Free Wayward Winds by Michael Phillips

she had said. “I can’t say there is much feeling left in my heart for anyone around here. I hate it here. I have hated it for years.” Then had followed the letter which, at least for the present, had ended hope of relationship in the near future. “I am not interested in your God,” she had written, “in your prayers, or in either of you.”
    The letter had come two and a half years ago. Yet to a sensitive nature like Charles Rutherford’s, the words plunged anew every day like a knife blade into his father’s heart.
    What a contrast between the two—George who loved him and embraced his role in his life, and Amanda who found all thought of parental supervision hateful and confining. He had been the same father to them both, thought Charles. What could account for the difference?
    Will Amanda ever want to call me father again? he sighed. Will the very word always be hateful to her, or will she one day soften to the idea of someone above her to whom she can be a daughter?
    With the thought, prayer was not far behind.
    Amanda had asked him not to pray for her. But that was one request with which he could not, and would not, comply.
    â€œO God, Father of us all,” Charles groaned inwardly where he sat, “though her mind is set against all reminder of it, stir Amanda’s heart toward daughterhood. Probe and prick her in the deep places of her being where we are all children, because we were made to be children— your children. Help her to warm to the idea of yourFatherhood, though her brain may resist for yet a season. Take away the hate, the bitterness, the resentment that somehow has come to reside in her as a result of my influence in her life.”
    As he prayed, the imagery of growing things came into his mind, as it often did when he and Jocelyn prayed for their children, as had been their custom for years, in the heather garden next to the wood east of the Hall.
    â€œ Till the soil of Amanda’s heart, Lord,” he now prayed. “Send your warming sun upon it. Break up the frozen ground of her independence. Though the thought of me remains odious to her, though perhaps she does not want to call me father, turn her heart toward your Fatherhood. And I am not, after all, her true father, Lord. You only gave her to me for a little while, to help her become your daughter. Forgive my inadequacy to the task. It would seem I have failed both her and you, Lord God. Yet I know you did not expect me to be a perfect father, only one who sought to obey you. I began late to do so, which is my life’s deepest regret, and even now I do so but feebly.”
    Charles paused and sighed at the reminder of his shortcomings as a father.
    â€œ You are the only perfect Father,” he prayed again, “ and you will yet be that perfect Father to our dear Amanda. You will take up my imperfect fatherhood into your plan for her, and use it in your miraculous way to perfect Amanda’s daughterhood in you. Carry out that work, heavenly Father—not only in Amanda, but also in George, in Catharine, in Jocelyn . . . and in me. Turn my heart, too, more and more toward your Fatherhood. Create ever more deeply in me the longing to be a child. Make me more fully your obedient and thankful son.”

 13  An Invitation
    Life with the Pankhursts rarely lacked for excitement.
    Visitors came almost daily for information, interviews, and business. Passersby came to heckle. Still others just stared into the windows of the home where dwelt the radical women firebrands.
    But mostly the excitement came from Emmeline Pankhurst’s activities themselves. Her most favored method in the women’s campaign was to push the limits of the law so as to make news for the cause. Every day the possibility existed that Emmeline might not return home for tea, or even for bed that night.
    Enough stories circulated about Mrs. Pankhurst, exaggerated by the London press, to keep