Emphasis Preaching Journal

Martha heard the girls coming up the front walk chanting a familiar singsong rhyme: "Step on a crack, you'll break your mother's back!" It was a childhood jingle so old its origins were lost in the folds of time. Martha had chanted it with her friends when she was a child, as had her mother before her -- a bit of innocent fun. Except, for Martha, it hadn't been fun at all. She genuinely believed that she must carefully avoid all cracks wherever she stepped, or she really would hurt her mother. Martha hadn't believed it for long, of course. But she still remembered.