The following is an excerpt from a brief book of mine that illustrates truths from Psalm 23. The e-book is available for 99 cents from October 25 to October 31. [You can download the free Kindle app for reading on a computer or other device if you don't have a Kindle.] The book is called, The Lord Cares for Me (click the link to go to the page on Amazon).
Another book, Faith Lives in Our Actions, is also available for 99 cents (e-book version) from Oct. 25-31.
The Story of Charlotte
(The start of the story)
Charlotte ran
a business in New Orleans. Her business
didn’t advertise on the radio or in the newspaper. Word on the street and pictures on the
Internet attracted customers. Charlotte
ran an escort agency. Actually, it was a
prostitution business. Charlotte had
been a prostitute herself. Now she was
in her mid-30s and had taken over as the head of the agency. The younger girls now worked for her,
providing sex for money for sex-hungry men.
Charlotte kept a large share of the money for herself, because she found
customers and made arrangements and kept things safe for her girls. Charlotte’s business made lots of money. She lived well in a comfortable apartment
that was home for Charlotte and her son, Logan.
Logan had been
a mistake. Charlotte had gotten lazy
about pregnancy protection sometimes when she had been selling herself for
sex. When she got pregnant, she decided
to have the baby. She’d never had anyone
to love, and the baby meant the world to her.
Now Logan was five years old and ready to start school.
Charlotte’s
business kept her up through the overnight hours most nights. She slept during the morning hours, into the
early afternoon. Logan stayed with a
neighbor as his babysitter during those hours.
Logan’s babysitter, Maria, had a five-year-old boy of her own. Maria was a Christian. She knew how Charlotte made her living. She didn’t quite have the courage to talk to
Charlotte about it, or know what to say if she did. But she invited Logan to come along to a
summer activity program at her church in the mornings, and Charlotte said it
was okay.
Logan loved
the church program. He told his mom, “I
want to go to school there all the time!”
The church operated a school, so Charlotte filled out papers to get
Logan enrolled.
Maria spoke to
the school’s director. “There’s
something you maybe should know about Logan’s mom,” she said, and told him the
type of work Charlotte did. The school
director replied, “Well, it’s no different for Charlotte than for any other
parent at our school. We ask all parents
to take a series of Bible classes so they’ll know the faith that we’re teaching
to their children in our school. If
Charlotte agrees to do that, her son is as welcome in our school as anyone
else.”
Charlotte did
agree. She began classes with the
pastor’s assistant, Stephen. Once a
week, Stephen met with Charlotte in the afternoon. He taught Charlotte about God and about how
God created the world and the first people.
He explained how some of the angels God had created rebelled against him
and became devils, and how Satan, the leader of the evil angels, tempted the
first man and woman away from God.
Stephen said, “After the first people disobeyed God, all people have
been stuck in sin ever since.” He warned
that sin is a real problem – and not just for our lives with one another as
human beings.
Stephen told
Charlotte, “Sin has created a horrible separation between us and God. The Bible
tells it like it is: ‘Your sins have
separated you from your God. They have
caused him to turn his face away from you.
So he won’t listen to you’ (Isaiah 59:2). And our separation from God is a permanent
thing, a deadly thing. ‘People will die
because of their own sins’ (Ezekiel 18:20).
‘When you sin, the pay you get is death’ (Romans 6:23). Because we are sinners and live in sinful
ways, we will die forever, be in hell forever.
Jesus warned us about the way we use our bodies to commit sins. He said, ‘If your hand or foot causes you to
sin, cut it off and throw it away. It would be better for you to enter the
kingdom of heaven with only one hand or one foot than to go into hell with two
hands and two feet. In hell the fire burns forever’ (Matthew 18:8). We can’t actually help our situation by
cutting off body parts. But Jesus’ words
were meant to show us just how serious a problem sin is.”
Charlotte was
uncomfortable with these lessons from the Bible, with all the harsh words of
God’s law. The 10 Commandments bothered
her. She knew she was a sinner. But she didn’t like to think about it. She told herself she was just making money in
the best way she knew how, to support herself and her son. She didn’t like the fact that God was judging
her life when the world seemed such an unfair place and God never seemed like
he was there to help her anyway.
As
uncomfortable as she was, Charlotte continued to meet with Stephen for Bible
lessons. Sometimes she argued. Sometimes she got upset. But she kept thinking about these
things.
Once Stephen
saw that Charlotte was thinking seriously about sin, he shifted his
message. “You know, Charlotte, the Bible
isn’t all commandments and condemnation.
I’ve started there because that’s where the story starts – with our sins
against God. But there’s much more to
the story than that. There’s good news
for us too – amazing good news. Jesus
warned us about the dangers of our sins, yes.
But Jesus mostly came to do something about our sins, to fix the mess we
have made for ourselves. The Bible says,
‘Those who do what is sinful belong to the devil. They are just like him. … But
the Son of God came to destroy the devil’s work’ (1 John 3:8). The damage the devil had done was undone by
Jesus. Jesus is God along with the
Father in heaven and the Holy Spirit.
But he became human. He became
one of us to rescue us. God says that
people ‘have bodies made out of flesh and blood. So Jesus became human like them
in order to die for them. By doing that, he could destroy the one who rules
over the kingdom of death. I’m talking about the devil. Jesus could set
people free who were afraid of death. All their lives they were held as slaves
by that fear’” (Hebrews 2:14-15).
Charlotte
looked at Stephen like had seen into her soul.
“For a long time in my life,” she admitted, “I wanted to die. But I was too scared of dying to actually end
my life.” She told Stephen more of her
story: “I had run away from home as a
girl because home was awful, but life on the streets was worse. I survived, but I hated what I was
doing. I wanted to die but
couldn’t. I wanted to live but it wasn’t
really a life. I grew numb to the kind
of life I was living. I just made it
about the money. Then Logan came
along. Now I want to make a decent life
for him, an actual life for both of us.”
“The only
actual life there is,” Stephen said, “is life that God gives us. Jesus said, ‘Anyone who hears my word and
believes … has crossed over from death to life’ (John 5:24). Having our lives connected to Jesus is the
one thing that matters, the one thing that is needed, as Jesus put it (Luke
10:42).
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There's more to Charlotte's story. Read the rest in The Lord Cares for Me: Stories and Thoughts about Psalm 23 (available at Amazon.com).
