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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 22: Takano 91
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Cooper 7
As Tommy stepped onto her rock, she looked at the mostly bare branches on the trees. If this were home, Delaware, they would look like this in maybe late November, if her memory served her here. There was rarely snow before the beginning of January, although late November snow was not unknown. She should be careful of her conclusions, though; a girl who had moved down from Massachusetts once told her that autumn moved much faster up there, and winter started considerably sooner, and really in global terms Boston wasn’t that far from Wilmington.
Pulling her eyes from the skies to the people, she pulled her mind back to what she intended to say today.
“Last week we finished The Gospel According to John and, as you have by now learned, the Bible isn’t one book but a collection of books which God has given us to teach us about Himself. I don’t know what Lauren would have chosen next; I don’t know whether she herself knew what she was going to teach us. And I don’t have her knowledge. So I’m just going to turn over the page to the next book, The Acts of the Apostles. If you will join me there, we will start reading.”
Waiting a moment while pages turned, she read through the introduction, in which the author addresses his audience and explains why he is writing. She then read the passage in which Jesus says goodbye to them and leaves them.
“It occurred to me as I read through this this week that something like this happened to us. We didn’t have Jesus; we didn’t even have Moses. But we had Lauren, and she was a bit like Joshua, leading us into this place where we have been learning to live and be more comfortable over the past several months. This book teaches us many things, but one of the things it gives us is how those first Christians formed a community. That’s something we’ve been trying to do, so I hope that as we read this we can learn a bit that will help us.”
She continued reading the next paragraph, and then stopped again.
“Did you hear that? They were united in prayer. They prayed together. And it tells us that the men, the ones who had just spent all that time learning from Jesus, prayed, but also the women prayed with them. I have said it before, but let me emphasize it now: we need to pray, and we need to pray together.
“You have all been learning to hunt and fish, to provide food for yourselves and your families. Last week we were talking about the time Jesus filled the net of His fishermen friends with more fish than they could draw into the boat, and we were talking about whether we could ask God for that many fish. Then I said that it was important to recognize that they brought the net, and the boat, and that if we expect God to fill our nets with fish we need to bring the net--metaphorically. Now I’m going to point out that like you, they were fishing when they caught those fish; but that they didn’t catch all those fish because they were skillful fishermen, but because God gave them the fish. We similarly need to be mindful of the fact that over the past few months God has given us every fish we caught, and every deer and rabbit we shot, and every berry we picked, and the onion grass which flavored our meat. It is tempting to believe we got these for ourselves, but we need to know that God got them for us, and to thank Him for all He has given us. We also need to know that, because as we go forward we need Him to give us more food as we face the hardships of winter, and so we need to be thanking Him for what He has given us, and for what He is going to give us.
“So you know what to pray. Thank God for all he has done for us, and pray that He will continue to provide for us.”
She glanced back at the page, and added, “I also notice that it tells us that they stayed where they were, and that they were told to stay where they were until something happened. There is a sense in which we aren’t expecting something to happen. However, I think we need to be expectant, that at some point God is going to do something more with us than He has done. We know He brought us here, and He has been providing for us here, and I think perhaps we need to stay here, together, learning to live together, until somehow He directs us to do something else. But let’s continue.”
She read beyond that, to the end of the chapter.
“A lot of this probably matters in ways that I don’t see, but what I do see is that they had leaders. They had twelve leaders, and when they lost one they replaced him. We also have leaders. We have our three group leaders Varlax, Torin, and Gram, and our three team leaders Boronir, Sylwi, and Peep. Together they form our council, working together to make this work. We need leaders. They needed leaders. We need to support our leaders, pray for them, work with them, and make their jobs easier. A lot of this depends on them.”
She closed the book. She was surprised that she had covered so much in so short a time, but she wasn’t really prepared to continue. It was time to end the meeting.
“That’s all I have this week, but I think it’s a lot. We need to pray, and to pray together, and to thank God for all He has given and pray that He continues His generosity. We need to stay together here until He leads us to do something else, and so we need to make our community work. To do that, we need to support our leaders. Did I miss anything?”
Getting silence, she said, “Torin, would you please close us with prayer,” and stepped down from the rock.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #501: Characters Orienting. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
