Outlandish Promises

I'm currently going through my extensive body of self-published stories: revising, editing, and the like.  It has been a long time since I've read 'The Serpent and the Unicorn,' and even longer since I wrote it.  I came across one particular storyline that truly made me wonder what I was thinking when I wrote THAT.  Could a person really act like that outside of a sappy, romantic tale?  Then I watched the third installment of the Horatio Hornblower series, the one where the title character and his men are captured by the Spanish and stuck in prison.  He strikes up a friendship with the local Don and together they watched a ship wreck itself on the reef.  This captured Englishman offers to go out and rescue the survivors, at much risk to himself, but the Don only stares at him and says it is too dangerous and only an excuse to escape.  The man promises to return and the Don relents.

After a harrowing rescue the little company is adrift at sea and picked up by the main character's ship.  It is a perfect escape!  Except for that dreadful promise.  But he goes back, his men as well, to fulfill his promise.  They were home free but they chose to return to chains and prison because of a promise.  I know this is a fictional tale but it is a relief to know I am not the only one with such fantastic storylines!  But then it is not such an outlandish tale, at least when you consider that grandest and most epic of all tales, the one the actually happens to be true.

For there was once a Father who made a promise, and though it cost Him the life of His Son, He did not hesitate to fulfill it though the world most certainly didn't deserve it.  This Christmas, remember that outlandish promise, fulfilled in the most unlikely of places two millennia ago, and remember that such love, honor, and sacrifice is never in vain!