SO WHERE DOES THAT LEAVE YOU?”
“With a little different perspective, I suppose.”
“You mean, regarding Mary and the welfare of her little boy?”
“Yes. A different paradigm. A shift of focus.”
“How so?”
“Well, I’m trying to figure this out—put myself in her shoes. She sees a tyrannical abuse of government power—obviously. But I really believe she was mostly thinking much like any loving mother would—she was trying to figure out how to protect her little boy.”
“But with obvious differences from the usual case, right?”
“Oh, yes. Absolutely.”
“In this case, the little boy is what the whole story is about.”
“Sure. But the idea is the same. That’s why I said a different paradigm, or focus. I was trying to approach the miracles in the Gospel accounts from the viewpoint of my old intellectual rationalism. I was approaching this story as if the real question were this—does God really protect us through supernatural acts?”
Len Redgrove thought for a minute about what Will had just said. Then he asked another question.
“Is that what you think was on Mary’s heart?”
“I’m not sure,” Will replied, finishing the last bite of his apple pie. “But we have to assume she would be feeling and thinking like any mother—or any parent. Or any one of us, for that matter.”
“And how is that?”
“Well, it seems to me we just think we struggle with the question of whether God will really protect us. In Mary’s case the question would have been, ‘Will God protect my boy, Jesus—protect him from the murderous plans of Herod?’ We tend to think that is the actual question. But it really isn’t.”
With that last comment, Will was waving his fork for emphasis.
“Well, what’s the actual question?” Redgrove asked.
“It seems to me that the question that plagues us is really not if God is willing to protect us—because we really know the answer to that question already. We know it through the promises in the Bible. We know it through the inner spiritual voice we have when Christ has come to live in us through his Spirit. And we know it from experience, from answered prayer—numerous ways. No, the real question we are asking, but perhaps don’t want to admit it, is this—how will God protect me? Is he going to protect me in the way I want—from tragedy, injustice, false accusations, disease, accidents, injuries? In other words, how will he do it?”
“Can you give me an example?”
“Well,” Will said after thinking a minute, “a little boy gets a toothache. His mother wants to protect him from dental problems, so she takes him to the dentist. The dentist fills the cavity, but in the process he causes some pain. The mother knows she’s protected her boy from tooth decay. But the little boy is upset because all he wanted was some protection from having to experience any pain.
“Most of us are like the little boy. We know, down deep, that the Father loves us and will take care of us—but we want to settle for much less. We want the form of protection to be our way—according to our shortsighted desire to avoid pain—rather than his way. And he has the welfare of the whole universe in his plan.”
Redgrove listened quietly, smiling.
“What our flesh feels—what our heart says to us when it’s breaking—is usually about the pain, rather than God’s plan for the human race,” the professor noted. “As long as we recognize the difference, then it’s okay to want to run from the pain—or to clench our fists and cry out when we lose loved ones. God gave us souls, but he also gave us bodies with nerve endings.”
Will reached for the check that the waitress at the Diner had just dropped off at their table, but Redgrove grabbed it first.
“Oh no. You paid last time.”
As the two walked out to the parking lot Will said, “I’ve got to hit the sack. I’m getting up really early tomorrow. Fiona is driving down from Baltimore and dropping her car off, and then the two of us are going to take a long drive.”
“Say,” his friend asked inquisitively, “when in the world are you going to ask her to marry you?”
Will kept walking to his Corvette and then said over his shoulder, “Dr. Redgrove, that is the best question you have asked me all night.”
In the countryside outside of Delphi, Georgia, it was hot, and the bugs were droning in the fields. The cattle on the farms had waded down to the nearest pond or creek.
But the sun was getting lower in the sky and there was a bit of a breeze, which, coupled with shade from the clouds overhead, was welcome relief to those down below on the farm.
Long tables in the farmhouse’s front yard were covered with checkered tablecloths and filled with platters of food—corn on the cob, barbecued ribs, mashed potatoes, steaks, fresh green beans, not to mention salads, bowls of Jell-O, and pies—more than enough to feed the crowd that had gathered at the home of Joe and Mary Sue Fellows.
Andrew White Arrow had traveled back from New Mexico to be there. Tommy, Danny, and Katherine had come all the way from South Dakota. Among the group were Madeline, Joe’s mother, and many friends from the Fellowses’ church.
A few miles away, Will was driving his ’57 Corvette with the top down, approaching the farm on the county highway. Next to him, Fiona had a baseball cap pulled down snugly on her head to keep her hair in place.
“What finally caused Mary Sue to return to Delphi when she did?” Fiona asked.
“That was really remarkable,” Will replied. “She had given the go-ahead to Dr. Bill to arrange for a medical airlift for Joshua, who was seriously ill by then, to the Delphi hospital. And Joe was in Delphi, but still in jail. And of course, her farm—her home—was back there. Further, she had to face the legal system sooner or later. She knew, I think, that the time had come. But there was something else.”
“Like what?” Fiona asked, checking the directions that lay in her lap to the farm.
“She asked God for a sign.”
“Really? What kind of a sign?”
“Anything, I guess. She told me she never felt comfortable doing something like that. But she was desperate. So she was in her cabin on Tommy White Arrow’s ranch, praying about it.”
“And?” Fiona asked, urging Will on.
“And there’s a sound at the door. It was Danny White Arrow.”
“Danny…oh, yes—the one who was disabled from the head injury?”
“Right,” Will said. “Danny is the youngest of the three brothers. Anyway, he trots into the room, gives his favorite yo-yo to Mary Sue, and says, ‘This is for Joshua to have after your trip back home.’
“Mary Sue looks at him and says, ‘Trip?’
“And Danny says, without skipping a beat, ‘There’s never been a better time to go home.’ His exact words.”
“So, Mary Sue took that as the final cue from the Lord?”
“That’s it. Say—” Will turned slightly to glance around the car. “We didn’t forget the flyers for the concert, did we?”
“These?” Fiona asked, pulling them out of the manila folder in her shoulder bag.
Will smiled as he glanced at the sheets in Fiona’s lap. They were glossy color versions of the ads that had been placed in several magazines, describing “a Special Benefit Concert with Dove-Award-Winning Gospel Singer FIONA CAMERON—in Honor of the Bravery of Deputy Hugh Thompson of the Juda County Sheriff’s Department.”
“This whole idea of yours was remarkable. You are an amazing woman!” Will declared.
Fiona held up a flyer and pointed to the words “Deputy Hugh Thompson,” and then she grinned, with her dimples showing.
“This man,” she said, “saved the life of my future husband. Are you kidding?”
As she held the sheet up, she couldn’t help noticing the sunlight playing in brilliant flashes off the large diamond on her left hand.
Then she glanced at the last sentence of the flyer—“All Proceeds Will Be Donated for the Treatment and Cure of Methylmalonic Acidemia.”
Suddenly Fiona snapped up her head. “There, Will, turn there—that should be the farm.”
“I was there once, but this doesn’t look like it…” Will replied vaguely.
“Will, dear—the directions say to turn right here.”
Will slowed the Corvette down and pulled onto a gravel road. That was when they noticed the bunch of balloons tied to a post at the opening of the driveway.
“See?” Fiona said, smiling triumphantly.
Up ahead, at the farm, there were two pairs of legs churning at full speed. A man was running through the field.
Joe Fellows slowed down to half speed.
The other set of legs, however, was still running at top speed—but because they were very small legs, they were making little headway despite a heroic effort.
Joe was catching up. Then, when he was right there, he slowed his stride a bit, swooped down, scooped up Joshua as he was running, and took him in his arms, swinging him around like an airplane.
Joshua burst into exuberant laughter, and Joe began belly-laughing himself.
At one of the tables in the yard, Tommy White Arrow was talking politics with a friend of Joe’s from the farm co-op. Under a spreading tree, Andrew White Arrow was sipping lemonade and discussing something with the pastor of the Fellowses’ church.
Mary Sue paused for a minute in the front doorway, surveying the front yard, the friends who had come, and her husband frolicking in the field with their son.
Inside the farmhouse, Katherine White Arrow was helping in the kitchen, and Danny, taking a break from the activity outside, was watching television.
A promotional ad from the National Airline Association, which had been playing since the time of the airplane strike, had just appeared on the screen. It showed a tired man and woman in an airport, checking in their luggage. Then the man called on his cell phone to his son and daughter at home. “Mommy and I are on our way home,” he said. “We’ll be there soon. You can count on that.” As the music in the background swelled, a deep, soothing voice closed the ad by saying,
AMERICA’S AIRLINES ARE HERE TO SERVE YOU
And then, as the voice concluded, Danny lit up in a huge smile and repeated the words by heart along with the ad—
THERE’S NEVER BEEN A BETTER TIME TO GO HOME
As the Fellows family’s farmhouse came into view, Will and Fiona caught sight of the group that had gathered outside. Pulling to the side, Will came to a stop. He pointed out to Fiona where Andrew was standing under the tree.
Then he said, indicating one of the long tables, “That must be his brother, Tommy.” He also spotted Joe, who by then was carrying Joshua on his shoulders toward the front door—where Mary Sue was wiping her hands on her apron, standing and waiting for them with an expression of quiet peace on her face.
When Will pointed to Joe, and Joshua, and Mary Sue—there on the threshold of their home—that was when Fiona, with the finger of one slender hand, delicately wiped away the tears forming in her eyes. And then, as the car was parked with the motor running, she turned to Will Chambers, placed her hands on both sides of his face, and spoke to him—softly and tenderly.
When the crowd at the house finally noticed the Corvette in the driveway—and the couple in it, embracing—a great cheer rose up. It echoed from the heart of the farm through the fields and hollows, all the way down to the little creek at the very edge of the land.