They say that whenever I’m at my wits end, I shouldn’t hesitate to speak.
But whose ears are always ready to lend themselves to listening? I pondered, as my eyes wandered over the hollowed ruins before me.
“Restore your faith,” they say, a task easier spoken than lived. One step into the ruins sent a faint tremor through the walls in the distance, a subtle warning, or perhaps, a whisper of fear, that they might collapse in the middle of my prayers. I found my knees deftly surrendering to the kneeler as my weight pulled me down into prayer. Haste pulsed through my veins and spilled into the cold of my palms, pressing them together stiffly as I murmured the words only heaven could hear.
“Lord, are you here, or have you stepped outside?”
Silence.
“The walls groan like they’re ready to give way.”
I felt an uncomfortable shift around me—an unsettling ripple in the stillness—and yet, I was the only one praying.
“I can’t tell if this is your hand holding us or letting us go.”
The force in my clasped hands painted me as a sinner, confessing to the father my failed attempts at protecting this church. It was not mine to guard—I’m merely a believer. And yet, I feel accountable.
“If the altar shakes, is it your breath that tests our faith, or the whispers of men who bargain with the holy?”
The weight of my prayers trembled the pillars of the church. Every phrase bore the wishes of its believers like a candle in dry grass—meant to bring light, yet capable of setting the whole sanctuary aflame. Every whisper amplified into a muted uproar. A protest disguised in silence—echoing through the stone corridors, chased by the wind that howled its icy lament through the open doors. A sigh.
“And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” I prayed for an apology.
“Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from evil…”
I felt a soul creeping behind my shoulder. I didn’t dare turn. The breath heaved at the back of my neck felt far from the wind. It was sultry, it was alive. The pews seemed to lean closer, the walls holding their own breath. One wrong move, and it might be the end for this place. Yet there’s still an ending mantra to my prayers, to which I say:
“Amen,” and for the first time, there was belongingness. I wasn’t alone. A presence lingered there, tame and unfamiliar—just close enough for me to feel its hushed agreement.
“How have you been praying dear?” A baritone voice chimed, almost tender, but it carried an echo that did not belong to the living alone. I shut my eyes tighter, hands clasped closer than my skin could touch. My system couldn’t comprehend it, I refused to turn. Some part of me feared that seeing the speaker would shatter whatever fragile thread kept the moment from unraveling into something else.
The entity stifled a laugh. Probably thinking my reaction was absurd, but who could you blame?
“Relax,” they said. “I’m not here to take your faith…not yet.”
The warmth at the back of my neck chilled into something sharper. My breath caught, yet I dared not answer—afraid my voice might betray the very doubt I’d been trying to bury beneath my prayers.
“Were you sent to promise?” I barely choked out. Courage coaxed me to open my eyes and turn. Who else should I be afraid of if it is not the father?
“I’ve been here since the first stone was laid; what more proof do you need?”
Lies. If that were true,
“Wouldn’t you have kept the rot from crawling up its walls?”
He tilted his head, portraying an amused child whose inquiry was satisfied. “And yet, aren't the hands of its keepers that bring decay? I can only do so much and that is to observe.”
I shifted my vision elsewhere, irritated. How could he not feel the weight this ruin has been holding up? I could only clench my knuckles as I held my stance in prayer.
“A watcher who lets the sickness spread is no better than the one who poisoned it.”
My composure was slowly shriveling, but it shouldn’t satisfy the shadow of a smile that crossed his face as I panned his way.
“Perhaps. But sometimes, the cure demands the patient collapse before it can be rebuilt.”
An illogical excuse for negligence. The crumble between the corners of the walls are the testament for the lingering hypocrisy that spread throughout its believers. To believe solely in an inanimate entity. To rely on uttered hopes every communion.
An enduring value and tradition upheld to believe in getting the odds in one’s favor. A gamble of faith against time, of prayers cast like dice into the hands of unseen, where every outcome feels both destined and rigged.
“Do your part before your strength fails, and let the Lord bear the rest.”
His reminder sounded less like faith and more like surrender. A finesse excuse to stand still while the cracks deepen, to let the weight shift until the whole thing gives way. Is it entirely all the Lord’s doing? How about other believers like me? Do the rest of us bear the weight of it too?
If this place falls apart, will you consider it Lord’s will, or will you admit we built the cracks ourselves?
The thought spilled out of my mind. He glanced at me once again, a piercing glance at that. As though my words had struck somewhere he had kept hidden. How could one rely solely on that thinking?
His mouth twitched into something that could’ve displayed a smile, but it was too stoic to carry humility.
“Then maybe,” he uttered softly, “we’ll see whose hands are dirtier.”
Tears and groans swallowed the pillars—low, aching, like the church itself had heard and answered either of our wishes. The stained glass quivered in their bones, colors unfurling across the floor. He leaped back into the shadows before I could catch a final glimpse; his presence slowly dissipating but never fully gone.
“Pray fast,” he suggested condescendingly, “You won’t have enough. You won’t have long. So keep that faith alive and just let him do it.”
The air suffocated with dust when I finally understood: the first fracture was not in the walls, but within us. For the first time, I couldn’t tell who the traitor was: the faith I held, or the believers who knelt beside me in it. But who would know? Their sole testimony is now entombed in stone and scripture, where no confession could crawl back in dawn.
