Gladden the Heart

by Olivia Newport

  Since arriving home, Niklaus had said little about the preaching excursion. Noah had fallen under during both open-air meetings and had traveled well otherwise. Niklaus’s silence suited Adam. The less he knew, the less anyone could expect him to answer questions. The Hooleys knew of the trip. Adam’s aunt Deborah and cousin Jonas knew. And, thanks to Adam, the bishop knew. It was no secret, yet the details made Adam uneasy. He would have been happier to hear that Noah had not preached, but he could not change what happened. Gottes wille.

  If he could turn back time, Adam would go back to the Sunday when Noah became ill and find a way to keep it from happening. Gottes wille sometimes puzzled Adam.

  And Susanna. If he were ever to take a wife, he would want only Susanna. Yet they had not even spoken in two weeks. The words he would speak to her now had not yet come together in his mind, but the impulse to see her persisted.

  The scenario at the Kauffmans’ was better than what Adam had imagined. A four-day absence of both Noah and Phoebe from the farm had thinned out the onlookers. Adam breathed a prayer of thanks. Perhaps Gottes wille for the preaching trip had been to deter their own people from gathering to listen. Yet a handful were there, chatting in the yard and arranging themselves on the benches. Adam chided himself. He could have come and gotten those benches while Noah was gone and done his part to make this stop. He could still return later in the day with a wagon and Jonas to help load the benches.

  What mattered now was that Susanna’s cart sat idle alongside the barn.

  Adam kept his head down as he strode down the edge of the yard. Eye contact with any of the gathered—all Amish—could be misleading. If Noah began preaching, Adam would take care not to be seen. He offered neither approval nor simple curiosity. But once Noah started preaching, Susanna would not answer the door, which she had taken to latching since the day Mrs. Zimmerman invited herself in.

  He knocked on the back door of the Kauffman house.

  “Adam.” Susanna answered the knock, as he had hoped she would.

  “’Tis good to see you, Susanna.”

  “And you.”

  He feasted on her countenance. Strained. Befuddled. Yearning. All that he felt was in her eyes also. Yet she did not move toward him.

  “Can you come out for some air?” he said.

  The day was a stifling blend of heat and humidity that had sent a rivulet of perspiration down the center of Adam’s back. Only the wide brim of his hat kept his face from puddling. Yet he wanted to speak to Susanna, and outside, away from Noah and Phoebe and Patsy, would give the most privacy.

  She closed the door behind her, and they paced away from the house.

  “How are you?” Adam asked.

  “Well,” she said. “And you?”

  “Also well.” Adam’s heart beat a little harder. They were losing precious moments acting as if they were near strangers. “I miss you.”

  “Adam.” Her breath caught slightly. “Everything is so confusing.”

  “We can go back and untangle it.” He reached for her hand.

  Her wide eyes met his. “I would not change anything.”

  “Even if what you are doing makes your parents decide to move west?”

  Her gasp this time was full and deep as she took back her hand. “Where did you hear that?”

  “Is it true?” Adam said.

  “My mamm mentioned it. That is all.”

  “I heard it from my aunti. Your mamm was talking about it at a quilting bee a few days ago. At least a dozen women heard what she said.”

  Susanna dropped her forehead into one open hand. “I thought she was just annoyed with me. She would not really uproot our family, would she?”

  Adam shrugged. How could he know what someone else might do?

  “I do not know how to talk to my mamm these days,” Susanna said. “My daed. I will speak to my daed.”

  “He will tell you the truth.”

  “I think he will.” Susanna glanced back at the house, her face paler than it had been just five minutes ago. “I have to go back inside. ’Tis nearly time.”

  Her voice cracked with the tear that slid from one eye. She sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across her face.

  “I did not mean to upset you.”

  “I have to go, Adam.”

  Susanna had heard so many of Noah’s sermons in the last few weeks—and two from Charles Baxton—that she was not sure her mind could absorb three hours of words that Sunday’s church service would bring. They were in the Plank barn this time, singing a long, slow hymn so unlike the ones Charles led. Her lips moved with the words.

  “Oh God Father, on heaven’s throne, you have prepared for us a crown if we stay in your Son, if we suffer with him the cross and the pain, if we surrender ourselves to him in this life and if we struggle continually to enter into his community. You tell us what we need to know, through your Son, if we have community with him.”

  Susanna’s voice stilled. Why should there be so much struggling to enter God’s kingdom? Reverend Baxton would say conversion brings assurance, not struggle. Plainly it should bring gladness.

  Her mother nudged her, and Susanna joined the singing again. Surely her mother had not discerned the question in her mind.

  “You gave your beloved Son to us to be our head. He has marked out for us the road we should take, so that we would not lose our way and find ourselves outside of his community.”

  Susanna preferred sitting on the rear of the church gathering because she could see nearly everyone present from that vantage point. Her mother rarely argued the logic. Raising a trail of spirited boys, Veronica had seen the practicality of being in the back. Now that they were all old enough to sit on the men’s side, she still liked to be able to keep an eye on them.

  The hymn was coming to a close. One of the ministers, probably the bishop, would offer a lengthy prayer. Then the sermons would begin. Susanna bowed her head for the bishop’s prayer, fairly certain that some church members used the occasion for a quick nap behind devoutly closed eyes.

  At the Amen, Susanna’s eyes opened and drifted to Adam. She could not see much but the back of his head or a glimpse of his profile if he should happen to turn his head. She should not have fallen apart yesterday and rushed away from him. She should have thanked him politely for his concern and inquired more fully about his own welfare. He was confused by recent events, she realized, just as she was. At some point, they would have to talk with genuine hearts, as they always had until recently.

  And then there was Niklaus, who seemed unusually fixed on Bishop Hertzberger today. During the preaching trip, Niklaus took great care not to say he approved or disapproved of Noah’s participation. He was a helpful friend to everyone in the group, tending the horses, making coffee in the morning over the campfire, making sure Noah ate well. His deeds spoke the intent of his heart even without the agreement of his mind. Usually in church, as Niklaus sat on the preaching bench at the front of the church, he had his Bible open in his lap to read and follow closely as one of the other ministers preached. If it was his turn, he spoke words of edification in calm, reasoned tones. What he thought of Noah’s preaching he kept to himself. But now he watched the bishop with great interest, each gesture of his hands, each lean of the head toward the congregation, each squaring of the shoulders, as if he were saying, Listen!

  Susanna’s gaze drifted to the bishop. His farm was not near the Hooleys’, and she had little reason to ride that far out unless Mrs. Hertzberger insisted she would not wait until the next church Sunday for Susanna to bring her a jar of dye or a length of cloth. And given recent events, Susanna was not eager to encounter Shem Hertzberger on her own.

  She missed Noah. Even though she saw Noah and Phoebe every day, over her mother’s silent objections, she still missed them on a church Sunday. Phoebe should not have to feel unsafe coming to worship in her own congregation.

  Was the edge in Shem’s voice new, or did Niklaus hear it differently now?

  I
n their meeting just before the service began, the three ministers prayerfully discerned that Shem would preach first and Niklaus would follow. Yohan Maist would do his part by praying unceasingly for both of them to respond to the Holy Ghost. Shem had chosen to preach on the topic of submission. It was not an uncommon topic in an Amish church service. Every adult made baptismal vows to submit to the authority of the church. Children submitted to their parents. Wives submitted to their husbands. Husbands submitted to the headship of Christ. Niklaus could have called on any member of the congregation to recite the Bible verses that they all took seriously. Still, from time to time a sermon seemed prudent to remind everyone that the entire congregation would suffer should they become lax on this belief.

  However, on this particular morning, Niklaus suspected that Noah Kauffman’s preaching had more influence on Shem’s choice of sermon text than did the whisper of the Holy Ghost. The first sermon was supposed to be shorter than the second, main, sermon, but Niklaus had never known Shem to make a distinction. Whether he preached first or second did not change the constraints of the sermon he delivered.

  Niklaus inhaled through his nose, slowly filling his lungs and feeling his belly rise. He judged he had another forty minutes before Shem would end his sermon with a prayer and step aside for Niklaus to stand. Niklaus did not fault the words of his fellow minister, but he was unsettled. Shem’s stern, authoritative pitch was not unusual, but today it bit into Niklaus.

  Or something did.

  Perhaps it was not Shem. Perhaps it was the Holy Ghost, on whom Niklaus would depend to guide his own sermon to follow. He imagined himself speaking the words Shem spoke. Would he change anything? Should there be more grace? Less judgment? More assurance? Less fear?

  More than all else, should not a sermon be livelier? More lyrical? More a song of the heart than a reading of the law?

  More like Charles Baxton.

  More like Noah Kauffman.

  Twenty minutes passed. As Niklaus breathed in and out, he questioned whether the Holy Ghost might breathe through his words today. If he relied on God to give him words, did it not also make sense to rely on God in the manner of speaking those words?

  Another ten minutes passed.

  Noah’s words from the preaching trip rehearsed themselves in Niklaus’s mind.

  The love of God.

  The wooing of God.

  The welcoming of God.

  The celebration of God and His angels when one sinner repents and enters the kingdom of heaven.

  Niklaus had watched Shem preach for enough years to recognize when he was winding down. He was beginning to repeat the list of points he had made and the passages he had read aloud to the congregation. In another five or six minutes, he would begin his prayer, and then he would humbly nod toward his fellow minister for the main sermon. Niklaus inhaled and exhaled with thoughtful deliberation, seeking God’s clarity.

  It was not Noah’s words Niklaus wanted—or Charles’s. But he could not help wonder what his own words might sound like if preached in the lively style of the revivalists.

  Shem began to pray. Niklaus shuffled his feet beneath the bench.

  Shem pronounced the Amen and nodded at Niklaus.

  Niklaus gripped his Bible and stood. The easiest choice was to preach in the style he was accustomed to and which the congregation—and the bishop—expected of him. Another two weeks before the next church service would allow him time to wait on the Lord on the matter.

  On the other hand, the apostle Paul admonished believers not to quench the Spirit of God.

  Shem sat down and turned his vigilant eyes to Niklaus.

  Niklaus moistened his lips, opened his Bible, and began to speak. With every sentence, he was more certain he had made the right decision.

  CHAPTER 17

  Rocky anxiety tumbled through Adam’s gut, and his head ached.

  His uncle’s sermons were always easy to listen to, and the congregation committed fewer infractions of restlessness than when other preachers were speaking. But this morning it was as if the bishop had invited a guest preacher whom he had not previously heard speak. The voice falling on Adam’s ears was the one he heard around the Zug home when his uncle was especially pleased or in the mood for winking and teasing. It was not his preaching voice.

  But Adam had heard someone preach in this manner. Noah. Adam hesitated to call them preaching or sermons, because Noah was not a minister and the episodes happened outside of church. Matters would be far less complicated if Uncle Niklaus had not gone on that expedition with Charles Baxton.

  At the front of the gathering in the barn, Bishop Hertzberger flipped the pages of his Bible while glancing up at Niklaus every few seconds. Shem Hertzberger was a man who knew what he thought. His words were as meticulously planned as the notches and corners of his carpentry work. Self-restraint permeated his personality and interactions—except when it came to Noah. The change began with Noah’s spell in the Satzler yard, but just the other day, Shem had smashed his fingers under a rock in a careless moment. Now he used those fingers to fidget with his Bible. Adam’s observation of the bishop caused his mind to lose the thread of his uncle’s sermon. He swallowed hard and shifted his eyes back to Niklaus.

  Niklaus glowed. Adam could think of no other word to describe his uncle’s countenance. It was not the angelic brightness that Adam had once seen in an English painting—one his parents never knew he saw. Yet Niklaus glowed with pleasure and confidence and satisfaction—the expression that Adam was accustomed to seeing on Niklaus’s face when all his children and grandchildren were gathered at the table and a meal of abundance was laid out before them. They bowed their heads in silent prayer, and when Niklaus spoke the Aemen that broke the hushed mood, his voice caught on love.

  Love in his voice. That is what Adam heard now.

  Adam’s father would not have approved of the way he now reached to scratch the center of his back in the middle of a worship service, but if he left the itch untended, it would only magnify and he would hear no more of the sermon than he did now. The contortion had one other benefit. It allowed him a brief glance at Susanna, sitting on the women’s side toward the back.

  Her eyes were wide, and with her hands gripping the bench rather than resting in her lap, she leaned forward slightly.

  But what did that mean?

  Agreement? Consternation? Inspiration? Conviction? Alarm? Encouragement?

  Adam thought he knew everything about Susanna’s face. But he did not know this.

  Words welled up in Niklaus, colliding on their way from his mind to his mouth. Thoughts coming faster than he could put them into proper form was not a familiar experience to Niklaus. If this is what Charles had meant all these years when he spoke of being caught up in the Spirit, Niklaus had new appreciation for his friend’s ministry.

  “Do you seek the Spirit of God?” Niklaus said. “Or do you quench the Spirit? Do you hear the gentle whisper of God, or do you hear the voices of the world? I implore you, my brothers and sisters, to know the Spirit of God prompting your spirit and speaking assurance of how precious you are to God—so precious that He would send His Son to redeem you. Perhaps this is the day that you will know this to be true in your heart and in your home.”

  Niklaus would not say that heads were bobbing in agreement. Such enthusiasm would disturb the accustomed restraint of the district’s church services. But as he looked around the barn, heads nodded here and there. The faces, so familiar that he could call them all by name, were fixed on him. No eyes strayed—whether in astonishment or agreement, he did not know. But this was a moment like none other he had experienced. He would quench pride at the first sight of it in himself as he preached, but the freedom of the Spirit he would not bridle.

  He paused, gazing at the upturned faces, forming the thoughts that would next carry words of the Holy Ghost to the waiting listeners.

  “Thank you, Brother Niklaus.” The bishop popped up from his seat, trapping his thick Bible betwee
n his arm and chest.

  Niklaus glanced at his own Bible, open and balanced in one hand. Shem could not have thought he was finished after only thirty-five minutes.

  “Let us meditate on our faithfulness to God,” Shem said, “as we sing our closing hymn.”

  Shem began to sing, rather than waiting for one of the men in the congregation to feel moved to lead in the first phrases.

  “We are scattered like sheep without a shepherd. We have left our houses and lands and have become like owls of the night, like game birds. We sneak about in the forest. Men track us down with dogs, then lead us like lambs back to town. There they put us on display and say we are the cause of an uproar. We are counted like sheep for slaughter. They call us heretics and deceivers.”

  The Ausbund was full of hymns recounting suffering the church had endured, by the grace of God. But had Niklaus enjoyed the opportunity to choose a hymn to follow his sermon, he would have chosen, “Those of us who have been washed with the blood of Christ and made free from sin are tied together in our hearts. We now walk in the Spirit who shows us the right way and who rules in us.”

  Instead, though, Shem pressed on with his choice, and the congregation joined with the words that were two hundred years old.

  “Oh Lord, no tribulation is so great that it can draw us away from you. Glory, triumph, and honor are yours from now into eternity. Your righteousness is always blessed by the people who gather in your name. You will come again to judge the earth!”