A Chance at Love by T. K. Chapin Read Free Book Online

everything.”
    “Neat.”
    We went on for an hour, talking about life as I lay atop the hood of my car. I spent time talking about how I had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do in life. She talked about how she wanted to work with children someday, but she wasn’t sure how or what she’d be doing with them. Her beauty grew with every word that came from her lips. She wasn’t boring like all the other girls I had met. She had ideas and interests, and she thought on a deeper level than any girl I had spoken with before.

CHAPTER 7
    T he next day, I awoke to a text message from Emily. Sitting up on the guest bed at my grandmother’s house, I read it.
    Do you believe in God?
    I closed out of her text without responding and got up out of bed. Rather deep question to wake up to, I thought to myself. My mind began to mull the question over as I went to go do the morning chores I needed to accomplish for my grandmother.
    Thinking about Emily’s question as I took the garbage out, I began to ask myself the tough questions. Did I believe in God? I knew I believed in God to some degree, and I had always felt connected to the light, but the God of the Bible? I didn’t know. There was no way I would convert to Christianity for a girl, but I’d surely investigate it for one.
    After dropping the trash off in the can outside, I headed back in and to the laundry room. Moving dirty clothes from the hamper into the washer, something a teacher once told me pressed itself onto my mind. While it was wildly inappropriate for the classroom, that didn’t stop Mrs. Hoffman from saying it to the entire twelfth grade science class. She said, ‘If a loving and graceful God does exist, how come He allows such pain and heartache in the world?’ It was a good question and one that the Christians in the classroom were silent on.
    As I walked out of the laundry room and into the kitchen, I met my grandmother at the kitchen table. Stuck in my thoughts about what my teacher said, I must have projected a look of contemplation.
    “What’s on your mind?” she asked right before taking a bite of her toast.
    Breaking away from my thoughts, I looked at her with a half-smile and asked, “Why would a loving and graceful God allow disabilities, illness and death to happen? Why wouldn’t He preclude these kinds of pains in life?”
    My grandmother set her piece of toast down on her plate and looked at the chair across from her at the table.
    I sat down.
    She finished chewing her bite. “First of all, he never designed it to be that way.”
    “Designed what?”
    “Life. Are you familiar with Adam and Eve?”
    “Of course, Grandma. Jeez.”
    “Okay. I didn’t know. Well, they fell from God’s grace and fell from the design in the Garden of Eden. In doing so, they set humanity on a course.”
    “Let’s get back on topic. Grandma, how come God allows pain? He’s so loving and caring for us, yet He allows us to be pained?”
    “I am on course. Death came from the fall. It’s sin’s sting. As for evil, God did not author it. On the final day of His creation, He looked over everything He had made and said it was very good.”
    “Creation . . .” I shook my head.
    “What?”
    “You understand that I’m smart and educated, right? I haven’t been to college, but I’ve done a lot of research on evolution and creation, and creation is just not valid.”
    “Let’s approach a different angle for your sake. How come you don’t like it when a shooting happens?” she asked.
    “Okay . . . It’s not right. Murder isn’t right.”
    “Okay, now would you say that murder is amongst other terrible deeds? Rape, incest, etc. . . . Each of these being considered not right .”
    I nodded.
    “Who hands down that universal truth to you? To me? If it’s not God?”
    “Nobody. It’s just called being a decent human being, Grandma. I don’t need God to tell me to be a decent person.”
    “He doesn’t need to tell you because it’s part of how you