The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (17 page)

After a minute or two, Mr. Jones opened his eyes again.

“Eh—there's the young preacher-lad,” he breathed softly, seeing Christopher now standing behind me for the first time as we all crowded around the bed. “Corrie, lass,” he said, “ye done mighty fine fer a man. . . . Ye make yer Pa proud . . . hee, hee—he told me so hisself. He thinks . . . thinks the world o' ye, he does—that's just what he told me . . . and you, Rev'rend,” he said, lifting his eyebrows up toward Christopher, “I reckon it's about . . . about time fer you t' be doin' yer work, eh . . . hee, hee—”

Again he started coughing.

“Would you like me to pray with you, Mr. Jones?” Christopher asked.

“Aye, that I would, young feller,” scratched Mr. Jones' tired voice, “though I don't . . . don't figure I oughta . . . let you do all the prayin' yerself. Don't ye reckon, seein's . . . I'm about t' meet him myself that I . . . oughta talk t' him myself?”

“That's a good idea, Mr. Jones,” said Christopher. “Shall I begin?”

Mr. Jones coughed lightly again, nodded, and closed his eyes.

Again the door opened, and Aunt Katie stole quietly in, though Mr. Jones didn't see her. He had his eyes closed, waiting for Christopher to pray.

Christopher began to pray.

“Our Father
,”
he said,
“we come to you in this holy
moment, committing into your care the life of our friend and brother and the son whom you love, Alkali Jones
. We thank you, Father, for the privilege of knowing him
, and we thank you that he is one of your family. We ask that you would restore him to health
. Restore him, Lord, to perfect health and vitality of life
and limb . . . and especially spirit. Thank you for his life
and for the great joy he has brought to every one of us.”

Christopher stopped.

“Hee, hee . . . that's mighty fine, young feller . . . hee, hee . . . you and ol' Rutledge, ye was always both mighty fine . . . at the prayin' . . . though I don't reckon I'm gonna help ye git yer prayer answered. . . . I ain't feelin' much o' that there vitality. . . .”

He closed his eyes. His breathing was so soft.

Christopher did not respond to Mr. Jones' misunderstanding of his words, but I knew what he meant well enough.

“Would you like to pray now yourself, Mr. Jones?” encouraged Christopher gently.

A faint nod came from the bed, though he didn't open his eyes.

He waited another few seconds, then began.

“Well, Lord,”
breathed Mr. Jones in the faintest whisper,
“I reckon it's about time . . . fer
ye t' see if there's anything worth keepin' in this ol' soul o' mine. Ye been mighty . . . mighty good
t' an ol' varmint like me. Ye gave me frien
's . . . that loved me more'n a feller deserves . . . an
' that I loved more'n I ever told 'em—”

A stifled sob broke from Almeda's lips. She clutched her mouth and turned away for a moment, eyes filling with tears. When she glanced back, she took the miner's two hands tenderly in hers once more.

I was crying by now too. We all were. Pa's face was wet, and I know he wasn't ashamed.

I blinked a few times and closed my eyes again while Mr. Jones struggled to get the words of his prayer out, though his voice was fading so soft I could barely make them out.

“Like I was sayin', Lord, ye
 . . . ye been good t' this ol' codger. . . . I'm mighty
obliged that ye kep' lovin' me all them years when I wasn't payin' as much attention as I shouda
 . . . an' I wanna tell ye thank ye again, that ye
seen fit them months back t' hear me when I . . . when I prayed an' told ye I wanted t' be
in yer family, Lord. You was mighty good t' let
me in . . . and now I'm . . . now—”

Suddenly he stopped.

His eyes, which had been closed, shot open wide.

I saw from the white grip of his fingers that his two hands had clutched the two of Pa's and Almeda's that they still held with a grasp tighter than would have seemed possible.

Almost at the same instant, he seemed trying to sit up in the bed, though all he could do was barely lift his head off the pillow.

There was almost a glow on his face and such a light in his eyes that I was sure he had seen something across the room. Unconsciously I turned to follow the direction of his gaze. As I did, I noticed that Pa and some of the others had turned as well.

Mr. Jones was struggling to talk, but mostly his lips were moving rapidly and silently. It seemed like we were only hearing a small portion of what was passing through his brain.

“He's . . . there he . . . Drum,” he said, and for the first time his voice was almost strong again. Though he was fumbling for words, those that did come out were loud and vigorous. “Drum, he's . . . he's comin' . . . he's tellin' me t' git up . . . t' take his hand . . . t' follow . . . he's takin' me t' see . . . so bright an'—”

The next sound to come from Mr. Jones' lips is one I'll never forget as long as I live.

Suddenly the words and strength were gone, and nothing was left but a long, slow sigh as the last air of life gradually eased out of his lungs.

I turned back toward the bed.

Mr. Jones' eyes were closed and his head had sunk back into the pillow. The glow on his face was gone. Pa and Almeda still had hold of the two hands, lifeless now.

We all knew he had seen Jesus and was now on his way with him to meet his Father.

Pa and Uncle Nick wept.

Almeda stooped down and again kissed one of the aged, bearded cheeks. “Bless the dear, dear man!” she whispered, then raised herself back up, gazing upon him with eyes of love, tears falling down her cheeks.

“Godspeed, friend and brother,” said Christopher. “We will miss you . . . but we will all see you again—and soon.”

The room was silent a moment.

“Goodbye, Alkali,” whispered Pa.

The funeral of Alkali Jones was a big event in Miracle Springs. Whether or not it was true that he had made the strike that began the town didn't seem to matter anymore. The legend of it had grown through the years to the point that, even if it wasn't true, it might as well have been. Mr. Jones had been here longer than just about anybody and so was a legend himself, even if more than half his stories were mere tales.

It wasn't by any means the first funeral Rev. Rutledge had been called on to perform as minister of Miracle Springs, but it may have been the most widely attended.

Everybody for miles around came. The church couldn't begin to hold all the people. So we all stood outside in the small cemetery near the church, next to the mound of fresh earth taken from the new grave that Pa and Uncle Nick and some of Mr. Jones' other close friends had dug.

It was a funeral to remember!

We were sad to lose a friend, of course, but the service seemed more a celebration than a time of mourning, like a farewell before a long trip.

Rev. Rutledge's words were more happy than they were sad, and they set the tone for the rest of the day. He told as much as he knew about Alkali Jones' life, which wasn't really too much.

“I think perhaps some of the sadness we cannot help feel on a day such as this,” he said, “comes not only from the simple fact that we will miss a dear friend, but also from the fact that a piece of our past, our history, our heritage as a community, is now gone. Alkali Jones was here longer, to my knowledge, than any other man or woman among us. We are going to hear from a couple of his oldest friends in a few minutes. But even when they arrived here in Miracle Springs to stake out their first claims shortly after the gold rush, Alkali Jones was already here. In a sense,
he
was our history, because he himself was the main character in the tales he told. Had it not been for him, none of the rest of us might be here now either.”

Then he went on to tell about how Mr. Jones had recently given his heart to the Lord.

“So you see, friends and neighbors,” he said in conclusion, “this is no occasion for grief, but rather one for rejoicing. Alkali Jones was always a man, if I may say it, just slightly out of step with this world and its ways, a man not altogether at home in this place. I would like to think that several months ago, when he invited the Savior into his heart, preparations began immediately, and that the angels even then began making ready for his arrival.

“He is there now, happy and young again, laughing with joy at the celebration of his own homecoming. He may even be telling some of the younger angels the story of his first big gold strike!”

We could not help smiling at the very picture Rev. Rutledge was painting in our minds. After that it was impossible to be very sad. Although there continued to be tears, I think that for everyone they were tears of happiness and of love.

“Whatever he is telling them,” Rev. Rutledge added finally, “it certainly cannot be denied that he has now discovered the greatest treasure of all!”

He stood aside while Uncle Nick said a few words, then Pa.

“You know,” Pa said, “as I was listening to Avery here, the most peculiar sensation came over me. I been to some funerals in my life. Most of them aren't all that pleasant, especially when the person that's passed on wasn't of an upstanding sort, because it's hard to pretend that they're playing a harp on a cloud in heaven somewhere when everyone knows they were the sort of person that deserves the other place, and that's likely where they are.

“It's different today with Alkali. I don't know that I ever saw him do a selfish turn to man or beast in my life. He could cuss at his ornery mules. But in his own way, Alkali Jones was a kindhearted man. I know that's the kind of thing everybody says at funerals. But if you'll all think back on what you knew of Alkali, can anyone here remember a time when he did a selfish thing to any of you?”

Pa waited a moment.

“Neither can I,” he said. “So when he prayed a while back and said to God his maker that he wanted to be his son, I think God was downright pleased. There ain't the slightest doubt in my mind that Alkali's with the Lord Jesus today, and so I figure that makes this a pretty exciting day.”

Again he stopped for a minute.

“I was fixing to tell you about something I felt a few minutes ago,” he went on. “I was standing here listening to the Rev., and all at once I thought I felt Alkali himself standing right next to me. No fooling—I could almost smell him.

“I kinda looked up and around, and I know it was just in my imagination, but I could see his face kind of hanging out in the air here above us. It was like he was right there, looking at us, listening to what we were saying.

“And what do you think was the expression he had? Why he was laughing, of course—what else! Laughing big and loud because he was so happy, and wondering why so many of the women were crying over an old coot like him.”

Beside me, Almeda could no longer stifle a sob, though as she cried I knew there was joy mingled in with it.

“Alkali Jones,” he concluded, “wherever you are, we love you, dear friend—”

Finally Pa's voice choked. He sniffed once or twice, and his eyes filled with tears.

“—we'll all miss you!” he managed to croak out in a soft voice, then turned and stepped back to Almeda's side.

Rev. Rutledge stepped forward again. He read a scripture, then said a prayer.

We couldn't help it. Joyous though it may have been, everyone was crying again—men along with the women.

Then Pa, Uncle Nick, Sheriff Rafferty, and Patrick Shaw—Mr. Jones' oldest friends—took hold of the ropes on opposite sides of the wood coffin and slowly lowered it down into the ground.

We all turned and slowly made our way out of the cemetery. No one said a word.

There was a hush over the whole town the rest of the day.

Three Sundays after the funeral, Rev. Rutledge got up to preach with an expression of serious thought on his face.

“I had planned to carry on before this with a topic I spoke of some time ago,” he said. “But with the passing of our brother Alkali, it has not seemed fitting to me until now. I believe, however, that the time has come when it may be helpful to you.”

He paused, and then began with a simple question.

“How can you know what is God's will?” Rev. Rutledge asked.

He paused.

“Let me make it even simpler,” he said after a moment. “Is it even
possible
for us to really know God's will? If so, how do we discover it?”

Again he waited.

“Several weeks ago,” Rev. Rutledge went on, “we spoke together about allowing the Lord to make the decisions in our lives. Now that you have had time to reflect upon this, I would like for us to inquire further into the practical aspects of that question.

“Let us say for the sake of argument that, as you sat here during that previous sermon, you said to yourself, ‘All right, preacher, what you say makes some sense. I'll give it a try. I'll let God start making some of my decisions for me.'

“And now you find yourself suddenly facing a situation that has recently come up in your life. It doesn't even matter that I know what it is.

“The point is that you are facing a dilemma. You don't know what you ought to do. And perhaps you have determined to try to let God decide for you instead of doing what seems right in your own eyes.

“Your question to me might very well be:
‘What do I do now?
How
do
I let God decide? How do I know what he wants me to do? How do I know what his will is?
How do I hear God's voice?
'

“If any of you have found such questions in your minds since our last talk together about these things, I hope today's discussion will help you begin listening to your heavenly Father in new and more personal ways.”

Rev. Rutledge paused to collect his thoughts before continuing. You could sense an anticipation in the air. Nobody was close to falling asleep. You could tell everyone was eager for what he had to say. After all, what could possibly be more exciting in all the world than actually learning to hear the Creator's voice . . . just like Moses did!

“Let me repeat my question:
How do I hear God's voice?
”

Another brief pause.

“Now, these days God doesn't usually speak loudly and forcefully and audibly like he did to Moses. His voice is much softer. Moses couldn't help hearing God, because God thundered to him from the mountain. For us the situation is completely reversed. We
can
help it. In fact, we won't hear him at all unless
we train ourselves to listen with a different set of senses than most men and women know much
about
.

“Hear me well, my friends. I will repeat what I just said: We must
train
ourselves to listen with a different set of senses if we want to hear God's voice speaking to us. Even the words I am using—
hearing
and
listening
—are inaccurate because they imply that what we are listening for is an audible voice that we will hear with our ears.

“We actually need different words to describe the process because God's voice isn't usually audible.
It's a different kind of hearing
that you do with the
heart
, not your
ears
.”

The minister paused, took a deep breath, then began again in more of a teaching than a preaching tone.

“I would like to take you through this process I speak of,” he said. “For it to work, of course, each of you have to try it for yourselves. But I will do my best to tell you as simply as I can what I have found works for me.

“First, find someplace quiet where you can be alone with your God for a few minutes. Remember, you are his
child
. He is your
Father
. All you have to do, therefore, is ask him what he would have you do. Very simply say to him,
‘Father, I ask you to show
me what you want me to do in this situation. I seek your will, and I will do what you
say. My desire is to do what you want me
to, so please tell me what that is.'

“That is all there is to asking, though certainly not in knowing what to do, which comes later. There doesn't have to be a great deal of fanfare in order to turn something over to the Lord. It is an act of relinquishment that is required, not a long pious prayer. It is very quiet and inward, just between
your
will and
his
will. It is just the act of saying,
‘Here, Father, I put this into your hands.'

“We can say
‘Here'
to God anytime.” As Rev. Rutledge said this he held out both of his hands toward us.

“If you
want
to do what God wants, your will is in a subordinate position to his. If you are still wrestling with whether or not to follow your will or his—as we all do from time to time—then the spiritual battle is not yet one of hearing the Lord's voice but of relinquishment itself, of deciding which side of the fence you are going to come down on in determining your course of action.

“But once the battle of relinquishment has been fought and you
want
to do God's will, then you can very quietly and deliberately and honestly ask him to speak to you . . . and you can be sure he will.

“I am absolutely convinced that in such circumstances as these, God delights in such an honest and humble prayer as
‘
Father, show me what you want me to do'
and that he
will
answer such a request.

“In my view, one of the chief impediments to God's speaking to his children is simply this: Our ears are plugged because our
own
wills are still heavily involved in determining our motives and attitudes and priorities.”

As I listened to Rev. Rutledge, I thought of what Christopher had said when he and I were talking about Jennie and Tom several weeks earlier. He could be preaching this exact same sermon!

“I do not for a moment say I have conquered this either,” Rev. Rutledge continued. “We struggle all our lives with our own wills. It is intrinsic to the humanity of our condition. But we grow capable of hearing from God to the extent that we relinquish our wills and yield them into his. The relinquishment of our own wills removes the wax from our spiritual ears and allows us to hear the still, small voice of God's Spirit.”

He paused, cleared his throat, and waited a few minutes. Some people shifted about in their seats.

“Now,” he went on, “what comes next? Having asked your Father what to do . . . what then?

“It is now time to wait. You can put the decision out of your mind.
‘Be not
anxious,'
we are told . . .
‘Fret not.'
The time has come to obey such commands.

“The still, small voice of God's speaking direction into your heart and mind is most often a slow process. We are quick-answer people, but God is not always a quick-answer God.

“It may take a while. You may not feel you know what you are supposed to do concerning what you have prayed about for six months, perhaps more. If you have relinquished the matter into his hands and your own will is not vying to gain a hearing, then the Lord
will
speak in due time.

“When I speak of
waiting
, however, I do not mean passive waiting—merely letting time pass while you do nothing. I speak rather of
active
waiting. It is the attitude a servant adopts when he is
waiting on
his master. It is an attitude of vigilant readiness, all senses alert and awake and awaiting the master's summons. We wait, but with our eyes wide and our faces turned toward our Father.

“We wait, and what happens next?

“Too often, we simply grow impatient. We grow weary of the waiting. Doesn't the Lord know how desperate we are for an answer? we say. Does he not realize the urgency?

“How many of you have felt such things?”

Rev. Rutledge paused with a smile. “I see by your nods that you know what I am speaking about. I, too, have grown impatient with the Lord more times than I like to remember.

“And then what happens?

“Then we make one of two mistakes. Either we decide to just go ahead on our own, or we try to convince ourselves that we
have
heard the Lord and likewise just forge ahead.

“Yet if our own impatience is behind the so-called ‘leading,' what have we
really
heard? Only our own desires. You have heard me say it many times, and I will remind you of it again—God's purposes cannot be rushed. Human impatience is yet another blockage to divine leading.”

He drew in a breath, then continued.

“But let us move forward and talk about what it is like when the season of patient and prayerful waiting has borne its fruit and at last the Lord does begin to truly speak his leading into your heart. What, you may be asking yourself, does God's leading actually
feel
like?

“There have been very few signs and wonders in my life, no visions or audible messages from on high. But I
have
witnessed the Lord's leading over and over. He has been speaking direction to me for the ten or fifteen years in which I have come to be open to it, although in very quiet and almost invisible ways.

“Thus I am absolutely convinced that the prayer,
‘Lord, show me what to
do,'
when prayed humbly and honestly and without one's own will in the way, will result in some kind of direction from him.

“So, how
do
you hear it, feel it?” Rev. Rutledge asked.

“Usually it is a sense that grows steadily stronger and stronger that such-and-such a course of action is the right one. God speaks through your brain, through your thoughts, and he also speaks to your heart, indicating a very quiet sense of peace, of ‘rightness'—or, if he is directing you differently, of ‘wrongness'—about the thing you feel inclined to pursue.

“I call it a
sense
that grows steadily stronger. Think of it, perhaps, as a divine
pressure
on your inward being that either says,
‘This is right'
or that makes you feel
uncomfortable
. As long as your wishes in the matter are not influencing this pressure, then these quiet and subtle feelings are ones you can learn to trust as coming in response to your prayers.

“As these feelings and thoughts begin to come, and you begin to think they
may
be in answer to your prayer, you can add the following to your conversations with him:
‘Lord, it
seems you may be indicating that you want me to do such-and-such or not to do such-and-
such. I ask you to confirm whether this is truly
your voice. If not, tell me otherwise.'

“Then again, you can rest, and wait for him to answer this new prayer. Either the sense of leading, the divine pressure or discomfort, will grow stronger, or it will diminish.”

He paused and chuckled good-naturedly.

“I understand how vague this all may sound to you this morning,” he went on. “It would be much easier if the Lord sent telegrams with direct and specific messages to us. But that is not his way, because it would not be best for us. It would not teach us to trust him, to be patient, and it would not enable us to learn his ways through the long, slow, silent, invisible obediences of life. And it would not help us learn to listen.

“This process of learning to attune ourselves to God's still, small voice is foundational to the walk of faith. This is what Jesus was doing constantly, what he did when he arose a great while before day to be alone with his Father in the hills.

“It
is
a vague and subtle process. There are no lists anyone can write down that will automatically tell everyone in every set of circumstances ‘how to know God's will.' God did not intend there to be.

“Jesus said we are to follow his example. He said he did not do anything except what his Father told him to do. He did not specify how exactly we are to do that same thing. Clearly, though, he gave us all the information we are supposed to have.

“Therefore, we have to learn to hear the still, small voice
without
benefit of lists and telegrams. That is the process of growth. That is the walk of faith. That is the reality of John 15—
abiding
in the vine so that the life, that is the will, of the Father more and more flows into us and through us.”