in his lap. Claire was crying silently.
Next file card.
“October of last year. A hurricane swept onshore near Wilmington, North Carolina, and killed seventeen. Six were children at a church day-care center. A seventh was reported missing. His body was found a week later, in a tree.”
Next.
“This item concerns a missionary family ministering to the poor with food, medicine, and the gospel in what used to be the Belgian Congo and is now, I believe, Zaire. There were five of them. They were murdered. Although the article did not say—only the news that’s fit to print in The New York Times, you know—the article implied that the killers may have been of a cannibalistic bent.”
A disapproving mutter—Reggie Kelton was at the center of it—arose. Jacobs heard and raised one hand in what was almost a benedictory gesture.
“Perhaps I need not go into further details—the fires, the floods, the earthquakes, the riots, the assassinations—although I could. The world shudders with them. Yet reading these stories provided some comfort to me, because they prove that I am not alone in my suffering. The comfort is only small, however, because such deaths—like those of my wife and son—seem so cruel and capricious. Christ ascended into heaven in his body, we are told, but all too often we poor mortals here on earth are left with ugly heaps of maimed meat and that constant, reverberating question: Why? Why? Why?
“I have read scripture all my life—first at my mother’s knee, then in Methodist Youth Fellowship, and then in divinity school—and I can tell you, my friends, that nowhere in scripture is that question directly addressed. The closest the Bible comes is this reading from Corinthians, where Saint Paul says, in effect, ‘It’s no good asking, my brethren, because you wouldn’t understand, anyway.’ When Job asked God Himself, he got an even more blunt response: ‘Were you there when I made the world?’ Which translates, in the language of our younger parishioners, to ‘Buzz off, Bunky.’”
No chuckles this time.
He studied us, a faint smile touching the corners of his lips, the light from our stained glass window putting blue and red diamonds on his left cheek.
“Religion is supposed to be our comfort when the hard times come. God is our rod and our staff, the Great Psalm declares; He will be with us and bear us up when we take that inevitable walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Another Psalm assures us that God is our refuge and our strength, although the people who were lost in that Oklahoma church might dispute the idea . . . if they still had mouths to dispute with. And the father and his two children, drowning because they tried to rescue the family pet—did they ask God what was going on? What the deal was? And did He answer, ‘Tell you in a few minutes, guys,’ as the water choked their lungs and death darkened their minds?
“Let us say plainly what Saint Paul meant when he spoke of that darkened glass. He meant we’re supposed to take it all on faith. If our faith is strong, we’ll go to heaven, and we’ll understand the whole thing when we get there. As if life were a joke, and heaven the place where the cosmic punchline is finally explained to us.”
There was soft feminine sobbing in the church now, and more pronounced masculine rumblings of discontent. But at that point, no one had walked out or stood up to tell Reverend Jacobs he should sit down because he was edging into blasphemy. They were still too stunned.
“When I tired of researching the seemingly whimsical and often terribly painful deaths of the innocent, I looked into the various branches of Christianity. Gosh, friends, I was surprised at how many there are! Such a Tower of Doctrine! The Catholics, the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Baptists—both hardshell and softshell—the C of Es, the Anglicans, the Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Unitarians, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventists, the Quakers, the Shakers, Greek Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, the Shilohites—mustn’t forget them—and half a hundred more.
“Here in Harlow, we’re all on party lines, and it seems to me that religion is the biggest party line of them all. Think how the lines to heaven must get jammed on Sunday mornings! And do you know what I find fascinating? Each and every church dedicated to Christ’s teaching thinks it’s the only one that actually has a private line to the Almighty. And good gosh, I haven’t even