The High Calling

by Gilbert, Morris

  Kat saw the warmth of his eyes, and something came to her in that still moment. She could not face him, afraid that he might read her true emotions. “Look at that,” she said, trying to change the subject. She pointed to a chipmunk that was streaking across the ground. The animal froze and tucked its front legs tightly together against its chest.

  “It looks like an alderman come to beg for a donation of some sort,” Parker said with a grin.

  Kat had no interest in the chipmunk at the moment. She knew she loved Parker and had loved him for years. Indeed, looking back at her life she saw that she had never been able to put away the love she’d had for him when he’d been in Georgia. She suddenly felt nervous. “I think I’d better go in. It’s getting chilly.”

  As they moved toward the house, he reached out and took her arm. “I guess I’m like the apostle Paul. I see through a glass darkly,” Parker said, “but I want you to know how much it’s meant having you here. More than just the help. You have such a sweet spirit.”

  Kat suddenly realized the loneliness that lay in this man. She longed to put her arms around him but knew that it was not her place to do such a thing. She quickly said, “Thank you, Parker.”

  He followed her up the walk, and as they entered the house, both of them felt they had let a special moment slip by unheeded. Neither of them, however, felt bold enough to remedy the situation, so each went his own way and the opportunity was lost.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Meredith

  The weariness and near despair of the RAF pilots had descended upon Brodie Lee. As he walked down the streets of London, he was depressed even more by the sights that met his eyes. A bomber raid had taken place only six hours earlier, and flames still raged in some of the buildings, although firefighters struggled valiantly to contain them. The walls left standing were being knocked down as soon as possible to remove the danger of them crashing to the ground. The acrid smell of explosives and burning buildings filled the city, the smoke hovering over it in an ugly cloud.

  Brodie passed a group of repairmen taping up the ends of electrical cables that had been severed by the bombs, while a family was loading what was left of their household—a sofa, several chairs, and a few boxes of housewares—onto a horse-drawn cart. Farther on he walked around a pair of men who had rolled a rack containing women’s clothes out of a bombed building and looked as if they were trying to decide what to do with it.

  Brodie’s deep depression also stemmed from his visit to the hospital in East Grinstead, where he had gone to visit one of the men who had been terribly burned. What made his visit even more difficult was that the pilot had been Trevor Park, the ex-movie star, the most handsome man in the entire squadron or, perhaps, in the RAF. A shiver ran over Brodie at the memory of Trevor’s face burned almost beyond recognition and the look of despair in his remaining eye. Brodie had visited only for ten minutes and was glad when the nurse had come to get Trevor for further surgery.

  “You’ll be back with us soon, Trevor,” Brodie had said.

  “No I won’t.” The man’s voice had been flat, a whisper tinged with despair and hopelessness.

  Brodie passed by a restaurant with all the windows blown out. Broken glass lay strewn all over the sidewalk, but peering inside, Brodie was shocked to see that it was business as usual. The patrons were sitting next to the window, some of them laughing, and a waitress moved around, delivering food from the depths of the restaurant.

  Brodie could not help but marvel at the endurance of these people. The English had proven themselves to be far tougher than Hitler and his henchmen had predicted. Even now with their beloved London being taken apart by bombers on a daily basis, they still had not given up.

  Walking aimlessly along the streets, Brodie wondered at himself. He had always considered himself a rather tough individual, but what he was seeing in this leveling of one of the great cities of the world shocked him. He had heard all of his life about the treasures of London, buildings ancient and meaningful in the history of the world—and now they were nothing but heaps of rubble and broken glass and charred wood. He walked by the Tower Bridge at the edge of Central London and glanced up at the barrage balloons that were meant to stop low-flying aircraft. They looked like fat sausages pulling at their cables as if anxious to be off somewhere.

  Brodie walked through the heart of London until he came to stand beneath the tall pillar in Trafalgar Square with the statue of Nelson perched atop it. He stared up at the statue for a long time. Brodie was not a great reader of books, but somehow Horatio Nelson had always fascinated him. He had once read a biography of the diminutive English admiral who had held the power of Napoleon at bay and defeated him time after time.

  “Good job, old boy. I hope we can do the same thing to Adolf.”

  Turning, he walked past the office workers who were scurrying along the sidewalks and streets as if there had been no raid. It occurred to Brodie that thirty minutes from now this part of London might be as devastated as the part he had just gone through, and the thought troubled him. He made up his mind to go to the mission, and a fear tugged at him that it might have been leveled too, so he hastened his pace.

  As he continued his walk, he passed a huge group of young people, perhaps a hundred, near an Underground station. All of them wore identification tags pinned to their clothing and had boxes that contained gas masks. He stopped a uniformed bobby who was ambling by. “Where are these children going?”

  “They’re being taken to homes and places of safety outside the city, don’t you see?”

  “That’s a good thing.”

  “Yes, it is. Families have volunteered to take them in. I have a brother ten miles outside of London. He took two of them, and he enjoyed having them so much that he’s taking in four more.”

  “You must be proud of him.”

  “Well, of course I am. But it’s the sort of thing we have to do.”

  Brodie watched as the children were taken down to the Underground before he hurried on. He kept scanning the skies for bombers, but none appeared. As he walked, he thought suddenly of Bernie Cox. He had never gotten over the death of the young airman who had been his friend. When Bernie had died, Brodie had lost some of his own life as well, and he couldn’t get over it. He still dreamed about the nightmarish incident when he had let his friend get killed. This in turn had opened him up to thoughts that he had seldom had before—thoughts of God and of eternity.

  Now he came within sight of the mission building and gave a sigh of relief as he saw it still standing. “Thank God,” he muttered, and somehow it shocked him that he had said such a thing. I’ve kept God out of my life, and now I come expecting Him to take care of things for me. That’s a rotten way to be!

  He entered the mission and asked a man he had met before about Meredith.

  “She’ll be leaving in a few minutes. She’s taking some children out to meet up with foster parents who will take them to the country.”

  “Where is she, do you know?” He listened to the directions carefully and then went off to find her. He succeeded with some difficulty, and when he saw her, he was relieved. He had not realized he was so worried about her.

  “Hello, little lady. Need some help with these young’uns?”

  Meredith was surprised. “Yes, I could use some help,” she said, giving him a smile. “Here. You take Jeffrey, and then I can handle the other two.”

  Jeffrey was no more than two or three, and his eyes were huge as he looked up at the tall man who stood before him. “All right if I pick you up, Jeff?”

  “Yeth.”

  Brodie picked the boy up, and soon he and Meredith and two little girls with braids down their backs had found their way out to the street. “Where are you going with them?”

  “Only to the Underground. The couple that are taking them will be meeting us there.”

  “That’s a decent thing to do, isn’t it?”

  “Yes. I’m very proud of our people for helping like this.”r />
  Brodie observed how good Meredith was with the children. They were nervous and upset, but her ready smile and her encouraging words and ways helped calm them down.

  “The entrance to the Underground is right over there. Oh, and there they are.”

  Mr. and Mrs. Williams proved to be a couple in their fifties. He was red-faced with a bushy mustache and a pair of bright eyes. His wife was a small woman with determination written on her face.

  “Here they are,” Meredith said and then introduced each child. “Take good care of them, now.”

  “We’ll do that,” Mr. Williams said. He reached out and took Jeffrey from Brodie and asked, “RAF, is it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, I wish you’d go back and shoot down a few of those nasty bombers.”

  “I’ll do just that, with your love,” Brodie said with a grin.

  The children left, herded by the Williamses, and Brodie asked, “What now?”

  “I’ve got to go make a call on an invalid—two of them, as a matter of fact. A man and his wife. They’re in their late eighties. They were doing fine until she was hurt in one of the raids. His health hadn’t been the best, and she was taking care of him. Now he’s resurrected himself. A lovely couple.”

  “Is it all right if I go along?”

  “Of course, Brodie.” As they walked, she said, “You look—” She started to say “tired,” but that didn’t seem exactly right, although fatigue did show on him, as she had noticed it did on all the fighter pilots.

  “I look what?”

  “You look troubled.”

  “I guess I am, Meredith.”

  She said nothing as they continued walking, and finally she said, “Let’s sit down over there on that bench. The Thompsons aren’t expecting me for a while yet.”

  “All right.”

  “Would you like to talk about it? What’s troubling you, I mean?” she asked.

  As a rule, Brodie Lee did not choose to talk about his troubles. He believed that a strong American man should be able to carry his own load. But Meredith had a way of getting him to talk, and almost without realizing it, he began to tell her how the death of Bernie Cox had practically destroyed him. “He was a good friend, and I let him get killed. It was my fault.”

  Meredith listened without saying anything. He spoke haltingly at first but then the words began to pour out of him, and it soon became evident that the loss of his friend was not his only problem.

  “I don’t know what’s the matter with me, Meredith.” Despair tinged Brodie’s voice, and he clasped his hands together tightly as if to keep them steady. “I was always a pretty happy-go-lucky guy, but lately it’s like I’ve got this big weight on my shoulders. I can’t shake it off, and it gets heavier every day. It makes it hard to do my work.” He turned to look at her, and she saw the bleak despair in his face. “I’m afraid I’m going to get somebody else hurt or hurt myself. I can’t fly carrying this weight.”

  “Have you ever read Pilgrim’s Progress?”

  “Read what?”

  “Pilgrim’s Progress. A book by John Bunyon.”

  “No, but I’ve heard of it.”

  “It’s a wonderful story. You ought to read it. It’s about a man who is in exactly your condition. He has a huge load on his back, and he’s staggering under it and about to fall.”

  “Well, that’s about the way I feel. What happened to him?”

  “He struggled with the load and tried everything he could to get rid of it, but he finally got someone that told him to go on ahead to a certain gate. And he went, and he kept being guided, and suddenly he looked up and he saw a cross, and Jesus on the cross. And the moment that he looked, the load fell off his back and rolled away into a big hole in the ground that was the tomb of Jesus.”

  Brodie sat very still. “I wish that could happen to me.”

  Meredith knew that the time had come for her to speak plainly. “Brodie, it’s not very difficult to become a Christian. It can be very difficult to be the Christian that you become.”

  “Kinda like gettin’ married, ain’t it?”

  She looked at him and tilted her head to one side. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I reckon it’s pretty easy to get to be a husband. It takes about two minutes, doesn’t it, before a J.P. or a preacher? And then a fella has to learn how to act like a husband. Some fellas never do learn it, I reckon.”

  “It is a bit like that, Brodie. Listen, I know something about what your burden is like. I had it before I became a Christian.”

  “Well, it must have been easy for you. You didn’t have a big bunch of horrible stuff to get rid of like I do.”

  “It wasn’t easy at all because I was proud. I didn’t want to ask God for anything, so I stumbled along, and the load got bigger and bigger. I couldn’t sleep. I even cried at night sometimes, and then one day I was out in the flower garden picking flowers to dry. I’d just picked a large yellow-and-white daisy, and I was admiring it. And suddenly as I stood there I remembered a verse my mother had embroidered onto a pillow. It said, ‘Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.’”

  Brodie turned to look into her eyes and saw the tears there. “And that was it?”

  “I gave up everything I could think of and told God I was sorry for the pride I’d had, and I asked Him to come into my heart. And He did. He’s been there ever since that day, Brodie.”

  “It sounds too easy.”

  “It wasn’t easy for Jesus. He left the throne on high where He had all the angels worshiping Him, and He came down to live like a man. He was hungry and tired, and people insulted Him. The very people He had created ridiculed Him and hated Him, and then He came to die, Brodie. You’ve read the story.”

  “Yes, I have. Terrible thing.”

  “There He was, the son of God, nailed to a cross bleeding and dying and yet that was why He came to this earth. For me and for you and for all sinners. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you’ve sinned. We’re all sinners and need to come to the cross.”

  Passersby stopped to look curiously at the young couple, wondering what they were talking about. The pilot was bent forward, looking down at the concrete beneath his feet, and the young woman was watching him and speaking earnestly.

  Neither Brodie nor Meredith was conscious of the passage of time, but Brodie was aware of one thing. The load that was weighing him down was getting heavier—and the more Meredith talked about Jesus, the more miserable he felt. He reflected on his life, but he saw nothing to be proud of. Finally he said, “I’m pretty tired, Meredith. I feel like I’ve been runnin’ all my life.”

  “I think you’re right. You’ve been running from God. I’d give anything in the world to see you get rid of that load.”

  He looked up and said, “Don’t you have to be in a church or somethin’?”

  “Brodie, weren’t you listening? I told you I was in the flower garden. God takes people wherever He finds them. If a pilot fell out of his airplane and called on God with all of his heart and meant it, he’d be saved before he hit the ground.”

  The conversation went on, Brodie avoiding the issue, and more than once he nearly got up and left. But he found he could not. He had been sorry for wrong things before, but now as Meredith began to quote Scriptures to him all about the Lamb of God dying for his sins, he knew he could no longer bear it. “Tell me what to do, Meredith,” he pleaded in a voice filled with despair. “I can’t live the rest of my life like this.”

  “I think you know what to do, Brodie. You have to repent. That simply means to turn around and go the other way—God’s way. You need to call upon God in the name of Jesus.”

  “That’s all?”

  “That’s all—if you mean it. It can’t be just words. You have to be willing to follow Jesus. There was this rich young ruler who came to Jesus once. Do you know the story?”

  “I sure do. Kat told it to me once. Jesus told him to sell everything and come
and follow Him.”

  “That was his problem, but yours isn’t money. You don’t care any more about money than I do. But you care about doing exactly what you want to do. You want to run your own life, and I think Jesus would say to you, ‘Give up your life and let me live my life in you. Become my disciple.’”

  Meredith knew when to stop talking and let the Holy Spirit work. She sat there tense and saw the emotions moving across Brodie’s face. He was perspiring now, and his hands were trembling. She longed to say something else but felt restrained.

  “All right,” he said hoarsely, “do I need to get on my knees?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Let’s just pray. I’ll pray for you and ask God to receive you, and you, in your own heart, ask God to forgive your sins and tell Him you want to be His. And He’ll hear you, Brodie.”

  He bowed his head and closed his eyes. He heard Meredith’s soft voice as she prayed for him, but he was not conscious of her words. His lips began to move, and he began, perhaps for the first time in his life, to really pray. He began to confess to God the things he had done years ago. This went on for some time, and finally he hesitated and then said loudly enough for Meredith to hear him, “God, I ask you to forgive me of every sin, and I ask you to make me a Christian. I want to follow you, Lord Jesus, if you’ll show me how. So I give my whole life to you.”

  Tears ran down Meredith’s face, but she did not move. She put her hand on Brodie’s shoulder and felt that he was trembling, and then she opened her eyes. Tears were running down his cheeks as well. “That was the right thing to pray, Brodie. I know God has heard you.”

  “I don’t feel a lot different. Well . . . maybe I do.”

  “How do you feel?”

  He straightened up, unaware of the tears that were staining his cheeks. “I feel . . . sorta light.”

  “You mean that load’s gone?”

  “You know, Meredith, it is!” He took out a handkerchief and began to wipe his face. “Here, you need this too,” he said. “We’re a couple of babies, aren’t we?”

  “No we’re not. Welcome to the family of God, Brodie.”