The Ooze
It was just a small black spot, a minor blip on her beauty radar, certainly nothing to worry about. She dabbed some blush over the spot, smiled confidently back at herself in the mirror, and went on about her fabulous life.
Another day. With pre-dawn, desperate-for-java annoyance, she noticed it again. The black spot was still there. Had it grown? But it was such a minor skin imperfection she again dabbed on the blush and viola!, it was dealt with. Again, she smiled and got on with her beautiful life.
The third day came and she dragged her hung over, near lifeless self to the mirror to face a sobering horror; now several black spots had appeared, and not just on her otherwise flawless face. The biggest one was over her heart. Worse than an infected boil, the spots were beginning to ooze tar-like streaks across her features.
Maybe it was the excessive drinking or the parade of nameless men. Maybe both. Maybe… God, who knows? She shook her weary head and vowed sobriety and abstinence, at lest till the weekend. She showered in blistering steam then carefully applied blush over the oozing black sores. Perfect. Well, almost anyway. She threw on her designer black sunglasses and sauntered defiantly into the din of the world.
While she was used to men ogling her, were people suddenly, you know… looking at her?
Self-conscious, she rubbed a nervous fingertip over the shame of her camouflaged blemishes hoping they would just go away as she desperately reached for her blush, waving it as if it were a magic wand that had the power to make things better; make her better.
She threw furtive, sidelong glances even as she laughed with friends over her wonderfully chintz lunch wondering nervously if anyone noticed the oozing blackness now running from her head, hands and heart. Worse, now she could smell it; a foul, burning sulphuric stench. She grabbed for the courage of her dirty martini only to shriek in horror at the black stains seeping from her hands staining her drink tumbler, marring all she touched.
The ooze grew. It festered. It slimed. It ran like bitter rivers behind her eyes darkening her sight. It boiled beneath her fingernails till they appeared black. And no matter how hard she tried, she could not stop the effervescently evil flow of the ooze. Painting over it, disguising it, bathing in hot steam, even perfume did nothing to abate its stench or stain. The sores continued to spread.
She was a leper afraid to leave her apartment for fear of being discovered. It was surely some kind of ravaging plague. She was diseased, infected, unclean, a carrier of the oozing blackness. Perhaps they would isolate her from the rest of the world for fear of contamination. Perhaps she would simply dissolve being finally consumed by it. And maybe they would burn her.
Was there a cure?
She sought out doctors who assured her it was imaginary, a disease of the mind, a baseless crippling guilt. Take a pill and make it stop. Yet the ooze ran like an unrelenting stygian river cascading into ever deepening darkness.
She tried to ignore it, tried to compromise with it, cursed and pleaded for relief from it but the ooze seemed hell-bent on devouring her. Finally there was nothing left but despair. She threw away her useless blush that could not cover the seeping stains, and wept. Her eyes were growing narrower, darker as the blackness filled every cell, every pore and space, poisoning her very soul like a suffocating artesian well of death.
From a place deeper than she knew, broken words formed almost imperceptibly on her blackened lips, “Please come find me, God.”
There was no hiding the stain. The ooze besmirched all she touched. She crawled out of her refuge hanging her head in shame certain everyone could see her decaying from this nameless plague. She had decided to find a hospital where they might mercifully kill her and end her suffering when, in a moment of utter clarity, she looked beyond her own misery and saw through the thin veil of civility that masked the sheer horror of the world as it really is.
The ooze was everywhere. On everyone, everywhere she looked, the ooze was pandemic, pulsating, as if it was alive, dripping like sewage after a flood, tainting all in its path. Her likable neighbors were dripping with festering ooze as they laughed and bar-be-cued. Her spiteful neighbors were dripping with ooze as they sneered in isolated, proud contempt. And most seemed oblivious to the presence of the sickening black ooze cascading from their mouths, and tearing from their very eye sockets.
Against this disgusting backdrop that seemed destined to drown the whole world in slimy blackness, she suddenly saw her; a beautiful stranger untainted by ooze. No pox, nor plague, no running sores on her soul, just a gentle radiant light that seemed to fill her every cell, her every pore and space, overflowing as an endless waterfall of effervescing… life!
In her was no darkness or shifting shadow. None at all. It was as if she were a new kind of creature immune, untainted by the ooze.
The passing stranger noticed her slack-jawed stare and, with a kind smile, asked, “Can I help you? You look a little lost.”
Lost. Yes, that she was. Fearing the loss of her last shreds of sanity but willing to risk discovery for even the hint of freedom from the encroaching darkness that was the ooze, she quietly said, “I see oozing blackness everywhere, everywhere except on you. Please, why?”
“You can see the ooze?” the surprised stranger gently asked.
“Yes. I am infected with it. Why aren’t you? I see a purity and light within you. No shadow, no darkness, no ooze. How are you clean?”
“I used to be as filthy with the ooze as anyone,” said the smiling stranger. “The light you’ve been allowed to see is called Righteousness and it is a gift from God. ‘He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.’ It’s what God gives you when you renounce sin.”
She did not understand so the stanger explained more clearly, “That’s what the ooze really is, sin. And Sin always pays its wages in death. You want free, don’t you? Good. Now, let me tell you some good news about all things becoming new in Jesus…”
What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.
- Hymn by Robert Lowry
Bryan Hupperts © 2009
www.sheeptrax.com/xpress
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