Chapter 7
Thankfulness From Behind the Clouds

Floating down the Sacramento River, I got to thinking about the new church in Miracle Springs. I thought about the building of the church, and how much Pa had helped with it.

After Rev. Rutledge came to Miracle Springs, he held services of some kind every Sunday, usually at Mrs. Parrish’s. When summer came, work got started on the new building that was going to be used both for a school and the church. By then there were enough new folks in town that it was crowded in her house. But that just made Rev. Rutledge and Mrs. Parrish all the more enthusiastic for the work that was going on at the building site.

And I think it gave them both a quiet kind of good feeling to see Pa and Uncle Nick helping with the new building more than all the other men, even though Uncle Nick might not have done it on his own, without Pa making him.

They provided lots of the lumber too. Pa said the Lord gave us that gold in the ground, and he figured he should give some of it back. So whenever they needed more boards, he’d hitch up the horses and go into Sacramento to buy a wagonload. And some of the big beams and timbers he cut right from trees on our own claim.

Pa still never said much out loud, but he was thinking about a lot of things, I could tell. I knew Rev. Rutledge was downright thankful for Pa’s support with the church building, though the two of them still were formal to each other. I doubted they’d ever be friends, but at least they were able to work side by side without arguing. And probably it helped Pa in his impression of the Reverend to see him with his shirt off in the hot summer sun, sweating with the rest of the men, helping to hoist a beam into place or driving in the nails of the wall supports or climbing up on top of the roof to help steady one of the joists. I think he was a little surprised that Rev. Rutledge was such a hard worker, and it gave him more respect for him than he’d had when we first went to Mrs. Parrish’s for dinner.

All through the summer months, the men of Miracle would get together two evenings a week and most of Saturdays to help with the church. By the middle of the summer it was looking like a real building.

Rev. Rutledge was excited about a place to hold church services, of course, but some of the other folks in the community—mothers of young children, mostly—were thinking of the uses for the place during the week. Mrs. Parrish organized a committee of seven people in Miracle to start looking for a teacher to come, and they wrote to papers in Sacramento and some of the other cities and towns around to advertise their need.

Mrs. Parrish was excited about helping civilize this rough and wild place, and gave more and more of her business affairs to Mr. Ashton to run while she spent as much of her time as possible on “community affairs,” as she called them. Pa wasn’t about to pack up and go someplace else, because the mine was doing well, but I couldn’t help thinking he wasn’t altogether in favor of the changes. At the same time, I know he was trying his best to put his past behind him and to be a good family man to us kids. So he helped with the church and was civil to Rev. Rutledge and downright friendly at times to Mrs. Parrish. Some of the folks around Miracle were beginning to look to Pa as one of the town’s leaders—though Pa himself would have hated to hear me say such a thing!

“What does ‘Alleluia’ mean?” I asked Mrs. Parrish all at once.

“What makes you think of that as we’re floating down the river Corrie?” she said, turning to me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I answered. “I was thinking about the church getting built. That made me think of Easter day and that hymn we sang, you remember, He Is Risen! Alleluia! I’ve been wanting to ask you ever since. Then that song Mr. Peters read said Alleluia a lot too.”

“Hmm,” she said, “what would be a good way to explain it?” She thought for a minute, placing one of her slender fingers across her lips, between her chin and her nose like she always did when she was thinking real hard.

“You know how it is, Corrie,” she finally went on, “when something is just so wonderful you want to tell everybody? Like a beautiful sunset, or some idea you’ve had, or maybe a precious possession—a favorite doll or a piece of fine jewelry?”

“Like Pa and Uncle Nick always talking about mining every chance they get?”

“Yes. That’s the idea. And when you talk about something you treasure like that, when you can’t say enough good about it, then you’re praising it. That’s what ‘praise’ is. And Alleluia is a word of praise—it’s a way of saying that you think God is wonderful and loving and kind. The word means Praise ye the Lord.”

“I think I see.”

“There is another side of it, Corrie,” said Mrs. Parrish. “It’s easy to give praise to God when you are feeling it inside. There are times when the sun is bright and you’re happy inside, and you know God is out there making the world beautiful and keeping you safe in His hand. But there’s even a better time to thank Him for being such a good and loving God. And that’s when it’s gloomy and cold and cloudy, and maybe you’re sad, and you’re not feeling like God’s anywhere around at all.”

“Why’s that a better time?”

“Because that’s when it takes faith to praise God, to thank Him for being good, to tell Him ‘Thank you,’ for taking care of you and watching over you and loving you. It doesn’t take any faith to do it when you’re feeling it inside. But when your mind and heart try to tell you it’s dreary and that life is sad and that maybe God doesn’t care about you after all, that’s when it takes faith to believe that He still is there just the same.”

She paused, and then her face lit up. “Think about your father’s and uncle’s mine,” she said. “It was the same mine two years ago, wasn’t it? The same hillside, the same dirt. The gold was even there back then, wasn’t it?”

I nodded.

“But your father and uncle didn’t know it! To them it looked like a worthless, played-out mine, when really it was a wonderful mine full of gold.”

“I see,” I said, but I didn’t really see what meaning she was intending. I guess she saw the confusion on my face despite my words.

“You see, Corrie, it doesn’t take any faith now for folks to believe your father’s mine has gold in it. Anyone can go up there and look and see it with his own two eyes. There doesn’t need to be any faith, because you can see it! But two years ago, if someone had said, ‘This mine has a rich vein of gold in it,’ back then it would have taken faith to believe such a statement, because no one could see it.”

“I understand that.”

“It’s the same with God! If the sun hides behind the clouds for a few days, we still know it’s there. But sometimes when God hides himself behind a cloud, we let ourselves start thinking He’s gone, instead of using our faith to remind us He still is there, and is just as good and loving as always. That’s why it’s best to give God thanks when we don’t feel especially thankful. That’s how we learn not to trust our thoughts or feelings about God, but to trust in God himself. We can even trust Him when we can’t see Him!”

“That seems hard,” I said.

“I don’t know why it should be harder than believing the sun is still in the sky even when we can’t see it,” she answered. Then a look of thoughtful sadness came over her face briefly. “But it is hard sometimes, Corrie, you’re right. And it can be a very painful lesson, learning to say Alleluia to God in trying circumstances.”

She said nothing more, and I looked out the window at the passing landscape again. One thing I was sure thankful for was Mrs. Parrish. She treated me like a grown-up and never seemed to mind my questions. I was learning so much about life and God from her.

“It won’t be much longer now, Corrie,” said Mrs. Parrish after a bit. “We’ll be to Richmond in two or three hours. We’ll stop there to take on some more passengers, and then it’s across the bay to the great city!”

San Francisco! I could still hardly believe it! It’s more than I would have dreamed or hoped for a year earlier, to see the big ocean that went all the way to China!

Mrs. Parrish then tried to explain to me about San Francisco Bay—she said it was shaped like a huge, tall, skinny ear—with towns and harbors all around it where ships came in, and with San Francisco itself sitting on a little piece of land on the other side. “It’s the bay that makes it possible for the ships to come in to the city from the Pacific,” she said, “but it also makes getting to and from the city kind of difficult if you’re not coming by boat.”

I couldn’t really get a picture of it in my mind, but she said I’d understand when we reached the pier in Richmond and could look out across the bay to see the opening into the Pacific where the ships go through, and see San Francisco on the peninsula, she called it, just to the left.

We finally did get to Richmond in the early afternoon, where we docked for about an hour. But we couldn’t see San Francisco at all. There was fog so thick we could hardly see the water in front of us, although I could hear it slapping up against the wood of the pier and the rocks on shore. And when we started moving out across the bay, going slowly through the fog, it was an eerie feeling.

The chilly fog was full of the smell of water and fish, and I could imagine we were sailing out to sea to unknown places. Even though Mrs. Parrish pointed to me through the fog to show me where San Francisco was on the other side, something in me wanted to make the adventure all the bigger by thinking that the captain of the boat might miss the city and go sailing out through “the gate,” as they called the opening, right out into the Pacific!

It was cold standing out there on the deck in the fog, and after a while Mrs. Parrish said she wanted to go inside. But I didn’t want to miss a thing, so I stayed outside by myself, leaning over the railing looking down into the water as the boat plowed a furrow through it, then glancing up again at the mists blowing about. Every once in a while a portion of something in the distance would appear, whether the shore or another boat I couldn’t tell, and then would fade back into the depths of the white-gray cloud we were going through.

I was gazing again down into the water, deep green with white from the boat splashing through it, when suddenly off to our left the mist broke apart, and through the middle of it, as if I was looking through a tunnel of light, I saw the shore and the buildings of the city scattered about the hills of San Francisco.

I stared in wonder. It was like a vision from God, and as far as I could tell I was the only one who could see it, for all about the boat and the water the misty fog still swirled to and fro. But right at the place where I stood, a bright window through it looked in upon the city. It was there all the time, just where Mrs. Parrish had pointed. I thought immediately of the conversation we’d had earlier about the sun being behind the clouds even when you couldn’t see it.

Then just as suddenly, as if God swept a giant curtain over the window He had opened briefly for me, the fog filled up the space again, and I couldn’t see past the end of the boat’s front. But still I stared, wondering if I had dreamed the whole sight.

I never forgot that moment. And sometimes when I can’t see what’s ahead, I remind myself of Mrs. Parrish pointing through the fog telling me where the city was, and think that maybe sometimes God’s telling me the same thing, that He knows what’s up ahead even though I can’t see it, that He’s steering the ship and knows where it’s going. And I think that if I’m paying attention, maybe He’ll give me a little sight through the fog to help me trust Him even when I can’t see where He’s taking me.