Article the star response

There was never a single Sunday service he missed. He was always takes the spot just a few steps away from the door and holds his gaze at the foot ofone of the unsympathetic saints. At weekday mornings, I would always see him hurrying towards the street going to church.
No, he is not a lay minister nor an active church member. He is one of those churchgoers who are familiar sights inside the church just like the ornate fixtures adorning the windows, the pallid walls that seem to have never been touched by sunlight and the dead serious saints that stare down at you blankly. Very much like these church furnishings, he was as inconspicuous as the window fixtures, his skin pallid as the walls and his face topped with a few wisps of hair was left as blank as the faces of the stone-cold saints by the deteriorating disease that appears to have drained the life out of him even before his time was up.
One Sunday I saw him and I said to myself, “ This guy’s definitely a saint’s buddy, I bet his prayers go straight up to heaven.” That Sunday, he was strangely paler than his usual pallor and he was not walking; he was painstakingly dragging himself towards his favorite saint. I never saw him again after that Sunday.
On yet another Sunday, curious on what happened to the man, I asked one of the church regulars on the guy’s whereabouts. I have learned he had died the night of the last Sunday I saw him. I never found out what disease he had but from the looks of it he may have had a cancer of some sort. Whatever condition he may have had, what happened to the man had struck questions and doubts in my mind. Why was he denied of the miracle he had prayed for almost everyday? Was the saint, his buddy, too busy to hear out his sole supplication? Was it too much to ask for him to be eased of that agonizing pain that caused him to drag his feet just to go to church?
Yes. What happened to that man had caused an immense blow on my faith not on God but on the saints I take little notice of at church and I reiterate, my faith on God did not falter but doubts on these marble statues at church had launched a massive attack on my belief on what the church had introduced as ‘ saints’. I stand by the basic principle that God can never be cruel and would never give false hope to Men.
These thoughts clouded my mind and covered my ears which caused me to not hear what was said during the service. The service ended and I remained sitting still, oblivious to the faint bustle of the leaving churchgoers. As I came to my senses, I stood up and walked over to the saint the man always prays to. I looked up and stared hard as though I blame the saint on the fate of the man. I wanted to ask the saint why he did not take pity on the man and why he did not listen to the man’s prayers. Then something caught my eye, I stretched my neck as high as I could to see the saint’s ear. The saint’s ear had no hole, which figures why he cannot hear the man’s prayers and the lips were tightly closed and permanently fixed into a disturbing smile which explains why the saint cannot offer any words of comfort to the man.
As I exited the church, I knew I would never see the man again and I knew then that my belief in the so-called saints (which in reality are mere statues) had died with that man. Statues are just statues…they can never be saints and answer our prayers.