Clean cont.

The gate where the elder men talked was like an aqueduct of information. Now there was talk about a man who was supposed to be a prophet. Some said he was performing miracles, like feeding vast numbers of people and healing people who had been sick for a long time. They say that as he walked around doing these fantastic miracles he was talking about a kingdom that belonged to God. A few people say that he was sent from God himself to help the Jews. The news of the miracle spread around the town and outside the gate like wildfire. The other poor souls that shared the same fate as the leper laughed at such nonsense. Hopeful nonsense they called it. They said Jehovah had forsaken their land hundreds of years ago. He would never rescue His people because the Jews had abandoned their love for Him. The men around him were filled with hate and despair. The poor leper shared their despair but not their hate.

What if God really cared about people; what if god really wanted to rescue folks from the pain and despair that so many people lived and died in? Could God do that? Well, was it a question of if God could do that, or more like, why should God do it? Why should God want to rescue people that had left him hundreds of years ago. He told himself that it probably wasn't true anyway. His hopeless heart couldn't believe anything good. He had been beaten down for so long. In spite of his despair something buried deep inside his soul stirred a bit. A whisper of a voice that had been buried beneath weeks and months of despair, buried beneath the weight brought down on his spirit by the hundreds of times he cursed himself and warned the people, a whisper was heard.