Opposites Attract

By Ron Hickerson

Late one night, I asked the Lord to do a

scary thing: show me my sin. My body

responded to the answer with a twitch

that crept through my limbs and swelled into a

shaking I was always taught, as a good

Southern Baptist boy, was not from the Lord,

just charismatic exaggeration.

Laying down in the aftermath, amid

aftershocks, I thought of the magnets my

girls play with.They like to turn them so the

like poles face each other and then they inch

one magnet toward the other, making

it scoot until it reaches the tipping

point, shaking and spinning and exposing

the opposite pole so the two magnets

fly together. I try to be holy,

because God is holy, but I forget

God’s holiness is completely other

than what I expect it to be, and my

constructed notions of what holiness

should look like push me away when the Lord

inches closer. God isn’t interested

in my holy side, God has plenty of

holiness. Instead, God wants that

other side, my opposite pole—the weak,

ugly, problematic face—and one turn

flings me to the holy magnetism

where I’m caught and made part of a new field.

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Ron Hickerson works in higher education where he helps students navigate the murky waters of academia. When he's not at his desk, you can find him wandering around campus, searching for the oldest trees. His work has previously appeared in The Clayjar Review and Foreshadow. Find him on Instagram @mikeron0_25.