Battle of the Godless – Ch. 7 | KT OLLA

MICAH’S long wait came to an end now. His patient waiting to see what his mother would do with the silver coins.

Rekah was done with that sort of consecration she promised. So she invited her son over to come see the result of her toil for him.

‘Oh Micah, my good son!’ she beamed. ‘Here’s the stack of silvers you returned to me weeks ago!

‘See the immortality I made out of them for you! See how I gave a lost jewel an immortal soul!’

So out from a big chest came Rekah’s silvern gift. But that glistening bequest arrived as a disappointment for the waiting son.

Micah’s hopeful eyes landed on the present in his mother’s arms. Then they suddenly gave way to a long, lifeless look.

For it wasn’t what the seeking child was expecting.

Indeed, out of that surprise box had emerged a wood carved idol, which was glazed and decked all around with a thin spread of silver.

But Micah wasn’t looking for a graven image to call god like he was raised to do. He wasn’t seeking yet another activity in “religion”.

No, the middle-aged was seeking the truth.

He was seeking God.

It’d been years since the Ephraim born had been searching for the few who knew God. The very few who truly knew.

The man had become fed up with the so many around him who claimed to know and claimed to be His.

Those many, he eventually discovered, were people like his mother and him. They were religious and pious from head to toe.

But on their inside where no one could see, they only trusted in black magic and occult practices as their real backup.

No, Micah was fed up with those sort of people.

And his eyes told everything.

Rekah caught the disappointment in her son’s gaze. She caught the emptiness in those weary eyes.

But in them also, she saw the longing lingering still.

Right then, the old woman knew her bequest had solved nothing in her son’s quest. She decided to give it another try.

Perhaps, I can make him hope to someday find his answer from this!

That was what the woman told herself. And so, she made the effort.

‘Micah my son, you know no mortal being has seen God. Well, no soul can ever see Him.

‘Why, he is the Almighty! The excellence of might and glory! How can we mortals expect to find Him?’

Rekah stopped a tiny moment to look in her son’s gaze. For right about then, she saw a look that seemed to questioned her last words.

But Micah didn’t give word to his thoughts at all. Yet his mother could read the words written on his facial lines.

She responded immediately.

‘Oh Micah! You wonder how our fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob found Him. But those are the fathers! And it’s not in vain we call them Patriarchs!’

Micah’s eyes were quizzical still. So Rekah attempted something else.

‘Oh Moses and Joshua? Tell me you are as pious as those holy men. Or tell me if you can ever be!’

Now Micah spoke up for himself.

‘What about Joseph the son of Jacob? Didn’t he grow up a common boy like me? Dreaming things and having no capacity to make it happen.

‘How did a common boy like that found God in his father’s house, Mother? Even at a time when his older brothers didn’t know God!

‘Again, how did he know to treasure Him in faraway Egypt, where no father or mother was there to teach him the way?’

He looked directly in Rekah’s eyes now. ‘Mother, my question is: Can’t a common person like me find God also?’

Right then Rekah looked away and swallowed a small sigh. For she saw that she didn’t have an answer to satisfy her son’s thirst.

She knew she’d failed him as mother also.

The old woman turned back to her son at once, as she aimed to snap him out of that conversation. And in that instant, she spoke the words of her thoughts.

‘Perhaps, you can someday find your answer from this!’ She said that holding out the idol.

But Rekah no longer meant those words she’d previously reasoned. She didn’t, in fact, say them for her son to consider.

It was just for the purpose of fill up an awkward pause that the woman spat those lines. But what happened after broke her heart so much more.

Micah nodded thoughtfully. ‘Mmm!’ Then he leaned forward in a slight bow and reverently received the idol from his mother.

The young man stood up now, carrying the statue in his arms like he was carrying a newborn son.

He gazed at it with eyes glistening wet. ‘Oh my, I will cherish this precious gift, Mother!

‘Nay, I will worship it with my house!’

Rekah just sat still, staring helplessly.

She stared at that inheritance she was leaving her son with. So her heart and soul cried some tears.

For she just realized and admitted a truth.

That a mother may ruin her child.