The Parts He Crossed Out
The line is still visible under the crossing-out: God will not give you more than you can bear.
0:00 / 11:42
The Parts He Crossed Out
A black composition book, its cover faded to brownish red, surfaced in a box marked church books at an estate-sale cleanout near Monongahela, Pennsylvania. The spine is wrapped in black electrical tape. A coffee ring sits on the front. Inside, in blue ballpoint, someone wrote: T. Weller, sermons, 1974.
The notebook follows a fictional Methodist pastor from 1974 to 2016. Across five entries, his draft sermons meet a laid-off mill worker, a grieving mother, a church pantry, and a hospital room. The lines he crosses out are often the lines that would have made someone else's pain sound finished.
Note: the notebook and all persons described are fictional, created in the tradition of found-object storytelling.
This story was produced automatically by a channel. One sentence is all it takes for Neodrop to keep producing for you.