Wild Grows the Heather in Devon

by Michael Phillips

  “Obedience and gratefulness have never seemed odious to me,” Diggorsfeld went on. “I would say they even seem natural. Yet it must be admitted that many young people do not find it so. The first son to walk this earth was a murderer. Rebellion began in the garden and has been with us ever since. Our Lord’s story of the prodigal would not have found such a wide hearing if it were not true to life.”

  “I am certain you are right. But it is painful to go through it on the side of the parent.”

  “It is indeed grievous that so many choose such a road. Yet God loves them and never stops wooing and seeking them. I have great faith for such ones. He promises that his words will not return void. And by none is this promise more to be prayerfully grasped than by the parent awaiting such a return in the heart of son or daughter. Have faith, my friend. The Father forgets none of his little ones.”†

  †See the introduction for a longer explanation of the historical context for the theological issues raised in this discussion.

  49

  The Keys

  It was several weeks after their visit to Devon that Gifford Rutherford became aware of what his son had discovered behind a loose wall-stone in the small tower room at Heathersleigh Hall.

  “What did you and Amanda talk about when you were alone?” the father had just asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” replied Geoffrey. Immediately he began to sweat. But the boy needn’t have worried. His father was after information, nothing more. “She said her father knew the queen,” added Geoffrey quickly. “I said so did you, and that you were rich besides.”

  “Good boy,” smiled Gifford with fatherly pride. “Nothing more? She said nothing about the estate or her father?”

  Geoffrey squirmed slightly in his chair. This was the portion of the conversation with Amanda about which he would do just as well to keep quiet.

  “No . . . nothing,” he said. “She locked me in the tower.”

  “What—in that little room on top?”

  Geoffrey nodded.

  “The impertinent little vixen! She’s as high and mighty as her father,” said Gifford.

  “I found these when I was there,” said Geoffrey. From his pocket he pulled out a brass ring with two keys around it—one large, one very small and ornate.

  “Let me see those,” said Gifford. He leaned forward in his chair with sudden interest.

  Geoffrey handed them to his father.

  Gifford took them and jingled them in his hand for a moment. His expression grew serious. “What do they belong to?”

  “I don’t know, Father. They were behind a rock in the wall.”

  “Behind a rock—what do you mean?”

  “A loose rock. I was sitting on the floor after Amanda locked me in, and I felt that one of the stones was loose against my back. I fussed at it with my fingers and it came out.”

  “What was there?”

  “A hole in the wall, with these keys in it.”

  “After you took them, then what?”

  “I replaced the stone.”

  “Did Amanda know about the keys?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I mean, did she know that you had them?”

  “I never said a thing.”

  “Good fellow! Let’s just continue to keep this our little secret, shall we?”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “I shall keep the keys, my boy, and put them in a safe place.”

  This was indeed a stroke of brilliant luck, thought Gifford to himself. He knew what kind of keys they appeared to be. Only time, and the chance to find out for himself, would prove whether he was right. It would not do to seek such an opportunity immediately. If the keys were found to be missing, another visit too soon might give him away. He could afford to be patient. He was doing all this for his son anyway, and Geoffrey was yet young.

  In the meantime, he would keep his own counsel.

  50

  New Values, Hard Questions

  During tea on the evening following his lengthy talk with Charles, their guest made greater efforts than he had made previously to engage himself in dialogue with George, Amanda, and Catharine.

  In all three he discovered an intellectual maturity beyond what would be expected from their years. The positive fruit of the rigorous training early in their lives was as evident as the negative fruit brought about by the corresponding absence of disciplinary regulation.

  “We sometimes don’t know what to do, Timothy,” Jocelyn said later that same evening when the three were alone together in the sitting room. “We realize now that we fed the sense within Amanda that she was the center of the world and need answer to no one. We too readily gave her her own way. There were few restrictions placed on all three of the children. We were loving parents, but we were not thorough parents.”

  “How do they now respond to the changes in your spiritual outlook?” he asked.

  “Amanda seems to resent our intrusion, wouldn’t you say, Charles?” replied Jocelyn, glancing toward her husband.

  He nodded. “She still thinks she ought to be the center of the world.”

  “Hmm . . . I see.”

  “It is my own fault,” Charles went on. “When I now look back, I see that she is simply being the person I taught her to be. In one way, perhaps, she is hardly to be blamed. I suppose we pulled the rug out from under her when we altered the entire perspective and priority structure here at Heathersleigh.”

  “We knew she was confused at first,” put in Jocelyn.

  “Then her confusion slowly gave way to the dissatisfaction of which I’ve spoken,” added Charles.

  “And the other two children?” asked Diggorsfeld.

  “They’ve adapted a bit more smoothly,” replied Charles.

  “Life didn’t change as much for them,” added Jocelyn.

  “It isn’t as if there haven’t been occasional stresses with them too,” said Charles. “I’ve had to confront George with obedience a time or two when he walked off a little sulkily. But George is rather a steady young man,” said Charles, “and so he didn’t let it affect his attitude afterward. An hour later everything would be fine between us.”

  “And Catharine was so young,” said Jocelyn. “I don’t know if she was even aware of the change. But it seems we turned Amanda’s world upside down. I’m at a loss as to how to correct the situation. We would be greatly in your debt, Timothy, for whatever advice you might be able to offer.”

  “I’m not at all certain I am the best person to ask,” he replied.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I am not married. I have never been a father. I have not occupied your shoes. Who am I to speak to such things?”

  “Perhaps you’re not in our exact shoes,” said Jocelyn. “But simply being a parent in and of itself means nothing. Any two people can become parents. Knowing how to train children is another matter. We are parents. Yet we now realize how little we have known all these years—to Amanda’s detriment. We honestly would like to hear whatever you have to tell us.”

  “And to answer your other question,” put in Charles, “—who you are to speak to these things, is God’s man. You may be younger than me by six or eight years, and you may not be a father. But you have been walking with God considerably longer than either of us. My wife and I ask for your help, not as a parent, but as a wise and experienced Christian man whom we trust to tell us the truth.”

  Diggorsfeld smiled. “If only my congregation was as hungry for my words as the two of you,” he said with an ironic smile. “I pour my heart out to them week after week. Yet more than occasionally must pound on the pulpit during my closing remarks to wake some of them up.”

  Charles laughed. “I assure you, Timothy, we will not fall asleep on you.”

  “What about your friends, the old couple?”

  “The McFees?”

  Diggorsfeld nodded. “From what you have told me, they sound like wise children of God. Their counsel may be useful to seek as well.”
/>   “We have spoken with them about Amanda. Their insights are generally accurate. Yet as long as the new direction of our training annoys Amanda, what can we do?”

  Diggorsfeld thought a moment.

  “On my part,” he began after a moment, “let me say first that I consider one of the greatest measures of maturity the capacity to receive advice from another, along with the desire to turn the light of truth upon one’s own self first rather than upon others. The fact that you want another’s help, and that you take your own share of responsibility in the matter of your daughter, blaming no one but yourselves—these things tell me that you are already well on the way toward receiving the truth you seek.”

  “But it seems our efforts with Amanda are of less than no use,” said Jocelyn with a sigh.

  “What efforts?”

  “Our effort to make up for our laxity of the past by attempting to draw boundaries around her attitudes and behavior now.”

  Diggorsfeld sighed. “Perhaps, however,” he said, “such is exactly what she needs. You cannot make up for the past. Those days are gone. But in the same way as a horse is trained, Amanda must learn to happily submit to authority or she will never know her heavenly Father with the intimacy he desires. Your responsibility is to help her begin moving toward that, however, much as she may resist it at first. She must know that authority exists and is the ruling foundation for all things.”

  “And if she resists more and more vigorously?”

  “That is always the chance a parent takes.”

  They continued to discuss the practical implications of the matter. The minister shared a number of Scriptures with Charles and Jocelyn, encouraging them to stand firm in their resolve to apply their new values to the rearing of their children.

  “I’ll admit, however,” he said, “that changing directions so radically once a family is well established—I don’t envy you. It is a difficult undertaking. The shock to a young person’s predictable world can be great. Especially in that you are attempting to impose a new set of values and a new outlook on life that you have adopted, but that one of your children in particular is not interested in.”

  “I thought I was being so modern, so contemporary,” sighed Charles, “so in touch with the best new thinking of what children need. Now I wonder if I did more damage than good.”

  “You mustn’t be too hard on yourself, Charles,” said Timothy. “The Lord called you and gave you a new outlook toward life, at a certain time. He had a reason for that. Amanda, too, is bound up in that eternal plan. We might not see it at present. But you must simply go on, prayerfully do the best you can from this moment forward, and leave Amanda in God’s hands. It may be she has a story to live out in that plan of which the timing of your own conversion is an intrinsic part.”

  “We know you are right, Timothy,” said Jocelyn. “But it is so difficult not to look back and feel we are partly responsible for her present independent nature. We feel guilty at times for our past mistakes.”

  It fell silent, as the three considered Jocelyn’s words. These were no easy matters to dismiss lightly.

  51

  A Prayer Garden

  You know,” said Diggorsfeld at length, “an analogy just struck me between your daughter and the heather garden you showed me this afternoon.”

  “We’d like to hear it,” said Jocelyn.

  “Heather has always been something of a favorite with me,” he said. “Even amid the wildness of its nature, it always blooms. It cannot be prevented from blooming.”

  He paused and smiled. “Somehow I find myself wondering if such is not the way God occasionally views us,” he went on. “You are an unruly little thing, my child, I can imagine our Father saying. Yet still you bloom. You cannot help it, for the beauty of my life is in you. I placed it there, and nothing you can do to yourself can keep that life occasionally from exploding into flower. Ah, but my child, there is so much more you could be, so much more I want you to be. I want you to become not merely a thin little bush struggling for survival, with a single blossom appearing every so often, but a whole garden with flowers constantly in bloom, flowers that are expressions of my life and my love and my goodness bursting out from within you always.”

  “You paint a lovely picture, Timothy,” said Jocelyn softly.

  “I suppose that is why I love heather,” he went on. “So many varieties exist, so many shapes and sizes and colors of foliage and flower, exactly like the human plant it resembles.”

  “And like our Amanda,” added Charles, “—a wild growing shrub at present, but one . . .”

  His voice trailed off.

  “One which will be brought into glorious bloom one day,” said Diggorsfeld, completing the thought. “In the same way that the two of you, as you told me earlier today when we were walking there, began to cultivate and train your heather garden, our heavenly Father will tend the garden of your daughter’s character.”

  “It is a beautiful image,” said Jocelyn.

  “There are many blooms upon her plant even now,” continued the pastor. “When she smiles, the radiance lights up an entire room. She has such energy, such strength and determination. And from what you have told me, I believe she also has a passion for justice, a concern for the weak and downtrodden. Look to these blooms and take heart. Pray diligently. In his time God will cultivate the whole into a thing of even greater beauty as she grows.”

  “You are right,” murmured Jocelyn. “I have been so vexed with Amanda, I have almost forgotten to see these beautiful things in her.”

  “But how can we pray with faith, Timothy?” said Charles. “We are still so new at praying. To pray and believe . . . the command sometimes seems impossible.”

  Diggorsfeld laughed. “Believe me, experience in the Christian life will not remove that particular challenge! It is always difficult to believe when we pray.”

  “Then what are we to do? Are not our prayers answered in proportion to our faith? How will any of them be answered?”

  “I will admit, it is one of the paradoxes of being a Christian. We are told to pray believing. Yet because we are human creatures, doubt is part of our nature. I love the statement the man made to the Lord—I believe, help my unbelief. Somehow, Jesus took those words as a statement of faith rather than of unbelief. I think perhaps it is our example.”

  “In what way?” asked Charles.

  “I think God takes the willingness to believe and the desire to believe and the attempt to believe almost as if they were belief themselves,” replied the pastor.

  He paused, then smiled.

  “Why not let that special corner of your grounds—your heather garden—become a prayer garden on Amanda’s behalf?” he said. “Walk its paths lifting up your daughter to the heart of her heavenly Father, who loves her even more than you do. As you walk there, remember how you have cultivated your garden into a quiet retreat that reflects God’s creativity. I’m sure it has been hard work, has it not?”

  Charles and Jocelyn both nodded.

  “No doubt much pruning was required. You had to pull out many weeds, reestablish borders and pathways, shape those shrubs which had become overgrown and scraggly. The heather submitted to the work of your hand. But Amanda may not be so compliant. Your prayers will be like the sunshine, always shining down to encourage growth upward toward the Source of life. Believe in faith that God will accomplish in her life what you are doing for your garden. Let the heather be a faith-picture to remind you that you are willing to believe, that you desire to believe, and that you choose to believe that God will draw Amanda to himself, in his time and in his way. Say to the Father, ‘Lord, we believe in you for our Amanda. Help our unbelief.’ Let the heather remind you that he will one day transform even the wild human-heather into a gloriously cultivated and blooming one.”

  Charles said nothing. He glanced at his wife.

  Jocelyn was silently weeping.

  52

  Why Must God Be Good?

  The evening
was advancing toward night.

  Outside, the still quiet of dusk deepened over the wooded countryside as the shadows cast by the trees lengthened over Maggie McFee’s flower garden.

  Inside the white thatched cottage, however, the conversation was spirited and the fellowship rich. Maggie had just poured water for a second pot of tea and placed before her guests another tray of scones, butter, thick Devonshire cream, and jam. Her husband and the pastor from London were engaged in vigorous dialogue.

  “Ye see, Mr. Diggorsfeld,” said Bobby, “I’ve always felt that if a thing can’t be done, I don’t consider it t’ be a matter o’ faith at all. Faith’s the belief a man can do, and nothing else.”

  Jocelyn and Charles had been listening with great interest to the exchanges between their friends, who had known one another for less than two hours but who, despite some twenty-five years difference in their ages, gave every indication of having been friends most of their lives. They had never heard such a discussion between experienced Christians and were fascinated.

  Before his conversion, Charles had been in the habit of considering Christianity a religion for nonthinkers. He had long since discovered that philosophical and rational thought was by no means limited to his colleagues in London. If any lingering doubts remained in that regard, they would be put all the more soundly to rest by the end of this evening. For Diggorsfeld and Bobby had taken so many thought-provoking side roads into theological matters Charles was but faintly familiar with that half the time, to his ears, they could have been speaking a different language. Yet ever did a practical simplicity of faith run like an unbroken theme through their comments. On that single imperative were the two men in absolute agreement, something Jocelyn and Charles had never encountered in the sophisticated circles of the world out of which they had come.

  “I couldn’t agree more, Mr. McFee,” replied the pastor to the Irishman’s comment. “How it warms my heart to find kindred spirits such as yourself and your wife . . . and you too, Charles and Jocelyn,” he added, turning toward them. “I think that if I could visit the warmth of your cottage and partake of your tea, Mrs. McFee, and engage in discussion over things of the faith such as we have here tonight—as I say, I think if I could do such a thing once a month, it would do much to prevent the discouragement of my pastorate and act as a spiritual restorative for my soul.”