The Conditions of Will

by Jessa Hastings

“Um—” She cringes. “I mean—we go to the same church.” She pauses. “I don’t think we know the same God.”

Girls like them who bat their eyes as they pick and choose from the Bible to create a world they’re comfortable to exist in.

“That God that my mom thinks she serves—he’s so much smaller than who I think the real one is. The real one—to me, he’s everywhere, in everything. And sure, maybe he speaks through the Bible. But also maybe he speaks through Narnia, and Harry Potter despite J. K. Rowling lately, and the trees, and science, and the stars, and black holes and the ocean and the way the sky looks sometimes, and you can feel it in your chest.”