Free A Shiloh Christmas by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Figure he had to leave his Jeep, couldn’t get through.
    Firemen are pulling one of the hoses back to the truck.
    I wave, and Dad sees me at last.
    â€œMarty, are your ma and the girls all right?” he calls, and I nod. When he gets up to where I’m standing, hesays, “I hear it took out some houses along Old Creek Road.” And then he sees Judd. “Judd, I’m so sorry . . . ,” he says.
    Judd lets out his breath, don’t say a word.
    â€œListen. You’re going to stay with us tonight and have some supper,” Dad tells him.
    But Judd shakes his head. “Gotta find my dogs,” he says, and starts back along the road toward his truck.

    The Red Cross shows up with sandwiches and coffee for the firemen and the families who lost their homes. Five houses, along with Judd’s trailer, been burned to the ground, and six or seven more been smoke damaged real bad. An announcement goes out on TV that cots will be put up in Sistersville Elementary for folks to spend the night.
    Church is full up the next morning, and Dad comes too. Ma says it’s times like this that bring a community together, and now we got a pastor to help us through it. She was on the phone the night before, calling to bring a dinner dish to church, to be carried down to Sistersville. The food is placed on a table near the back before it’s transferred to a station wagon and driven off. So all the while I’m sitting in the pew with my family, my nose has the memory of ham and friedchicken, and I wish I’d eaten a bigger breakfast.
    It’s a somber service. Mrs. Maxwell plays “God Will Take Care of You,” and we sing all four verses. Then Pastor Dawes goes to the pulpit.
    â€œOur hearts are heavy this morning as we grieve with all the families affected by the fire,” he says. “But despite the destruction, no one lost his life, and Lord, we thank you for that, for if your eye is on the sparrow, as the Bible says, then it surely is on us.”
    I hear some “Praise the Lords.”
    But now the preacher’s restless-like; turns his body one way as he talks, then turns it the other. He leans over the pulpit and then rears back, like he can’t get comfortable any which way.
    â€œBut what is God’s message?” he’s saying. “Brothers and sisters, the Lord has sent both a drought and a fire upon us. What will it take to turn us back to God? In the last perilous times of this earth, the Bible tells us, men will become proud, boastful, and haters of God. Children will be disobedient to their parents, unthankful, unholy. . . . ”
    I’m glad Becky is downstairs putting pictures of Jesus in a sticker book.
    â€œLet us use these punishments to look into our own hearts. Have we lived up to the Lord’s teachings?Have we demanded obedience of our children? Have we preached the gospel to our neighbors?”
    Pastor Dawes takes out a handkerchief folded into a four-inch square and wipes his forehead. Then he goes on quoting the Bible, but somehow I think he’s leavin’ a lot out: “The Bible tells us that if a neighbor acts unholy and neglects to hear the church, ‘let him be unto thee as a heathen man,’ lest worse things fall upon us. . . . ”
    What the heck does that mean? I wonder. Seems to me the preacher’s saying that if us church folks aren’t to blame for the drought and the fire, then somebody else is, and we got to find out who.
    One thing I’ve decided on my own, though—I’ve got to tell Ma and Dad that I let Judd’s dogs out. I was disobedient in going over there, because I knew they wouldn’t want me anywhere near that fire. But maybe this is one way to show Dad he can trust me to tell him stuff. He’ll be angry, knowing the chance I took, but he’ll be glad I’m not keeping it from him neither.

    Don’t think it’s just me;