by Murray Pura
There was a silence. Then Minister Yoder began to lead out in an Amish hymn of praise in his deep voice. After a few moments women began to join in, and soon other men and the teens on the staircase as well. Bishop Fischer didn’t sing with them, but lowered his head and listened. He thought it would end in a few minutes. But it went on, new voices coming in all the time, some high, some low, all harmonizing with one another, filling the house and all its rooms, filling his heart. He looked up as the hymn continued and saw Micah Bachman surrounded by his wife and Luke and Rebecca, by Minister Yoder and Timothy, by people who smiled and put their hands on his shoulders as they sang, by older women who hugged him and his wife.
My Lord, so much has changed for the better, and yet for the great change to come so much had to be lost—our pride, our hardness of heart, our tradition, our unwillingness to bend, our reluctance to think something we did not understand could be from you. It has not been easy. It has not been without pain. But neither has it been without its own special glory. And it has been your doing.
He looked at his people again, God’s people, and at Micah Bachman as he sang, encircled by those same people.
Sie, die mich ehren, werde ich ehren. “They that honor me I will honor.”
“So sometimes God does,” Bishop Fischer said quietly. “So sometimes love does.”
About Murray Pura...
Murray Pura earned his Master of Divinity degree from Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, and his ThM degree in theology and interdisciplinary studies from Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more than 25 years, in addition to writing, he has pastored churches in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, and Alberta. Murray’s writings have been shortlisted for the Dartmouth Book Award, the John Spencer Hill Literary Award, the Paraclete Fiction Award, and Toronto’s Kobzar Literary Award. Murray pastors and writes in southern Alberta near the Rocky Mountains. He and his wife, Linda, have a son and a daughter.
Visit Murray’s website at www.murraypura.com.
About the Publisher
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To learn more about Harvest House books and to read sample chapters, log on to our website: www.harvesthousepublishers.com
HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS
EUGENE, OREGON
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