"Oi, oi you!" The Exiled Preacher looked up from the book that had absorbed his attention for the last three and a half hours and wondered at the strange voice. It seemed vaguely familiar, yet at the same time deeply unsettling, like the sound of haunted dreams. The preacher scanned the assorted bookshelves in his study, trying to find out where the sound was coming from. Suddenly a terrifying sight appeared before him. It was David Sky, Exiled's old pet monkey. The monkey had been banished to a dark corner of the room where only books by Karl Barth and Tom Wright are stored. But now, there was David Sky, bold as a brass monkey, sitting before Martyn Lloyd-Jones' sermons on Romans.
"Oi, you" repeated Sky, "haven't I been punished enough? After all it's Christmas time, a season of love and forgiveness. In that book you were reading by Miroslav Volf, it said that it's your Christian duty to offer people unconditional forgiveness whether they repent or not. Well, I haven't repented, so you have to forgive me!" Exiled Preacher sighed a very deep sigh. "But you are not a person, you are a stuffed monkey that came free with a box of tea bags. You have ruined my credibility as a serious blogger with your silly Sky's the Limit antics. Some people think that I'm really behind all that nonsense. I let you go to school with my daughter and you go and bite some kid. You are a wild animal and you don't deserve to be forgiven." David Sky thought long and hard before replying, "Look, so what. I'm fed up being consigned to the naughty corner. I need light and air. Just cut me a deal and and forgive me. It'll give you a warm spiritual glow. The experience could even make a good sermon illustration or at lest a half-decent children's talk. C'mon, you know it makes sense."Exiled Preacher sighed again. Forgiving the creature would not be easy, but as Volf said.... "OK then, I'll forgive you. But to receive my forgiveness, you'll have to repent." David Sky shrugged his shoulders and said, "Yeah, I repent. Sorry, whatever. From now on I'll be a proper little angel." This got the preacher's mind working. "He wants light and air and he 's promised to be a little angel. I've got just the job for him this Christmas time....."
"Hey get me down!" Shouted David Sky. "I thought that monkeys liked climbing trees." Exiled quipped. Sky replied, "Yes, but I don't like heights - I'm a stuffed monkey." "You are now." Said the preacher gleefully, "Happy Christmas my little friend. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
5 comments:
Mr. Davies,
I would like to email you and ask about John Flavel. I read your paper on Thomas Goodwin where you noted Flavel held similar views to him on assurance. I would have emailed you through this sight, but my computer won't pull up your email address. Mine is adam.embry@gmail.com. Please email if you can. Thanks very much, and God bless,
Adam Burgess Embry
There's some good Christmas theology in that there post! :)
David Reimer
Ah... sheer class.
Poor little chap...Is that a monkey puzzle tree?
Andrew, never feel pity for the monkey. That was my downfall. He caught my gaze, his doleful eyes staring out of a box of tea bags. Such apparent sorrow touched touched my pastor's heart. You know the rest.
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