Morning has Broken—Dustin Thursdeau's Conversion, Chap. I (Satire)

The Power of Prayer: One morning, President Dustin Thursdeau awakens in more ways than one—with the shock of his life. What happened, and what will he do now?

Dec 10, 2024

And now for something a bit lighter than usual…

Introduction:

God holds each of us in the palm of his hand. He is closer to us than we are to ourselves. The most powerful enemies of God on this earth are powerless in the face of grace and the divine plan.

Saul was turned into St. Paul. What could become of the great men seeking the overthrow of God’s order?

“Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be.” Hamlet 4.5

For the sake of keeping everything in one place, we are publishing this first part of a short fictional series, previously published elsewhere, imagining what could happen with the power of prayer.

Any resemblance to real-life figures, organisations or events is obviously completely coincidental and in your own head.

Chapter I – The Morning has Broken

Many people have had the experience of waking up in bed after a night of revelry, with a slow seeping-in of consciousness and recollection of what happened the night before.

I mention this to illustrate, by contrast, the experience that President Dustin Thursdeau had that fateful morning.

Sleep suddenly left him, and with great surprise he himself now held, with a surprising conviction and clarity, very many unacceptable views.

But this was not all. He opened his eyes, and realized that almost every single one of his policies as President was wrong, disastrous, tyrannical, and wicked.

Furrowing his eyebrows, and looking around the spare bedroom in which he slept, he tried to make sense of what he was seeing and knowing to be true.

Gosh, some of the views he now held really were unacceptable indeed. He could hardly believe it: what had happened to him? Where had all this come from? How and why did he know all these things?

While he saw his own wickedness with perfect clarity, his memories were fuzzy: he wasn’t sure what was true and what was a dream – and he had a gnawing sense of having lost chunks of his memory altogether. He grimaced with the strain – but no, he couldn’t remember anything from the past week, and many other things were unclear.

He sat up in his bed, and looked around the spare bedroom again. As usual, he was alone: where was his wife? Of course – she was gone. But she had long since slept in a different room. Why was that again? Was it him? Was it something he had done?

“What…” he thought, “What am I doing here?”

What indeed? The sensation was difficult to describe. He knew that he was the president of this great nation: but again, he could not remember how he had got there – or what he had done to get there.

And yet… and yet even without any clear memories, he felt oppressed by the same dim guilt that one has when awaking from a night of revelry – a guilt made all the worse by not knowing what one has actually done.

All those babies, dead because of his laws… and not just in his own nation – all that international funding spreading death across the world! A great chill passed over him, and it seemed like the whole room was crammed with little invisible ghosts, all starting at him.

Shadows and half-remembered dreams flashed through his mind – and the shame at it all drove him back to the bed, and he hid his head under the bedcovers.

Under the bedcovers, everything pressed itself upon him all the more: that laughter of the crowds, his ludicrous outfits – not to mention the tyranny, the handshakes, the oaths, the health passports, the furtive deals in those corridors of power – and other darksome things that you and I, dear reader, can only suspect at this time.

And then all seemed to go quiet for Thursdeau. The smoke of all these wicked memories disappeared, and in that quiet, how his heart burnt within him.

What a fool, what a worthless fool, he was. What had he done with his life? What was he doing with his life?

What ought he do with his life?

Like a drooping flower might rise and open her face towards the sun, so too his will turned towards God.

Casting off the bedclothes, he jumped from the bed and held his arms out towards the heavens.

“O, my offence is rank!” he cried, in the words he had learnt from Shakespeare as a child. “It smells to heaven!

“Is there not rain enough in the sweet heavens
To wash me white as snow? What then? what rests?
Try what repentance can: what can it not?”

And with this he fell to his knees, and beat his breast as he had learnt to do as a boy, serving at the Altar of God.

“Bow, stubborn knees; and, heart with strings of steel,
Be soft as sinews of the newborn babe!
All may be well!”

A moment’s silence, and Thursdeau wept.

But then, a knock at the door, and there entered his secretary.

“Good morning, Mr. President! How you have overslept! Come, come: it is nearly time for the service, they are expecting you in the Freesculptors’ Lodge! And then, your meeting with the delegation from the League of Nations about the new ‘measures’ they’ve been planning. Hurry, hurry!”

Link to Chapter II below.

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