101 
Autumn Rains and Memories

About the same time that evening when Amanda stumbled back into the lobby of the Clairmont Hotel—as one deadened to all around her—and up to the room Lieutenant Langham had arranged for her, Timothy Diggorsfeld arrived home from his unsuccessful attempt to locate her.

As he had walked he had been thinking more and more about Charles’ sermon.

He entered into his office before even removing his coat, went straight to his file, and quickly flipped through papers and envelopes and folders. There it was just as he remembered it—the handwritten copy of the text. Charles had given it to him at the end of the same day, saying he no longer had need of it.

Timothy pulled it out and eased into his favorite chair. His eyes and cheeks revealed the gradual signs of advancing age. He was a few years past fifty. His hair was thinning and receding rapidly above the forehead, though he still possessed a good wavy crop up to a distance of three or four inches above both ears, and most of the top and back of his head was still moderately thatched. He had retained his lean frame through the years, for he walked a good deal, and rapidly whenever alone, conducting nearly all his pastoral calls, even occasionally to a distance of an hour each way, on foot. He tended to go through boots rather more quickly than most of his profession, but his health was robust and his face well tanned as a result.

The mere sight of Charles’ handwriting—with various marginal notes and a multitude of scratchings and deletions and additions, then the clean-written final draft—brought a renewal of tears to the sensitive pastor’s eyes. But the hurricane of initial grief had passed, and the tears had now gradually become as a lingering quiet rain, pouring forth no longer as a flood but rather a steady, almost peaceful, drizzle.

A rush of nostalgic reflections filled him . . . Charles’ first visit . . . the incident with the rabble-rousers . . . the sight of him as he walked into New Hope Chapel hardly knowing why he had come, his first questions about faith, their discussions, their many prayers together through the years . . . the friendship that had developed, his own many visits to Heathersleigh.

He had seen many things in his life, thought Timothy, and been acquainted with many people. But never had he known a man so obedient, one who so resolutely determined to change the whole course of his life, whatever the cost, because of what he had come to believe.

Most of those in his experience, Timothy reflected, overlaid their belief on top of a lifestyle that continued unaffected by it, as a coat they took on and off once or twice a week, or when a discussion turned toward matters of religion.

Not Charles, he thought with a smile. He had made belief the fundamental thing, and had set out to order his priorities and relationships, his family and career, according to it. It was no cloak on top of but separate from the real him . . . his belief became the essence of the real Charles Rutherford. He was the first to admit having made mistakes in that process. But Timothy admired the effort, however imperfect, in a way that he had never admired anything he had seen a man do in his life.

Slowly Timothy began to read the words in Charles’ hand. He reread the entire message for the first time since he had heard the words spoken out of his friend’s mouth as he stood behind his own pulpit. Even though he was the one who led Charles to the Lord, he found himself convicted anew by his words.

Charles should have been a preacher, not a politician, Timothy thought, smiling again.

He recalled how earnestly Charles had prayed prior to summoning the courage to deliver this message. He had, in fact, been in fear and trembling beforehand. He had spoken before his nation’s political leaders many times. But to rise into the pulpit of a small London chapel and speak to thirty or forty people about being one with their heavenly Father—that was far more fearsome.

Who was he, Charles said, to speak to anyone else about rightness with God when he had ignored him most of his life? Perhaps, Timothy had argued, that fact, along with the additional fact that he was ignoring him no longer, gave him the right to speak. In the end, Charles had realized that he must obey the Voice.

Timothy recalled Charles’ warning to the congregation at the beginning of the sermon that he would call on them to examine their hearts with an honesty seldom required of listeners to sermons in England these days. But, he assured them, it was by such straightforward honesty that he had himself come to believe—honesty from the mouth of their very own pastor. From him he had learned, Charles said, to ask difficult questions and to point their difficulty first of all upon himself. Thus he would examine his own heart anew with them.

Timothy brushed away a renewal of tears. Less than forty-eight hours after his death, already the memory of Charles Rutherford’s life and faith had begun a new work which in time would impact many—that greater work which the seed falling into the ground of the faithful lives of God’s servants often produces.

“Lord,” Timothy began to pray in the quiet chamber where Charles Rutherford had first come so many years ago to ask about what belief meant, “may this dear man’s life live on. May his faith, his character, his obedience, and his good deeds as he walked the earth continue to draw people to you though his physical presence is gone from us. Use his life, Lord . . . and continue to use him.”

His voice caught as he prayed, and he paused for a moment.

“And may you somehow miraculously use the memory of his character and faith in his daughter’s life. What she was unable to see in life, may she apprehend with tenfold clarity in his death. May she truly learn to arise and go to her father, both you and our dear friend Charles. Work a miracle in her life, Lord. Do a work within her that will spread out to influence many for good. May this tragic loss in the end reap a hundredfold harvest for your kingdom.

“Give me strength to speak Charles’ words and to forget for those brief moments my own grief. Grant that some soul, Lord, may hear Charles’ heart tomorrow, and may his words be what that individual needs at just that moment.”

By the time he was through praying, Timothy was again weeping freely. The tears now falling down his cheeks as he gazed upon the treasured sheets in his hand were the gentle showers of a warm autumn’s evening, capable of bringing out of the human soul—as the rains of autumn lure from the soil of the earth—many fragrances too subtle to be detected during the happier seasons of blue sky and red roses when high summer reigns over the land.

If his heart could not yet be said to be at peace, the knowledge that Charles and George were in the presence of their heavenly Father was some comfort. And he took quiet consolation in that fact.

It is at such moments that Christians discover how deeply they believe in eternity, Timothy reflected. And perhaps the loss of his best friend shook the foundations of his own belief a little more vigorously than he might have liked. If he took to heart the words of Jesus about eternal life in their fullness, he should now be rejoicing.

But he could not rejoice. All he could do was let the autumn rains of grief fall down upon him and drink in the subtle messages they carried from the Father’s heart, who invented life and death together and linked them mysteriously as one.

Nor would he chastise himself for his grief. If he could not rejoice, he could be content in knowing that he was but a weak human being, after all, and to suffer and weep at such times was intrinsic to the human experience.

His belief in the eternal life of his two friends would rise again to conquer this present anguish. And the day would come when he would rejoice that they were with the Lord Jesus and his Father. For now he must be free to weep and grieve, that his belief, when it did rise up to quell these doubts of his human weakness, might in the end carve deeper wells of trust within him.

So Timothy continued to weep, and eventually wept himself to sleep, still dressed, with his coat still over his shoulders, and with Charles’ handwritten sheets still in his lap.