I was hired help for an archaeological dig in Jordan.

I was hired help for an archaeological dig in Jordan. I had to destroy what I found. I had to hide it at first. It would have meant ruin for my people. No one saw me pocket it. No one even knows that it was there. It was a blessing. It turned up there in the sand, just another piece of rock. I was sifting through the sand, the dig foreman was off somewhere doing something else. He doesn’t know I can read hieroglyphics either. He thought I was just another ignorant local. But I knew what he was looking for. I could only pray that I would be the one to find it.

It’s crazy. It’s only a small piece of stone. If it were laying on the ground you’d walk by it and never think twice. But what it says, what it would mean. I can’t. I just can’t let them see it. They’d tell the world. We’d be ridiculed and persecuted. It’s better if this remains a mystery. It’s better if faith handles this and not science. It’s better in the end.

When we left for the day I took it home and smashed it into dust with a hammer. the wind blew it all away, far far away into the distance. The shattered remains of a rock that could ruin an entire religion, nothing more than sand in a world filled with it. Specks of dust in an ocean of wind and time.

I fell to my knees and wept for the sacrifice.

~ by thethingswethink on November 14, 2006.