"Owe !!"
Syros cried out. Born in Cyrene, but dragged through Palestine to finally come to the house of a Greek landowner. Syros was slapped in the face when asked, "what is your name?"
He continued to answer,
"I am Omari of Cyrene !!"
The Greek lords laughed at him.
"Show us your palace and your stallions Prince Omari."
They joked and tripped him.
"Your name is Syros, property of Gaius the Magnificent. Don't forget it."
Syros looked down at the ground. It was his first day at this new household and it was not going well. He was beaten, bruised and abused. Now he was in the cellar given the duty of digging a new wine shed. This would be a lot easier if he had not been chained hand and foot. As he went at the wall with the blunt shovel, he thought about Gaius the Idiot who bought him. With each swing of the shovel he imagined Gaius' head was the rock. He thought to himself:
"Oh, what a poorly dishoveled nose you have Gaius!"
He would never address Gaius as Master Gaius or Gaius the magnificent even mockingly for once Omari was a "high born" man of Cyrene taken from his own country by force. He was a highly educated young man trained in the fine arts as well as in martial arts. Now he was digging in a cave and he really didn't know why, but if he stopped he would hear the foreman cry out:
"Get back to work Syros!"
That's when another man joined him. This old man was mostly skin and bones but he smiled and said,
"Hello good man.^^"
He was wasn't much to look at with a crooked nose and curly dark hair. He had bruises and welts and looked even more pathetic than he imagined himself to be, but this man looked genuinely happy. He even started humming some song. He kept this up for hours.
The foreman didn't seem to mind as long as he could hear the shovels digging. The man kept his humming in beat with the rhythm of the digging. The deep humming and clinking of the shovel made an amazing almost glorious harmony. They were in the darkest cave but this man was full of light. He didn't say much but he got his work done.
In the evening Syros and the old man were taken to the open fields to sleep. They were not given anything to eat, not even a roof over their heads.
As soon as the foreman was out of sight the old man said:
"Thank the good Lord we are alive to see the bright shinning stars on a night like this."
Syros answered,
"Are you out of your mind old man? Gaius is not a good Lord and we are both exhausted and starving."
The old man answered,
"Oh for a high born man of Cyrene you are so small Omari. Can't you read the sky? Look over there toward the hills. Have you ever seen anything like that?"
He was right. No star had ever seemed so close or so alive. It was almost as the star were calling them as if they could hear voices singing from the star.
The foremen were fast asleep and it wasn't far to the top of the hill where the star was shinning. The old man said,
"I'm just gonna slowly walk over there."
As tired and hungry Syros was, he couldn't let the old man go on alone. He followed the old man to the ridge of the hill and what they saw below amazed them both. There was no other way to describe it but the light of angels singing.
When the old man sang there was a little bit of this song, but when these angels sang the song was complete and filled with sustenance as if the song rang out rest and restoration and food and drink and sleep with every verse they felt recharged as if they weren't prisoners.
They felt free and light as a bird.
They looked down at the chains on their hands and their feet. The chains never moved. They were still prisoners in this world but what they saw made them sure that they were prisoners of no one, no matter what names they were called.
The old man and Syros shared this little haven of sanctuary. They tried to keep it as a secret just among the two of them, but others noticed that there was a little twinkle of joy and peace in these two. As time went by the story came out and even the foreman wanted to hear more of what happened that night.
You see there was a lot more than the light and the angels. What they saw was hard to describe. It was as if God had come to visit them. In the darkest place at the darkest time they saw the light shine in his sanctuary. In a barn nearby gathered some more people like them, distraught and distressed.
They gathered around a baby born of light, hope and peace.
They began to clap and even Syros began to sing. Oh... Let's call him "Omari" because for the first time he lived up to what his name means (a high born man):
"Man went down to the river"
Wading in the Water
Wading in the Water
You're an inspiration for hope and a bright light in the darkness!💡🙌🕯
Thank you @mineopoly💓
!LADY
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Thank you @ninahaskin. It's not easy and I am very confused. In Korea entering high school is a little bit like entering college in the US. We can choose any school, but the school can choose to accept or reject students. My son is entering high school and is stressed out trying to find the right school to apply to. Above all, I need the sanctuary. For the past few weeks our guest house has been filled to capacity. So many people are visiting Korea these days. I really don't know what I am doing half the time. I'm thankful I was called in for two weeks of Summer School English to at least put me back in my office. Today is my second day and the first day didn't turn out the way I expected. The first day is so important to the imprint of the class and established procedures. Kids were out of hand and two students refused to participate. I didn't like it, but I was too exhausted to force anything on them. The next day I simply and calmly told the students what they did and how they behaved giving examples of what I saw and how they had responded. The students are fourth graders and they listened and agreed to participate. Some are slow learners and others are shy. It's interesting how a quiet class can be just as painful to teach as a rowdy class.
!LUV
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Excellent - the Lord tends to have that effect if one just listens 🙌🙌🙌
!PIZZA !ALIVE !LOL
This post has been upvoted by the VYB Curation Project
Wow. This is amazing @mineopoly. You have a gift of ink, I must confess.
I could see how you dropped the message of the birth of Christ, along with the stars that brought the three wise men to the stable to offer gifts to him. And then there is Herod somewhere in the between... That would be Gaius if I am not mistaken.
And of course, that peace that comes with knowing that God loves us and cares for us regardless of what we are going through in life.
Damn. I don't know if this is the message you were trying to pass, but believe me, this is the message I got.
For as long as we believe in his unending love, we will always have that unspeakable joy in our hearts even when the world is in turmoil.
Thanks so much for sharing this in the dreem-wotw. This was a lovely read. Well done.
Hi @iskafan,
Thanks for reading carefully. The characters in the stories are based on several people in history not just one character.
This kind of writing comes from my history professor. Instead of teaching us from the textbook he gave us case studies of people who lived in a certain place and period of history and asked us then to write our own.
You are free to take home any message you want from this story.
Today the world looks hopeless to many eyes, but when I look through Syros' eyes I don't see a slave succumbed to his situation. I see a man who has a tiny promise "Omari" from the time of his birth. He holds on to this promise stubbornly until he sees it fulfilled.
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this weekend was madness - hehehe but I finally had some quiet time to sit down and enjoy this! and did I!!! :)
I never saw that coming hehehehe what a twist! I love that they were free and light - despite their chains, because they experienced the Lord! hehehe I agree with @wrestlingdesires - He can definitely have that effect - and more!
Glad you shared this!!
Thank you for inviting me. I hope it works out well @dreemsteem
I'm glad you could enjoy reading and also appreciate the light and solace we find.
!LUV
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Sorry it came late
Thanks @joseph23. I didn't get the post up soon enough for Dreemsteem's curation, but I am really impressed on your persistent curating in VYB. : )
This was a beautiful story of hope and peace in the midst of great sufferance 💗🙏That they could take sanctuary in the Lord and the blessing of the Angels choir whilst still shackled to the world shows their immense depth of love and faith. I am so pleased you shared this with us despite missing the Dreemport cut off for submission :-( I do hope that you write an entry for S1R2 - the contest post which will be published beginning of next week. !LUV !ALIVE !PIZZA
@mineopoly! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @samsmith1971. (7/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
I don't think I will have any luck in getting the dates of the contest correct, but I enjoy writing whenever I get a chance to sit down.
!LUV
!LOLZ... honestly it is not too difficult... hehe on the actual submission day to Dreemport, simply submit your post between 4am UTC and midnight UTC... so are you in South Korea? If so then you are 9 hours ahead of UTC. I assume you were finalising your last entry mid-morning on your side of the world and missed the cut-off? If you are 9 hours ahead of UTC then if the contest cuts off at midnight UTC in Dreemport on a given day, it means for you it ends at 9 am the following morning. So the next contest will have a deadline of 11.59 pm UTC on Tuesday 23rd August. This means your cut-off is Wednesday 24th August at 9 am in South Korea. Make sense... but you will need to plan ahead and make sure that your curation is already done and the curation needs to be done within the same cycle as your submission... so make sure you do your curation of your random 5 BEFORE your submission and in the 20 hours before submission deadline. !LUV ... but we would love to have you participate if it is something that you enjoy... we will be taking the new crowd of dreem-wotw participants on a journey from simpler meaningful words to more complex... just as Cal and Felix did with us 💗
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I got it Sam,
Thanks for doing the math for me. I will write up a scheduled post in advance. As for the curation and submitting it on dreemport I will try that afternoon on August 23rd.
excellent..my comment should have said make sure curation is done in the 20 hours before submission deadline lol !PIZZA !ALIVE
@mineopoly! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @samsmith1971. (2/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
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Because he always has a great fall!
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