October song by Unknown Read Free Book Online

of hope. The young woman had taken the story to heart. There were others who’d walked the agonizing road Mary now trod, yet they hadn’t lost heart, trusting the Lord God heavenly Father for grace and mercy.
    “You’re not alone in your grief, Mary. We’ll keep remembering our loved ones in
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    prayer, each and ev’ry one.” Pausing, Rebecca looked out at the trees shedding their autumn finery, depositing crisp heaps of red and orange leaves on the ground below. ” ‘Tis not our place to try ‘n’ force an erring one home,” she said finally, reaching for her coffee cup.
    Mary got up quickly. “Here, let me pour you some more.”
    “Denkithank you, Mary,” was all Rebecca could say just now. The Telling had taken ever so much out of her. Far more than she’d expected.
    Rebecca assured Samuel that Mary seemed to be doing all right. She didn’t tell everything that had been said between the two women. Not that Mary had asked for her confidence, ‘twasn’t that. She just felt the things Mary had shared about the bishop his heavy burden for the People
    wasn’t something to bring up just now. “Mary needs a close friend, someone to take Katie’s place until . ” She couldn’t finish. Too painful, it was.
    Samuel pushed up his glasses. “Well, now, I wouldn’t be looking for Katie to confess anytime soon; Clan neither. Prob’ly won’t at all.”
    She eyed her husband, this man who was
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    known to follow every jot and tittle of theOrdnung.She shouldn’t have been too sur prised at his statement. “Once electric gets its grip on a person, well. and automo biles, too. Jah, you’re prob’ly right,” she agreed.
    “There’s much more to it than flirting with modern ways.” He was close to making a point. She could see it in the way he set his jaw, put down his paper, and began rockin’ in the chair to beat the band. “I’ve seen it time and again folk who leave the church only to claim they have salvation. They don’t usually return to the Old Ways. If they profess that their sins have been forgiven and they’re on their way to heaven . . well, I’d say they won’t be kneeling before the membership in re pentance.”
    “Whyisthat, do ya think?” Honestly, Rebecca wanted to know how the “assur ance of salvation” doctrine taught in cer tain groups could seize a person, so as to confuse their minds. The Old Order be lieved in thehopeof salvation, as taught in the book of Ephesians.
    “Between you and me, I’ve been reading parts of the New .Testament, tryin’ to see just what it is Katie’s got that’s so different from how she was raised. All I can say is
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    ‘Strait isthe gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.’ “
    Rebecca took that to heart. Samueldidbelieve their church was the one and only. Yet, Katie had openly shared the life-changing experience that had “set her free,” as she put it. Right convincing, it was. Her daughter had declared that peace wasn’t found in doing good works, not even in following Old Order rules, but in giving your heart wholly unto the Lord Jesus, accepting God’s “gift of salvation.” Sounded simple enough, if true. Yet, why did Samuel fight it so?
    Samuel rose from his chair. “If they’d just stayed away from the music . and the car.” He said it softly, maybe hoping not to be heard.
    Sadly, she watched her husband hobble through the kitchen toward the front room, where he fell into the chair nearest the window. Prob’ly staring out at the splendor of leaves and sky, ever grateful for a bountiful harvest and a time of rest for the land and its caretakers.
    On another day she would raise the issue of Benjamin’s future here as a farmer. Maybe it’d be best told in story form a young man finds and marries a Plain girl
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    and settles into the elder parents’ house, them moving over to the Dawdi Haus.
    Looking in on Samuel, his eyelids a-drooping now, she let him be. While he snoozed