Denis Kabi's Blog

The Grace

by Denis Kabi

 

There once lived two sisters in a city by the sea.

The two girls were raised by their father in a spacious manor

in the suburbs of that city.

Their father provided them with all of their needs.

The older girl was only a year older than her sibling.

Their personalities contrasted as sharply as night and day,

a hill and a valley, sea and land, good and bad.

This contrast of his daughters’ personalities concerned the father

so much that he hoped they wouldn’t harm each other

in one of their many heated arguments.

The two girls disagreed about many things,

and they mainly argued about things that were appropriate

and things that were not appropriate.

Music, movies, clothes, books, slang, were some of the topics

that they argued about,

with the older sister taking a conservative stand

while the younger sister leaned heavily towards the liberal.

Their modes of dressing, manner of speaking,

the music they listened to,

the movies they watched, the books they read,

the type of friends they hang out with

reflected their contrasting opinions.

In their late teens when they’d both completed high school,

and were both weighing different options,

and considering which professional courses to study at university,

the older sister startled her father by choosing to join a convent

and be trained to be a catholic nun.

When the father talked to his eldest daughter

and realized that she was serious about her decision,

he supported her and sent her off to the convent.

The younger girl on the other hand chose something different;

she chose to study fashion design at an art college,

and her father supported her as well

and paid for all of her expenses.

The older sister did very well in the strict environment of the convent

and when she graduated she was sent to work in a remote parish.

She lived a pure life,

always conscious to avoid all of the world’s evil ways.

On the other hand, the younger sister flourished as a fashion designer,

and there was not a party within a kilometre of the art college

that she didn’t attend.

During her time at the college,

she conceived and gave birth to a child out of wedlock.

When she graduated from the college she got a job as a designer

in an up-market clothing store

and she drank and partied a lot

and even conceived and birthed another child.

One holiday the father invited his two daughters to a banquet.

When the two sisters had travelled back home to visit their ageing father,

the father announced that he was in the process of writing his will

and would be dividing his property equally between his daughters.

When the older daughter, the nun, heard this announcement,

she was angry at her father

for allowing the younger sister to get half of his wealth

yet the younger sister had lived a carefree, sinful life.

The older sister even pointed at the two children

that her younger sister had brought along to visit their grandfather,

as proof of her loose living.

The older sister would have been contented

if her younger sister got no inheritance.

“Father,” the nun had said to the old man.

“How will the grandchildren learn what is right and what is wrong

if impropriety is rewarded?”

But the father loved his children so much that he wrote in his will

specifying that everything he owned now belonged to them.

The nun was not amused;

but her sister and kids were overjoyed by this Good News.

For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith.

 It is not the result of your own efforts,

 but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it. *

*Ephesians 2:8-9 (Good News Bible)

 

© Denis Kabi, 2012