Chapter 13
A Visit With the Rutledges

I found myself coming away from that afternoon at Uncle Nick and Aunt Katie’s with a heaviness in my heart, a confusion—not about the slavery issue alone, but rather how there could be so many different views on the same thing. I wanted to talk with someone about it, but I didn’t feel that Almeda or Pa would be the right persons. I respected them as much as ever, but maybe because they’d been part of the discussion, and I knew that Almeda herself held pretty strong opinions on things, I wanted to get an outside, unbiased perspective.

Since it was a spiritual question even more than something to do with issues, I thought of Rev. Rutledge. As a pastor, he not only ought to have answers to spiritual questions, but by now I knew that he didn’t usually voice outspoken views on issues people normally differed about. When it came to the Bible, he said what he had to say without fear and without backing down. But he never took sides about politics or on decisions facing the community. Pa would sometimes get riled when he wanted Rev. Rutledge’s support for something the town council was getting ready to vote on.

The Rutledges had become our good friends, and we had grown to feel a great deal of respect for Rev. Rutledge since his first awkward days in Miracle Springs. He had changed nearly as much as Pa had. His teaching and his sermons and his outlook on life and Scripture and what being a Christian meant had been important in forming the person I’d grown up to be. There was a lot of Almeda in me, and a lot of Pa. But there were big chunks of Harriet and Avery Rutledge, too. They both had influenced me in different ways.

So on the Monday after the dinner and discussion, I found myself saddling up my horse and riding down into Miracle Springs for a visit with them. School had been out for a week, and I knew that Rev. Rutledge usually spent Mondays at home, so I hoped to find them both there.

Harriet opened the door. “Corrie, hello! It’s nice to see you!”

“I wondered if I might talk with you,” I said. “Both of you, I mean. Is the Reverend at home?”

“Yes . . . yes, he is. Come in, Corrie—Avery, we have a visitor,” she called out as she led me inside and closed the door.

I followed her into their sitting room, where Rev. Rutledge was just rising from his chair, a copy of the Alta in his hand.

“Corrie, welcome,” he said, giving me a warm handshake. “Harriet and I always enjoy your visits.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I’ve come to ask you about something that is troubling me . . . I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. Troubled souls are in my line of work,” he said with a laugh.

“It’s not my soul that’s troubled, only my mind.”

“I was only jesting. You can feel free to share anything with me, with both of us if you like.”

“I would like both your opinions,” I said, glancing back at the former Miss Stansberry, whom I still sometimes had a hard time calling by her first name. “It’s not what you’d call a spiritual problem, but there’s something about being a Christian I don’t understand as well as I’d like.”

“Well, we’ve been through a lot of growing together, Corrie, you and I, and your whole family,” said Rev. Rutledge. “You’ve spent lots of hours in this house talking and praying with Harriet and me, and it wouldn’t surprise me if we’ve learned just as much from you as you might have from either of us.”

“That could hardly be,” I said, “when I sit and listen to your sermons on most Sundays. I’ve learned more from listening to you talk about the Scriptures than you can imagine.”

“The best sermons aren’t to be found in church, Corrie.”

“How do you mean?”

“Do you remember what the apostle Peter said in his first letter? ‘Ye also, as lively stones, are being built up a spiritual house.’ He’s saying that we are the building blocks and bricks of the house that God is building. Then the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians about our being living epistles or letters. ‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men . . . written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, written not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’” He paused, then added, “Do you see the connection I’m trying to make?”

“I always like it better when you tell me instead of my trying to guess,” I answered with a smile.

He laughed. “People can be stones and letters, according to the Scriptures—living stones and letters. In the same way, people can be sermons too. And living people-sermons are far more powerful than anything a preacher says in church. I suppose the point I am attempting to make is that you make a better sermon just by your life than any thousand sermons I may preach.”

“That’s nice of you to say, but I’m not sure I believe it,” I said. “When you preach, people listen to what you have to say. Nobody pays that much attention to people going around just living.”

“Oh, I think you’re wrong about that, Corrie. As a matter of fact, I think it is exactly the reverse. People sit quietly when I’m preaching. But most of them aren’t really listening, not deep down in their hearts. You might be, and a few others. But most people don’t know how to really listen and absorb what another person is saying. There’s an art to listening that most folks don’t know too much about.”

“I suppose you’re right. But then, what about when people aren’t in church?”

“People look as if they’re listening in church, when they’re really not. In the same way, out in the midst of life, people look as if they’re not paying that much attention, but they really are. In other words, people listen far more to the living people-sermons around them every day than you would ever know to look at them.”

“Hmm . . . I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Tell me, has Almeda influenced your life?”

“You know she has, in a thousand ways.”

“Why is that, do you think? Is it because of the things she’s said to you, or the person she is?”

“Of course it’s the second, although she’s taught me a lot too.”

“Certainly she has. But it’s the living sermon she is that’s gone the deepest inside you, isn’t it? Her words go only so far as she lives them out. What do you think my sermons would mean to you if you never saw my words at work in what I tried to do in the rest of my life?”

“Not much,” I admitted.

“How much did you listen to me when I first came?”

I laughed.

“There, you see. And when did my sermons start getting into you?”

“You’re right,” I smiled. “When I saw the real you, when I saw you and Pa trying to form a real relationship.”

“That’s right. That’s the living stone, the living epistle—the real-life sermon at work. So I stick by what I said to begin with—the best sermons aren’t to be found in church, and your life is as dynamic a sermon as I’ll ever preach. One that people are watching and observing and listening to all the time.”

“Do you really think so?”

“You listen to me, Corrie; the Lord has placed you in many situations where you are constantly being a living epistle, a flesh-and-blood sermon to the people you rub shoulders with. You have more influence for him than you realize—and I don’t mean only because you write. The person you are is the living sermon. You can believe me—people are listening to it!”

I didn’t say anything more for a minute. That word influence had come up again, and I couldn’t help wondering if what Rev. Rutledge had said had any bearing on the decision I was facing.