to do, but I knew that no matter what people see and think when God looks at me, He sees the perfection of Jesus so I don't have anything to worry about. I took a deep breath and let it go.

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Okay, now to explain my inspiration. As many of you know, I went to a camp this summer called Masquerade. You can read about it from my perspective here. I liked the literary possibilities in the mask theme, and I hoped writing about it would help me understand the meaning behind it. While I was considering the idea, one of my friends pinned a Creative writing prompt that said, "She took a deep breath and let it go" and I used it at the beginning and end of the story. How do you think it turned out?
-L.

-Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved."