than usual for a Sunday evening, no doubt meant to offer him their support and encouragement for his very first official sermon. One person was notably absent. He and Lori had seen Kenzie off at the bus station more than a week ago already. But Lori was in her familiar spot. Ruby sat with her. And there in the front row beside Brother and Sister Kraft, his former minister, Brother Tony, and his spunky wife, Eileen, beamed up at him, proud as peacocks to hear him preach. They’d traveled over six hundred miles for this sermon. So he better make it good.
“Show of hands. How many of you have Jeremiah 29:11 underlined in your Bible or committed to memory?” Hands lifted all over the sanctuary. Jase nodded, chuckling. “I thought so. It’s a pretty standard one for Christians to memorize and then pull out and chew on when they hit a rough spot in life. It’s a good reminder, right?”
Heads bobbed.
“But what happens when a rough spot is so hard, so jarring, that it shakes the faith right out of you? The Lord’s plan is to prosper us—and this is spiritual prosperity, just so we don’t confuse it with financial prosperity—and give us hope. But I bet a lot of you can attest that some life situations feel pretty hopeless.”
More nods and a few sheepish grins or sad frowns.
Jase pulled in a deep breath. “When I arrived in Bradleyville two months ago, I was in a pit of hopelessness. My plans, the ones I’d carefully laid out with a goal of honoring God with my life, had crumbled. The woman I loved and wanted to marry, taken from me. The goal for us to go out as a missionary team, crushed. We use the term heartbroken kind of flippantly sometimes, like it’s a storybook word, but that’s what I was. Heartbroken. Hopeless. If this was God’s plan, I didn’t want it. I couldn’t see any kind of future anymore. Not with a God who allowed such devastation to fall on me.”
The sanctuary was silent. Reverent. Maybe stunned. Jase’s gaze skimmed across faces. Some seemed somber, others sympathetic, a few uncomfortable. He didn’t blame them. He’d never known how to react to someone else’s raw pain laid out in the open. But he needed to be honest, so he sent up a quick prayer for courage and continued.
“People told me God giveth and taketh and I should praise His name. People told me God knew the number of Rachel’s days and it was His will for her to go home. People told me to find comfort in the hope of heaven. But I was angry. Angry at God. And bitter. I wanted my plans back. So when I came to Bradleyville, it wasn’t so much out of obedience to God as a way to escape the bitterness, anger, and disbelief I’d wallowed in for a full year in San Antonio.” He looked directly at Brother Tony. “Yes, disbelief. I wasn’t sure anymore if God even existed.”
The preacher who’d led Jase to salvation, who’d baptized him, mentored him, counseled him, and loved him didn’t even flinch. Tears winked in his eyes, though, and those tears told Jase how deeply the man cared for him. Maybe as much as a father would.
Jase shifted his attention to the congregation again. What he planned to say next might disappoint some people. Might turn a few people against him. But he’d promised God to be honest tonight, and he would keep his word. He glimpsed Brother Kraft’s warm smile, and it bolstered him.
“Shortly after I arrived here, I realized the stupidity of why I’d come. Y’all needed someone to lead and guide your next generation. And here I was, empty as a buckshot-blasted rain barrel in a drought.” A few laughs broke the tension. “I had nothing to pour out. You know that old song ‘Just a Little Talk with Jesus’? Well, I had me one, and it wasn’t very pretty. I told Him if He was really there, then He needed to show up. I told Him to prove Himself to me.”
He cringed. “Pretty brazen, right? I know we’re not supposed to talk disrespectfully to God Almighty or His Son. But at that moment, I didn’t much care about offending God. That’s how far from Him I’d slipped.” He propped his elbows on the podium and leaned toward the people in the pews. “But here’s the thing…When I told God to show