The Christmas Cradle (25 page)

Saturday morning dawned foggy and overcast, and as Ben gazed out the window of the front room, gloom and resentment filled his heart. His Aunt Jerusalem and Bishop Vernon had returned to Cedar Creek, and Preacher Henry Zook had succumbed to the flu, so that left Ben and Tom to preach Hiram Knepp's funeral service. As he sighed once again at the destruction across the road, Ben prayed for a major attitude adjustment. How could he preach about God's love and hope and light to the Knepp children—and to the town of Willow Ridge—when he was struggling with the personal devastation Hiram had caused him and Miriam? Horse-drawn rigs were pulling into the lane over at the Wagler place, so he didn't have any more time to brood.

Ben smoothed the front of his black vest and buttoned the cuffs of his best white shirt. He turned to savor the sight of Miriam sitting in the recliner with baby Bethlehem in her arms. “Are ya sure you'll be all right here by yourself? It's time for me to go.”

“Ah, but I'm not alone,” Miriam reminded him. “I've got this baby of yours—and God'll be here with us, as well.”

Ben smiled at her answer. He suspected Miriam was relieved that Andy had stopped by yesterday with strict instructions: she wasn't to strain herself or expose the baby to crowds yet. A part of him envied her excuse for staying home.

“I'm hopin' that by the time I have to stand up in front of that houseful of people, God'll give me something appropriate to say,” he admitted. “I've always known that funerals would be tough services to preach for somebody I knew and liked, but it's not gonna be any easier to speak about Hiram. How do ya commit somebody's soul over to God when you're not sure that's the direction he went—or intended to go?”

“There are folks thinkin' it was no mistake that he died in a fiery blast,” Miriam remarked. When Bethlehem coughed, she turned the baby onto the towel draped over her shoulder. “Maybe it's best to focus on helpin' Annie Mae, Nellie, and the four younger ones. If
we
have angry, mixed thoughts about Hiram, think about the guilt and pain his kids will be dealin' with for a long, long time yet.”

“
Jah
, it's
gut
that they've got a home with Adam and Matthias—fine men who can stand in for a
dat
who was hard to understand. You're right, honey-girl,” Ben said as he bent to kiss her. “I should focus on the rainbow rather than the rain.”

“Of course I'm right,” Miriam teased. “Ya knew that when ya married me, Bennie-bug.”

“I'll be back as soon as I can. There's still plenty of nice leftovers for your dinner and—”

“Are ya sayin' I forgot how to look after myself when I birthed this wee one?” she countered with a chuckle. “Better skedaddle. You're stallin'—and ya don't want to be the last one to show up.”

As Ben began the short walk to the Wagler place, he was grateful for his wife's sense of humor and perspective. Funerals weren't so much for the soul who'd passed away as they were for the folks left behind—in this case, not just the Knepp children but also the members of a church district who had once followed their faith with Hiram as their bishop. Once again Ben asked God to fill his heart with compassion and his mind with pertinent words. This would be the first funeral he'd preached, and he was feeling jittery and inadequate.

As he entered the crowded house, shaking hands with everyone eased his nerves. When he'd come to Willow Ridge a little more than a year earlier, these folks had immediately welcomed him—and had embraced him this past spring as their new preacher, when Tom had become the bishop in the wake of Hiram's banishment. At times his head spun with how many major life events had befallen him since he'd met Miriam—yet the solemn smiles of these neighbors affirmed their belief that Ben Hooley had been chosen by God to lead them.

And with Your help, God, I will.
He glanced into the main room of the house, which had been expanded by taking down some of the house's interior walls. After yesterday's visitation, the Waglers had moved their furniture and arranged the pew benches in the usual pattern, so the men would sit on one side facing the women on the other. A simple wooden coffin rested on a bench behind where the preachers would sit. Ben was relieved it would remain closed.

A short time before the service was to start, Ben and Tom and their deacon, Reuben Riehl, slipped upstairs. Funeral services had followed the same order for decades, so the only decision they had to make was who would preach the shorter sermon and who would preach the main one. Ben and Tom each chose a passage of Scripture for Reuben to read, and then the redheaded deacon cleared his throat. “Esther and I'll be taking off right after the service,” he murmured. “My cousin in Roseville called, saying my
dat
's in a bad way and might not make it through the day.”

“I'm real sorry to hear that,” Ben replied.

“Travel safely. We'll send our prayers along with ya,” Bishop Tom added as he clasped Reuben's shoulder. “Let us know what all we can do while ya need to be gone.”

Tom looked at Ben with an odd expression on his face, then pulled a quarter from his pocket. “Unless you're sayin' straight out that ya want to preach the main sermon today—”

“Nope, ya didn't hear that from me,” Ben insisted.

“—maybe we should flip for it,” the bishop continued. “We can say that God determines how the coin'll land, just as He selected us to be preachers by the fallin' of the lot. Or is my theology too far outside the lines?”

Ben chuckled. It was a relief to see that even after years of experience, Tom was no more eager to preach Hiram's funeral sermon than he was. “Heads.”

The coin spun in the air between them. When Tom caught it and slapped it onto the back of his hand, George Washington was looking away from them, as though he wanted no part of the proceedings, either.

“There ya have it,” the bishop murmured, tapping the coin with his finger. “‘In God we trust,' it says. Can't go wrong believin' that—but if ya don't have the heart to preach the longer sermon about a fella who caused ya so much trouble, it's my job to assume that responsibility. Your call.”

A smile found its way to Ben's face. “In for a dime, in for a dollar,” he quipped. “I'd better take the talent my Master's entrusted to me and make it pay,
jah?
”

“You're a
gut
man, Hooley. I'll keep the first sermon short, followin' the Twenty-Third Psalm, and leave ya plenty to say about Paul's passage from Romans.” Tom marked a few hymns in his copy of the
Ausbund
and then looked at Ben and Reuben. “Let's go. Folks need to hear what God tells us to say today.”

From there, Ben allowed ritual to carry him. He and Tom and Reuben reentered the main downstairs room to walk down the aisle between the folks who'd taken their seats and sat in solemn silence. After the bishop said a few opening words, everyone bowed in prayer and then—because singing had no part in a Plain funeral—Tom read the words of one of the hymns he'd chosen. After Reuben read the Twenty-Third Psalm and the passages Ben had chosen from the Book of Romans, the bishop began the shorter of the morning's two sermons.

Ben listened, yet he drifted . . . not planning out what he would say exactly, but allowing the familiar cadence of Tom Hostetler's homespun speech pattern to soothe him. It was a balm to his soul to recognize every solemn face in the congregation, friends who were trying to make sense of a disaster such as they'd not experienced before. Although each family had its own concerns, they'd set aside their individual cares to give the Knepp kids their support.

In the back row, Ben spotted Derek Shotwell from the bank sitting beside Bob Oliveri. While it was unusual for English folks to attend Amish funerals, these two men felt a close kinship with the people of Willow Ridge—and they'd been directly affected by Hiram's wrongdoings, too. They were listening attentively to Tom's message, words of comfort and assurance from a psalm that had served as the basis for many a funeral, Plain and English.

After Tom read the words of another hymn and led a prayer, Ben stood up. He had no notes, and his only instruction for becoming a preacher had come from studying the Bible with Tom and Vernon's guidance. He gazed around the crowded room.
From Your lips to my ears, Lord,
he prayed as he clasped his hands.
Help me to be a blessing and to make a positive difference in the lives of Your people.

“We're familiar with the first chapter of Genesis, where God created the world and called it
gut,
” he began quietly. “But right now we're caught up in a dilemma, in which a church leader we've known and trusted has caused trouble like we've not had to fathom before. And even if we're not sayin' them out loud, we're probably askin' some mighty tough questions. If God made the world to be
gut
, how can He allow such evil as we've seen this week to exist? Or does God sometimes turn a blind eye when we need Him most?”

Ben swallowed so hard his parched throat clicked. Within a few short sentences he'd strayed from the comforting tone Bishop Tom had set and had painted himself into a very tight theological corner. Had he been wrong to speak of evil when the Knepp kids needed peace that would allow them to forgive their errant father?

He glanced at Annie Mae and Nellie, whose heads remained bowed as they sat with little Sarah between them. Then he saw that Adam and Matthias Wagler, with Timmy between them and Joey and Josh on their laps, were focusing very intently on him. Josiah, too, was sitting tall on the backless bench, appearing hungry for whatever words of wisdom he could impart. Judging from the intense expressions on several faces, folks had indeed questioned God's presence when part of their town had gone up in smoke.

Ben took a deep breath and went on, for there was no going back. “I don't know the answers to those questions,” he admitted. “But when I hear Paul's letter to the Roman church, which Reuben read for us, a few important points help me to keep believin' in a God who loves us even when it seems His creation has gone astray. ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?'”

Ben paused to recall the verses he wanted to lift up. The house was filled with an expectant silence as nearly three hundred people watched and waited for what he would say next. “‘Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?'” he went on in a stronger voice. “‘Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?' If we say we believe in a God who loves us despite our sins, then we must also believe that
nothing
comes between us and our Lord, even in times of deepest doubt and grief. When it seems He's turned His back on us and our troubles, maybe . . .”

Ben closed his eyes, hoping something brilliant and uplifting would come to him.
What would Miriam say?
He opened his mouth, hoping that some of her innate faith and goodness would see him through to the end of this difficult sermon.

“When it seems God has turned His back,” he repeated—and then he reached toward home in his mind, visualizing his dear wife and their newborn child. “Maybe that's when He's leadin' us toward a better life, a future that He alone can see—but we have to
follow
Him. We must have faith that He knows best, and that He knows what lies ahead for us, even when we're standin' in the ashes, shakin' our heads and thinkin' all is lost.”

Ben wasn't entirely sure what came out of his mouth for the rest of his sermon, but when he saw Josiah's expression of awe—noticed that Gabe Glick, who'd preached hundreds of sermons before he'd retired, was nodding in agreement—he continued in a voice that rang with confidence. “‘For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels'—nor any of the other things Paul listed,” he paraphrased, “‘shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.'”

Ben looked out over the congregation, smiling solemnly. He knew now how it would end—his sermon, as well as his personal grudge against Hiram Knepp. While he'd been exhorting everyone else to believe, he'd talked himself out of his own faltering faith. “In this season when we celebrate the birth of our Jesus, let us not dwell upon death or destruction,” he said. “Let us renew our faith, believing that God will show us the way we're to go.”

“Amen,” Bishop Tom murmured behind him.

Moments later, when folks were expressing condolences to Annie Mae and her siblings, Tom sidled up to Ben with awry smile. “See there? God knew you'd do a better job preachin' over Hiram than I would,” he murmured. “I wish Miriam could've heard the conviction and inspiration that rang in your words this morning, Ben. You've blessed us all on a difficult day.”

Oh, but Miriam was here in spirit, guiding every word
, Ben realized with a smile. Denki
for the fine woman You've blessed me with, Lord. With Your help we'll figure out what comes next, as far as how we'll rebuild our lives and livelihood.

 

 

A few minutes after Ben left for the funeral, Miriam gently laid Bethlehem in the cradle he'd made for her. She gazed at their dozing daughter with such love in her heart and such hope in her soul, knowing she would need all the love and hope she could muster for what she must do this morning. While everyone else in Willow Ridge gathered at the Wagler home, she would come to terms with the destruction of the Sweet Seasons Bakery Café.

With her eyes closed, Miriam went to the big picture window. She stood for several moments with her head bowed, praying for strength. When she at last opened her eyes, it took a moment for the devastation to register. Where once had stood a sturdy frame building with signs for the
SWEET SEASONS BAKERY CAFÉ
on one side and
SCHROCK'S QUILTS
on the other—and where the white farrier shop had stood behind them—only charred pieces of the smithy's forge remained recognizable in the rubble. The restaurant where she'd fed so many friends and baked away her troubles alongside Naomi, where she'd reunited with her lost daughter Rebecca and first met Ben on a stormy morning, was gone. In its place, a large, dark scar ravaged the snowy face of Willow Ridge.