In His Place: A Modern-Day Challenge for Readers of In His Steps

by Harry C. Griffith

  Praise for In His Place

  “Through masterful character development, tight writing, and a fast-paced narrative, Harry Griffith packs the pages of In His Place with complexity, poignancy, and truth. The reader weeps to consider the failure of the Church to incarnate Jesus for a lonely old man and then watches as the Body of Christ finds it faith, its feet, and its courage. That Christlike courage is contagious and transformative, but it doesn’t happen in the 15 days recorded in the novel. It happened over 15 years of invested ministry by a pastor who came to understand the truth that to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

  —Carmen Fowler LaBerge, President, Presbyterian Lay

  Committee Chairman, Common Ground Christian Network

  “I highly recommend In His Place, first as a novel with vivid human interactions by (mostly) likable characters who are thrown into situations that test their Christian commitment. Aside from enjoying the novel, however, I have been unable to shake the question raised by an atheist friend of the pastor. When a lonely member of the parish takes his own life, the atheist wants to know how anyone who belongs to a church can be so alone. In His Place poses a challenge for all church-going Christians. Are we really acting in His place?”

  —Charlotte Hays, coauthor of Being Dead Is No Excuse,

  frequent contributor to the National Catholic Register

  “On one occasion, while driving through my hometown in the Atlanta suburbs, I felt a strong inner urge—no, a push—to stop and offer a ride to man with a briefcase. He got in and told me where he was heading. I noted it was a long way to walk. He said it was, but he had Parkinson’s and could not drive. On arrival, he got out and said, ‘You just did for me what Jesus would have done.’ An unforgettable moment! This book’s premise is just that—If we live ‘in Him’ life will be remarkable and so fulfilling. I encourage you to read it.”

  —Victor Oliver

  “Along with justification by grace through faith, the indwelling Christ was Paul’s core understanding of the Christian faith and way. Living a life IN CHRIST is the nature of Christian discipleship. That means we are primarily responsible not TO Christ, but FOR Christ. We are to live as Christ in the world. In this attention gripping novel, In His Place, Harry Griffith provides an exciting picture of one man seeking to live “in His place.” If you will read the first few pages, you will not want to put it down; but more important, reading on, the core meaning of Christian discipleship will become crystal clear.”

  —Maxie Dunnam, Former President, Asbury Theological

  Seminary and former World Editor of The Upper Room

  “There are a number of surprises in this first novel by Harry Griffith. First the positive and honest portrait of a sincere, but very human, pastor. One sees that so seldom in the media and modern literature. Next crisis after crisis suddenly appear and take both the pastor and the reader by surprise and move the plot along with increasing tempo. Lastly, mixed in throughout the book, we find theology and practical challenge for both the individual Christian reader and for any Christian congregation. By all means give this book a read and take the challenge.”

  —Rt. Rev. John H. Rodgers Jr. (Retired), Dean/

  President Emeritus Trinity School for Ministry

  © 2016 by Harry C. Griffith

  Print ISBN 978-1-63409-766-6

  eBook Editions:

  Adobe Digital Edition (.epub) 978-1-63409-848-9

  Kindle and MobiPocket Edition (.prc) 978-1-63409-849-6

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted for commercial purposes, except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without written permission of the publisher.

  Churches and other noncommercial interests may reproduce portions of this book without the express written permission of Barbour Publishing, provided that the text does not exceed 500 words or 5 percent of the entire book, whichever is less, and that the text is not material quoted from another publisher. When reproducing text from this book, include the following credit line: “From In His Place, published by Barbour Publishing, Inc. Used by permission.”

  Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual people, organizations, and/or events is purely coincidental.

  Published by Shiloh Run Press, an imprint of Barbour Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 719, Uhrichsville, Ohio 44683, www.shilohrunpress.com

  Our mission is to publish and distribute inspirational products offering exceptional value and biblical encouragement to the masses.

  Printed in Canada.

  Acknowledgments

  This book would not have been possible without the help of Jim Pence, Julie Cosgrove, Victor Oliver, Bruce Barbour, Greg Johnson, Ronald Rolheiser, Barry Grecu, John Rivenbark, and my ever-supportive and encouraging wife, Emily.

  Additional support came from Maxie Dunnam, Fitz Allison, Keith Miller, George Gallup, Robert Whitlow, Cecil Murphey, Peter Lundell, Ron Hooks, Charlotte Hays, Kacky and Joyce Avant, and Bob Snyder.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Otis Huntington sat at a rickety wooden table and picked up a small brown bottle of sleeping pills. His hands trembled as he fumbled with the childproof cap, working it back and forth. Finally, the cap popped off and fell to the floor.

  Instantly, the click, click, click of tiny paws sounded on the grimy tile floor. Otis’s little Yorkie-mix mutt came over and sniffed the cap.

  “You leave that alone, Skeeter. Y’hear?”

  The scraggly wire-haired dog let out a quiet whine.

  Otis poured the bottle’s contents into his palm.

  About twenty-five pills. More than enough.

  He held the pills in the palm of his hand as if weighing them and then dumped them back into the bottle. He couldn’t take them yet. He didn’t know how quickly they would take effect, and there were still two things to do.

  Otis jotted down a quick note on a piece of paper torn from a yellow legal pad then sealed it in an envelope. He took the envelope, along with a roll of duct tape, and walked across to Mrs. Sherwood’s apartment. He pulled his knobby sweater closer to his chest as the rush of autumn air whistled through the breezeway.

  He tore off two short lengths of tape and secured the envelope to her front door, just below t
he metal numerals 212. Otis wasn’t worried about waking her up. Mrs. Sherwood slept like the dead. She’d find the envelope when she came out to get her newspaper tomorrow.

  Otis ran his fingers along the door frame’s peeling paint. He absentmindedly pulled a few large chips loose and let them flutter to the floor, where they joined the others. The whole building needed repainting. Not his problem now.

  When Otis returned to his apartment, Skeeter jumped and danced as if he hadn’t seen him in months. It never ceased to amaze Otis how much this little dog seemed to love him. He picked him up and cradled him in his arms.

  “You’ll be all right now. She’ll take good care of you.”

  One final task remained. Otis sat back down at the table and pulled the legal pad to him. He took his pen and began to write.

  Dear Pastor Steve….

  Chapter 1

  I sat on the bed and rested my head in my hands.

  Jayne laid her hand on my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly. She bent down and kissed my cheek and then left me to my thoughts.

  As I pulled on my sneakers, my mind replayed the phone call I had just received.

  “Is this Pastor Steve Long?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Officer Robb with the Belvedere Police Department. Is Otis Huntington a member of your church?”

  A wave of anxiety shot through me. “Yes, he is.”

  “We need to contact his family. Do you know any of his relatives?”

  “Otis has no family.” I cleared my throat, changed the phone to my other ear. “Is something wrong?”

  There was a slight pause.

  “Mr. Huntington was found dead in his apartment this morning.”

  For a few seconds, I couldn’t reply. Then I choked out the words. “What happened?”

  “That’s still under investigation. Would you be able to come down to the hospital and identify his body?”

  I swallowed hard, fighting back the emotion that flooded to the surface.

  “Sure. I’ll be there in about twenty minutes.”

  As a pastor, I had made many trips to the hospital to be with people when they were dying. And I had gotten my share of late-night phone calls telling me that a member of my congregation had died. This was the first time I had been asked to identify a body. But that’s not what bothered me.

  Jayne came back in, carrying coffee in a stainless steel travel mug.

  “Thought you might need this,” she said, handing me the mug.

  “Thanks.” God had chosen a great wife for me. She always anticipated my needs.

  “Did they say what happened?”

  I shook my head. “Only that it’s under investigation.”

  Jayne’s eyebrows furrowed. “Who would’ve hurt that sweet man?”

  “I don’t think anyone did. I’d better get over there.”

  I grabbed my keys and started for the door, but Jayne caught me by the arm. “Are you okay?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  It doesn’t take long to get anywhere in Belvedere, Georgia. From the city center, where Jayne and I lived, Belvedere’s limits were about five miles in any direction, give or take a mile. So it only took me about ten minutes to get to the hospital.

  I wheeled my pickup truck around the back of the hospital, toward the ER, and into one of the parking spots marked CLERGY. A Belvedere police cruiser was parked nearby.

  Like the city where it is situated, the Belvedere Hospital is small. Only four stories. And no big morgue like you see on TV. As a matter of fact, bodies are usually sent to Atlanta for autopsies. So I didn’t have to trek down to a basement and wait for a medical examiner to dramatically open a stainless-steel door and roll the deceased out of a drawer.

  A uniformed police officer met me in the emergency room. His name tag—Robb—identified him as the one who had phoned me.

  “Officer Robb,” I said, “I’m Stephen Long.”

  We shook hands.

  “Thanks for coming, Reverend. He’s down here.”

  We walked down a short hallway and entered Treatment Room D.

  Otis lay on the table, partially covered by a sheet. He looked peaceful.

  Officer Robb looked at me, arching an eyebrow and shifting from one foot to another.

  I nodded. “That’s Otis,” I said. “Can you tell me what happened?”

  “Well, as I told you on the phone, it’s still under investigation, but right now it looks like a suicide. There was an empty bottle of sleeping pills on the kitchen table.”

  “Did he leave a note?”

  Officer Robb shook his head. “Only instructions about caring for his dog. He taped those to a neighbor’s door, along with a key to his apartment. She’s the one who found him. She came out to get her morning paper and saw the envelope. The note didn’t say anything about suicide, though. Just asked her to take care of the dog. She got worried and decided to check on him. When he didn’t answer the door, she went in and found him.”

  Officer Robb switched directions. “You sure he doesn’t have any family we can contact?”

  “I’m sure. He’s been coming to our church for about a year now, and he told me early on that he was alone in the world. He asked me to handle the arrangements if something ever happened to him. Told me there wasn’t anybody other than Skeeter.”

  “Skeeter?”

  “His dog.”

  Officer Robb nodded. “Funny thing about that dog,” he said. “He was curled up with him in his recliner when his neighbor found him. He wouldn’t even leave his side when she knocked at the door.” He nodded toward Otis’s body. “Looks like the dog was his best friend in the world.”

  Those words stung. They were more accurate than the officer knew.

  I sat down on the grass, on a hill just outside the hospital, watching traffic on the four-lane road that bisected Belvedere. Most of the town’s new growth spread toward the west, near the interstate. The east part of town was older, although most North Georgia towns preferred the term historic. I had to admit, it sounded better than the more accurate descriptions: run-down, abandoned, deteriorating, low-income.

  But one thing that the east and west parts of town had in common was Loop 121. It was the main east-west artery through town, and there was hardly a time of day when it wasn’t busy. Almost constantly, cars, pickups, and eighteen-wheelers rushed back and forth on this road, speeding toward their various destinations.

  This spot had always been special to me. I could look to the north and see the mountains in the distance, peaceful and beautiful. I could look below me and see the hectic pace of everyday life. Somehow the balance between the two—calm in one direction and frenetic in the other—represented for me what life is all about and helped me cope with it.

  As I sat there, watching the traffic, thoughts and “what-ifs” raced back and forth through my head like cars and trucks on Loop 121.

  Why’d you do it, Otis?

  If there was one person in the world I would have thought incapable of suicide, it was Otis Huntington. Although a quiet man who kept to himself, Otis never appeared to be unhappy. I saw him from time to time during the week while he did his maintenance work at the church and then virtually every Sunday, but I never picked up a hint that he might be suicidal.

  In fact, Otis seemed to be one of the happiest people I knew. He didn’t have much in the way of material things, especially compared to the congregation of Incarnation Church, but that didn’t seem to bother him. Our church was upscale for a small-town congregation. In that sense, Otis didn’t fit in very well. He didn’t dress as nicely. Most of the time he came to church wearing clothes he’d gotten from Goodwill.

  But the people were always kind to him. Nobody treated him badly because he didn’t fit into the proper income bracket. The church used some of its benevolence fund to help him with his bills from time to time, and I had hired him as church groundskeeper and maintenance man when he’d lost his other job.

 
Otis never complained. He always seemed to be in good spirits, and his positive attitude encouraged others. He never failed to talk about the Lord in his life, both in the church and outside. It was a natural thing with him. I have no idea how many people he personally led to the Lord. He certainly moved me closer to Christ.

  So what went wrong? What could have pushed Otis over the edge so radically that he saw suicide as his only option?

  Otis lived in the Southern Plantation apartment complex, an elegant, but absurdly inaccurate, name. The place looked nothing like that, unless perhaps Tara after the Union troops burned it.

  It was one of the three oldest complexes in Belvedere, and its age showed everywhere you looked. Potholes dotted the deteriorating pavement. All the buildings were in need of new roofs, and the amber paint peeled so badly that a sprinkling of chips littered the ground around most of them.

  But the age of the complex was the least of its problems. Southern Plantation was a center of the illegal drug trade in Belvedere. The police were regular visitors to the complex, and the calls were not social.

  That was quite a contrast with most of the people from Incarnation Church. Those who did go on visitation were reluctant to go to the Plantation, as they called it. Maybe they were afraid they wouldn’t come out in one piece. I had made many visits there, and the thought had crossed my mind more than once.

  But today as I pulled into a parking spot in front of Otis’s building, fear for my personal safety was the furthest thing from my mind. I wanted—needed—answers, and I hoped that somewhere in Otis’s little apartment I might find them.

  The police had completed their investigation by early afternoon and released the scene. I had a key because Otis had asked me to be the executor of his estate several months earlier. Why hadn’t that given me a clue to what was going on in Otis’s mind?

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” he’d told me. “I don’t have much of anything.”

  He wasn’t kidding about that.

  I stood in the front room, looking for something but not knowing exactly what.