Stuck in the Middle (20 page)

Joan picked up the phone and dialed home. The clock read 4:30. Hopefully Gram hadn’t started supper yet.

“Hello?”

“Gram, I’m going to be late tonight, so don’t plan on me for dinner.”

A short silence. “But I’ve got Salisbury steak in the Dutch oven. You like Salisbury steak.”

“I know, but something’s come up and I need to go to Lexington. Why don’t you give Allie a call? Eric’s working tonight, and she loves your Salisbury steak.”

Another pause. “I guess I could do that.” Joan steeled herself against the distress in her grandmother’s voice. She knew how Gram hated having her schedule disrupted. “But what will you eat?”

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll pick something up on the way.”

“Why do you have to go to Lexington on such short notice?”

Not a question she wanted to answer at the moment. She glanced toward the appliances where Pat, the store’s assistant manager, was pointing out the features of an upright freezer to a middle-aged woman. The rest of the store was empty. “Oops, there’s a customer, Gram. I’ve got to go. I might be late, so don’t wait up. Love you. Bye.”

She replaced the receiver quickly, before Gram could ask any more questions.

The Open Bible Church didn’t even look like a church. It looked like a convention center. The parking lot was divided into sections with names like “Love” and “Faith” so you wouldn’t lose your car. At a church! What was this place, Six Flags Over Jesus? Joan parked in the Hope section and sat clutching the steering wheel, her stomach in her throat. A stream of people strode past her car up the walkway toward a huge modern building that looked like it had been designed for the twenty-third century, with a roof slanted at artistic angles atop a gigantic entryway. The building itself was octagonal, and not a stained-glass window in sight. No doubt that this was a church, though. The sidewalk split around an enormous white cross that reached toward the sky on the front lawn.

What was she doing here? She hated reruns. She couldn’t even stand to see a movie twice. What was it about the missionary woman that made Joan want to hear her again?

She hated going anywhere new alone. Could she have convinced Allie to come with her? She shook her head. No, she didn’t want to have to try to explain to Allie why she wanted to hear Mrs. Sachs again. She couldn’t even explain it to herself, really.

Inside the building, a woman approached Joan with a friendly smile the moment she stepped through the glass doors. “Hello. I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Sandy.”

Her hand caught in a soft, warm grip, Joan whiffed a subtle scent of roses as she returned the smile. “I’m Joan. I came to hear your guest speaker.”

“We’re glad to have you visit with us. The sanctuary is right through there. Sit anywhere you like.” She gestured at the nearest set of open double doors, through which Joan glimpsed rows of chairs. “Not as many people come on Wednesday nights, so we close the balcony so we can get cozy down here.”

Cozy? In this colossal building? “Thank you.”

Joan stepped through the doorway and stopped, her jaw slack. This was not a sanctuary. It was more like a . . . a concert hall. Six sections of plush chairs in long rows filled the gigantic room. The carpeted floor slanted downward toward a huge stage in the center, where an elaborate drum set stood surrounded by an assortment of band instruments. The polished surface of a huge grand piano gleamed in the bright lights. The only thing that made this look like a church was the large illuminated cross on the back wall. Giant speakers hung suspended from the ceiling all around the auditorium, and two huge white screens flanked the cross.

Was this what Ken and Karen’s church looked like?

Trying not to gawk like a country bumpkin, Joan selected a row near the back. She slipped into a chair on the aisle, her stomach fluttering. If anything weird happened, if anyone started rolling on the floor or shouting or anything like that, she intended to make a quick exit.

The stream of people filing into the auditorium slowed to a trickle a few minutes past 7:30. Only about a third of the chairs were filled, she estimated, which was still probably several hundred people. Christ Community Church saw a crowd this big a couple of times a year, on Easter Sunday and Christmas Eve. They’d given up Wednesday night services during the summer several years ago because not enough people showed up to justify running the air conditioner.

A slip of paper peeked from the pocket of the seat in front of her. Joan pulled it out. A bulletin from last Sunday. Curious, she flipped it open. No order of worship, no list of hymns, not even a sermon title. Instead, she read through the announcements, prayer requests, and a list of activities going on in the church throughout the week. The list continued on the back page, with youth activities and Bible studies and meetings in the coffee shop. Coffee shop? She looked again. Yes, apparently this church had its own coffee shop and a bookstore too. She even saw a notice listing the times those establishments were open for business.

But obviously they didn’t believe in punctuality. Joan had glanced at her wristwatch a dozen times when finally, at 7:36, a door she hadn’t noticed at the side of the stage opened and a troupe of people filed onto the platform. Several of them made their way to the instruments, while four people around Joan’s age carrying microphones arranged themselves across the front of the stage facing the congregation. Mr. and Mrs. Sachs followed a thirty-something man in jeans and a golf shirt through the doorway. They walked down a set of steps and sat in chairs on the front row, much as they had at Christ Community, while the man Joan assumed to be the pastor crossed to the center of the stage to stand behind a simple wooden podium.

“Welcome, church. Tonight we’re going to suspend our regular Wednesday teaching so we can hear from a special guest. I’ll introduce her in a moment, but first, let’s begin with prayer.”

Joan stood along with the congregation and bowed her head as the pastor led them in a lengthy prayer. When he said Amen, Joan started to sit down. She stopped when he went on with, “Now let’s lift our voices as our praise team leads us in worship of our awesome God.”

The gigantic screens came to life as the band launched into a lively tune. Joan didn’t recognize the song, but everyone around her knew it. They all sang, though she couldn’t hear anyone over the sound of the instruments and the voices of the singers with microphones. The tune was simple, easy to follow. Joan joined in on the second verse, reading the words from one of the big screens in a soft voice.

When the song concluded, Joan looked toward the pastor, expecting him to step back up to the podium and make announcements. Instead, the band changed keys and launched into another. Uh-oh. Were they going to sing for thirty minutes like they did at Karen’s church? Joan glanced at her watch again. It would be after 10:00 before she got home at this rate.

But the music was great. No doubt that band rehearsed a lot more than Christ Community’s choir, which only practiced once a week during the Sunday school hour. These singers sounded so good they could have been a professional performing group. Two trumpet players stood up and played a duet. People applauded when they finished. If anyone ever tried to applaud at Christ Community, they’d probably be escorted from the service.

The third song was slower. The singers all had their eyes closed, and two of them raised a hand high above their heads, as though reaching toward heaven. Many of the people around Joan did the same. Down on the front row, Mrs. Sachs had her head thrown back and both arms stretched into the air, like a little girl who wanted her parents to pick her up.

Joan read the words on the screen as the congregation sang them.

You are worthy, Lord,
You are worthy, oh my Father,

You are my life, my love, my heart and soul
And I worship you.

When the music swelled on the last line, something rose from deep inside her and squeezed her throat. She closed her eyes. This wasn’t like any song she’d ever heard at Christ Community. It was more . . . personal. This wasn’t singing about God, this was singing to him, and it was far more intimate than anything Joan had ever done. Like opening up her heart and letting God see what was inside, in the place that no one, not even Joan, dared look.

And it was scary.

Tears prickled behind her eyes, and she squeezed her lids tight. Her fingers clutched the back of the chair in front of her. Whatever this was, she didn’t like it one bit. She would not lose control and cry in front of all these people!

Thankfully, the song ended quickly. If the praise team started another one, she would leave. She half turned, ready to pick up her purse and head for the exit, when the pastor stepped to the podium. The people all around her sat down, and with a sigh of relief, Joan took her seat as well.

The pastor introduced Robert and Mary Alice. They both stood as the congregation applauded to welcome them. Mr. Sachs lifted a hand to wave as Mrs. Sachs mounted the stairs and went to stand behind the podium. Odd that he left the speaking to his wife. She had spoken of their work together in Afghanistan. Why didn’t he tell his side of the story?

As Joan expected, Mrs. Sachs’s message was the same as the one she gave at Christ Community Church. But instead of being bored, Joan sat fascinated along with the rest of the congregation as she heard again how God miraculously provided the thousands of dollars necessary to build an orphanage in the midst of a war-ravaged village. The skin on her arms erupted with chills when Mrs. Sachs told them of a small pot of soup that somehow managed to fill the bowls of almost fifty starving children.

Then came the part that had hovered on the edge of Joan’s thoughts for the past week and a half. She told how God answered the seemingly insignificant prayer of one orphaned boy.

Mrs. Sachs told the spellbound congregation, “We teach the children that our God is a personal God, that he cares for each of them more tenderly than any earthly father, and that he delights in giving them the desires of their hearts. Eight-year-old Rahim took us at our word. He came to Robert one day and said, ‘My brother is a soldier. He told me ice cream is the most delicious food in the world. Do you think God would give me some ice cream?’” Mrs. Sachs paused. “Now this is hard for us in America to understand, because we can walk down to the corner store and buy an ice-cream bar anytime we want. But in that village, treats like that simply don’t exist. They often don’t have the food they need to survive, much less the ingredients to make ice cream. They don’t have ice. They don’t have electricity.”

She directed a tender grin toward her husband. “But my husband has the faith of a giant. And he’s a man of few words. His response to Rahim was, ‘What flavor?’” Joan laughed along with the rest of the congregation.

“I scolded him later for getting Rahim’s hopes up, because I couldn’t see any possible way to get chocolate ice cream for that boy. But we serve a God who loves to accomplish the impossible. Two days later, a helicopter was scheduled to deliver some much-needed medical supplies from the headquarters of a relief organization. The pilot told us their refrigeration unit malfunctioned right before he left camp. It wouldn’t be fixed for days, and the director sent some of the frozen food along with him to donate to the orphanage.”

Mrs. Sachs paused, and even though Joan knew what she was going to say, she held her breath.

“I nearly fell over in a dead faint when that man handed Robert a five-gallon container of chocolate ice cream.”

The congregation burst into spontaneous applause, and Joan joined in, chills coursing down her spine.

Mrs. Sachs leaned forward on the podium. “You see, our God doesn’t supply only what we need to scrape by. The almighty God is our Father. He loves us. He delights in delighting us. He wants to give us treats and enjoys hearing our joyful laughter in return.”

That was it. That was the part Joan drove to Lexington tonight to hear. She leaned against the cushioned back of her chair, her mind whirling as she tried to grasp the point Mrs. Sachs had just illustrated. Was it merely an incredible coincidence, or did God really arrange for that little boy to have chocolate ice cream delivered via helicopter to his front door? The God Joan knew didn’t act like that. Of course there was only one God, so why did he take such an active part in the life of an orphaned boy on the other side of the world, while he ignored her? That boy didn’t have a father, but neither did Joan.

She didn’t hear another word of Mrs. Sachs’s message. An ache in her heart became a physical throb as her thoughts circled around a question. What was wrong with her? Something must be, because both of her fathers, earthly and heavenly, had deserted her.

When Mrs. Sachs sat down, the congregation responded with thunderous applause. The pastor announced that a love offering would be taken to help finance another orphanage the Sachs hoped to build, this one in Africa. He also said they would be in the coffee shop if anyone had any questions or wanted to chat. The service ended with another song led by the praise team, but Joan didn’t even pretend to sing along. Instead, she scribbled out a check and tore it from her checkbook while the music blared from the speakers all around her.