To Live and To Breathe (Could Be #2)

Chapter 52

Just sitting next to Mary was distracting, but Timothy knew he'd better find a more effective method of concentrating on the sermon than watching an ostrich feather bob in someone's hat. He'd come to make good on his promise to Mary, but he also didn't want to leave the church feeling as empty as he had last week. He needed to hear from the Lord, and he couldn't do that while wondering how long the ostrich had been dead that had supplied the feather.

So he set himself to studying the preacher the moment the dreadful tradition of singing was over and his silence was once again an acceptable behavior. The man was somewhat balder and plumper than Mr. Stephens, dressed in shabbily well-kept black tailcoat and trousers. He looked at the congregation for a moment, then announced that his sermon would come from the eighth chapter in the book of Romans and leaped in without preamble.

"'There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit,'" he began, and Timothy couldn't stifle the smallest trickle of disappointment. It was an important message, but it didn't fill up the hunger inside him.

Hardly any light made it through the dusty windows on either side of the pulpit, but what did glinted off of the man's shiny bald head when he looked down to read. It reminded Timothy of a magnificent gelatin Prissy had once had for her birthday. It had looked alien and tasted like nothing. He wondered that such a thing existed. Did Mary know how one was made?

It was several minutes before he realized he'd let his attention stray, and he forced it back onto the pulpit with stubborn determination.

"'For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father,'" the preacher read. "'The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.'"

Children of God. A little of Timothy's artificial attention slipped away to be replaced by the genuine article. He hadn't lately thought of himself as a child of God. Debtor, yes—but not child. He'd known it, once. Timothy had come, a boy scarcely six years of age, and begged the Sunday school teacher to tell him how to know the man Jesus.

"'For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?'" The preacher stopped. "I know that many of you here today are burdened. We live in a time of great violence, and change. The future can be frightening, and hard to hope for."

Timothy looked down at his hands, clenched knuckles turned white. There was no ink on them. His heart ached.

"But with Paul we can say, 'What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?'" The preacher turned the page. "We have His hope as an anchor for our soul so that no matter what changes we can know that He is there, and He loves us."

The feeling in Timothy's chest sharpened and deepened. It was no longer pain, but warmth. It blossomed, tentatively seeking the light.

"'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter,'" the preacher went on. "'Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.' More than conquerors. Write that on your heart, take it home and live it. We aren't going to scrape by—through His grace we can overcome. Not of ourselves, through Him. Through His love."

Could God possibly love unstable, odd, broken, Timothy Wright? After all the mistakes he'd made and years spent chasing a feeling rather than a God, could He really love him? The tendril of hope wound tighter.

The preacher pounded the pulpit. "'For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' Nothing! His love isn't part of the time or conditional on what we can do. He loves us no matter who we are or what we've come from. We can't earn it. He loves us whether we want it or not, and I can't think of anything more wonderful than to know that the One who created me loves what He's created."

Timothy bent over to hide his face in his hands before anyone saw him cry, right there in the middle of the church. He hadn't felt God's love so palpably since he was a child, and the warmth of it drowned out all his fears. Oh, Lord—teach me Your love. Don't let me forget it. Could the Creator really love His created?

Mercifully, the preacher began the closing prayer. Timothy worked his handkerchief out of his pocket and held it to his face as if to stifle a sneeze, then sat up. He wasn't ashamed of the truth, but it was too deeply personal a revelation. To give voice to it might spoil its beauty.

His efforts were only half rewarded. His mother asked him what was the matter the moment conversation was acceptable, and his father arched an eyebrow in a way that said he didn't believe for a moment that Timothy had encountered dust. What he did think Timothy didn't dare to entertain. Mary returned his glance with a tiny smile that frightened him more than his father's eyebrow.

Since he was already scared for different reasons, he thought that it was a good time to break the news that he was about to spend the afternoon with the O'Connors. His parents wouldn't dare explode in public, and perhaps by time the opportunity came for giving him the dressing-down he so richly deserved they'd remember that they'd been young once too.

"Miss O'Connor has been kind enough to invite me to the O'Connor residence," Timothy said in a rush, garnering a look of shock from his mother and two lifted eyebrows from his father. "On the condition that I bring St. Vincent. I understand he's quite the celebrity there."

After one horrible moment of silence, Mr. Wright sighed. "I really do not know why anything you do surprises me anymore, Timothy. I really do not."

Mrs. Wright grabbed her husband's wrist, a funny smile Timothy wasn't sure he liked spreading over her face. "Charles!"

"I rather think we ought to be going," Mr. Wright said, towing her into the aisle. "It's growing quite crowded in here, and we could both benefit from the wholesomeness of some fresh air. What would you do if the whole thing fell down on us like matchsticks? Out we go."

The moment they were gone, Mary laughed. Timothy turned to her in amazement, unable to see what there was to be laughing about. "I always thought your father was a stern man, but now I see you in him."

–––––––––

I think there are few of us who can sit in a church and dutifully listen to a sermon without getting distracted at some point, so I didn't want to romanticize the churchgoing experience. I wanted to depict it truthfully.