I met up with Cherry at her house the next day. She was waiting on the porch for me when I got there.
“Hey!” she said, greeting me.
“Hi,” I said back.
“So I was wondering if you’d like to come with me to my church youth group tonight. It starts in twenty minutes.” I’d never been to church, let alone youth group.
“Um, well, I’m not a Christian…”
“Oh, that’s alright! Everyone’s welcome.” That sounded nice. ‘Everyone’s welcome’. Why couldn’t everything be that inviting?
“Okay. So, what do you guys do there?”
“We just play some games, read the Bible, do activities, pray, and eat food,” she said, smiling at the ‘food’ part.
“Alright,” I said. “I guess I could come.”
“Ooo, yay!” she squealed, wrapping her arm around my shoulders. “This is going to be awesome.”
---
Surprisingly, church was actually fun. I’d always heard about how boring it was and that everyone there are just perfect little angels who are stiff and boring. Stiff and boring would not, in any way, describe the people at Cherry’s youth group. The Youth Pastor was kind of insane. He taught us all how to unicycle and would randomly talk in this weird accent. The other kids there were pretty cool, too. Everyone was really welcoming.
After about an hour of goofing off and having fun, we read a passage from the Bible. It was interesting. One verse really stuck out to me. It was:
You, Lord, hear the desire of the afflicted; you encourage them and you listen to their cry.” ~Psalm 10:17
This was just so incredibly comforting to hear. Maybe there was someone looking out for me. Maybe there was someone who cared about me when I was hurting and wanted to help me.
Maybe God is real. And maybe He’s exactly what I’ve been looking for.
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When Sleep Doesn't Come
Teen FictionTessa doesn't know what to do with herself. She cannot sleep. She eats too much. Her friends don't understand the first thing about her. And she has absolutely NO idea what to do about any of it. But listen to one girl's story as she chooses fi...
