Welcome to the Scripture Study Project. We study together by investing our hearts into important questions, discovering powerful truths from God and His Word, and connecting meaningfully with others as we learn and teach together.

Hey everyone, welcome back.

I want to start with a really depressing story that I promise gets better, or at least it'll

help us to discover something better.

This is from a really short story written 50 plus years ago called The Ones who walk away from O'Mellas.

And it's less of a story and more of kind of a philosophical narration.

It describes this town, O'Mellas, that is perfect in every way. They have green

fields and fruit and everyone's happy and no one stresses and everyone can be peaceful with each other

and have the happiness that they want. They have parties and celebrations and it's heaven, heaven on earth.

And then the author, this is Ursula K. Lee Gwynn. I think she won a couple of awards for this.

She writes this, do you believe? Do you accept the festival, the city, the joy? No. Then let me describe one more thing. In a basement under one

of the beautiful public buildings of Omelis, or perhaps in the cellar of one of its spacious private homes, there's a room.

It has one locked door and no window. A little light seeps in dustily between cracks and the boards,

secondhand from a cobweb window somewhere across the cellar. In one corner of the little room,

a couple of mops with stiff, clotted, foul-smelling heads

stand near a rusty bucket.

The floor is dirt, a little damp to the touch, as cellar dirt usually is.

The room is about three paces long and too wide, a mere broom closet or distrusted tool

room.

In the room, a child is sitting. It could be a boy or a girl. It looks about six,

but actually is nearly ten. The door is locked. Nobody will come. The door is always locked,

and nobody ever comes, except that sometimes the child has no understanding of time or interval,

...