Chapter 37
Hope in the Darkest Hour
The office light was out and the blinds closed. It was an understated office, just big enough to fit a desk, three bookcases, a filing cabinet and three chairs—a cushioned, swiveling one with wheels behind the desk, and two slightly padded, four-legged wooden ones on the other side. The walls were light green. The furnishings were inexpensive but not cheap, most donated to the church many years before by a church member who was closing his business. The most noticeable things in the office were the books—dozens, perhaps hundreds of them. Most were Bible commentaries, which came in handy when Pastor Rick Matthews prepared his weekly sermons. There was a smattering of spiritual growth books that he and his associate pastors handed out to church members whenever their unique problems fit the subject matter within the covers.
Pastor Rick was sitting behind the desk with his head lying on it in the crook of his right elbow, which served as a pillow. He had been praying and crying, but that stopped two hours before as exhaustion took control of his senses and lulled him into a deep slumber. He would’ve slept much longer, but the ringing and vibrations from the cell phone clipped to his belt startled him awake. It kept ringing as he glanced up at the green-lighted digital clock on the filing cabinet, the only light in the room. It flashed 4:00 P.M.
He detached the phone from his belt, flipped it open, and placed it to his right cheek. “Hello?” he groggily said.
“Pastor Rick?”
“Yeah,” he replied, shaking his head vigorously, side-to-side, trying to shake the cobwebs out of his head and guess the identity of the faceless voice on the other end of the line. “Who is this?”
“Robert Baxter,” he proclaimed enthusiastically.
“Hey, Robert,” he replied, bubbling with excitement at the first uplifting emotion he’d sensed in someone else in days. “I haven’t talked to you in weeks. How’s school going?”
“Well.”
“That’s good to hear.”
Pastor Rick silently reflected on Robert’s recent challenges. He had been Robert’s pastor for as long as he could remember. They had been through a roller coaster of emotions over the years—He had comforted the little fatherless boy who needed a male role model in his life and had offered a listening ear and nonjudgmental counsel to him when Robert’s view of an omnipotent, compassionate God was challenged after the young man’s accident. He was amazed that one so young could weather such storms with his spiritual well being intact. He pondered whether he, the Pastor, would have turned out as well had he not been sheltered in a God-fearing home with two Christian parents who raised their family in a home that was absent the storms inherent in the typical, or not-so-typical, dysfunctional family. Robert was a model Christian, despite or perhaps because of the difficult upbringing of his earlier years.
Pastor Rick also wondered if he would be making the change in his career direction recent events compelled him to make if he had been formed of the same mettle as Robert. The timing of the call could not have been worse, or better, depending on how one looked at it. It was good to hear a friendly voice. He knew from experience that his visit with Robert would be pleasant and not spirit-draining. In his line of work, the latter was far more common. “Spiritual vampires” were the bane of his calling, those who reveled more in depressing others with their problems than being made whole through spiritual and emotional healing. I can do all things through him who gives me strength, he thought, as he momentarily doubted whether the particular Bible verse was true. He mostly took such so-called counseling sessions in stride, shaking off their depressing effects by meditating on more uplifting Proverbs or other biblical passages. Moreover, such depressing meetings were vastly outweighed by the joy that came from helping other, less co-dependent types overcome the difficulties life entailed—at least, that’s how it used to be. Recently, especially the most recent few days, the bad far outweighed the good.
Four funerals in as many days, and two of those were children, one baby just six months old, and one teenage boy who had been killed in an accidental shooting at his own home by his younger brother. How apropos that Robert, a victim of a no less tragic accident—he was near death, at least—would call him at such a time as this. He had been praying for strength when exhaustion had lulled him to sleep. He was too weak to make it through the strain of so much death in so short a period of time. Regrettably, the prayer did not give him the strength he initially sought. Instead, he decided that he would use what little strength he had left to tell the congregation at Stonelee Christian Fellowship that he was resigning as lead pastor, effective immediately. He had enough of the demands a full-time pastorate placed on him and his family. He had enough funerals and spiritual vampires sucking the life out of him in the past week to last a lifetime.
“So what’s going on?” Pastor Rick asked, knowing that Robert never called unless he felt moved to do so.
“This will sound bizarre,” he began, “but I talked to the guy who hit me, Michael Thomas.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. The guy who almost killed me? I visited him in jail.”
Pastor Rick said nothing.
“I was hoping you would go down and see him.”
“What for?”
“I think it’s spiritual. He’s been in and out of trouble most of his life, and he blames alcohol and drugs. But I think it’s spiritual, that and parents who are almost as lost as he is. I even asked him if he believes in God.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘I don’t know.’”
“Does your mom know you visited him?”
“No.”
“Your grandpa?”
“No. And you can’t tell them. This is between us: you, me and Michael.”
“Okay,” Pastor Rick said after both sat silent for several moments. He wondered what transpired between the victim and his assailant to compel Robert to address the would-be convict by his first name. “I’ll go see him.”
“Thanks.”
After hanging up the phone, Pastor Rick resumed praying. He stayed awake this time, interrupting his prayer time every so often to make notes for his resignation speech. He reached for his pocket planner on the edge of his desk, opened it up, and penciled in a jail visit for Michael Thomas in Darkwell County jail the next day.