Free Orchard of Hope by Ann H. Gabhart Page B

love generously and without prejudice with one another.
    David was preaching on Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. His focal verse was the one where Paul asked, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?” That was a question every Christian needed to ask themselves. It was a question David had asked many times since the first time he’d felt the Lord in his heart. It was a question he’d asked even more times after the Lord had laid his hand on him and called him to preach.
    Could a man ever be absolutely certain that he was following the will of the Lord instead of his own will? Every Sunday when David stood up behind the pulpit he prayed his sermon would be what the Lord wanted him to say and what the people needed to hear. Sometimes he felt the message move through him and become more powerful as it left his mouth, and other times he felt he failed completely.
    Now as he watched Ogden Martin and Harvey McMurtry bring the offering plates with the tails of bills and checks sticking up out of them back to sit on the table in front of the pulpit, he said the prayer he said every Sunday before he preached. Not my words, Lord, but thine.
    The heat was building in the church. Already David’s shirt was sticking to his back, but he didn’t loosen his tie. He took hold of the pulpit on both sides so that no one could see how his hands were shaking. He’d been preaching for almost twenty years, but he still got nervous, still had to swallow his fear of speaking in front of people. He reminded himself he wasn’t speaking. He was preaching, and the Lord would give him the power to do that if he only reached toward him in faith.
    He began reading Acts 9. He read the sixth verse twice. “‘And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.’”
    And then the sermon was there spilling out of his mouth, some of the same words as he’d prepared the night before and some new words put into his mouth by the Lord. The people listened. They waved their fans back and forth in front of their faces but they listened. For a while, they even seemed to forget that something unusual was happening at Mt. Pleasant on this Sunday morning. Something that probably hadn’t happened for almost a hundred years in Holly County. Blacks and whites sharing the same church pew.
    After the invitation hymn had been sung and the final prayer said, David stood at the door and shook the hands of his people. The Hearndons were one of the first families out the door. When Myra Hearndon took his hand, her hand felt cool as if she could even will her body not to feel the heat that had gathered in the church building during the service.
    “Thank you for coming,” he said.
    “I appreciated your sermon,” Myra Hearndon said. “It’s a question I ask myself every morning when I get up. What would you have me do this day, Lord, to make the world a better place?”
    “And do you get an answer, Mrs. Hearndon?”
    “Some days, and some days I find my own answers.”
    “May the Lord guide you to the right answers.”
    “And the same for you.”
    “That is my prayer,” David said.
    She studied his face a moment before she nodded. “I believe it is. Thank you for your welcome, Rev. Brooke, and for the welcome of your people.”
    “God’s people. We’re all God’s people.”
    “Yes.”
    “May I come out to meet your husband? Alex, didn’t you say?”
    “He’s working. He might not stop for a visit from the preacher.”
    “Perhaps I can help him in whatever he’s doing.”
    “On the Lord’s Day, Preacher? The day of rest?” She raised her eyebrows at him.
    “A preacher does little resting on Sunday,” David said.
    “No, I suppose not. Come if you want.” She started to step out the door, but then smiled at David over her shoulder and added, “I’ll hide the shotgun.”
    The girl, Cassidy, slipped past David