[Faith-talk] Chapter II of my novel

Tue Jul 29 19:31:51 UTC 2014

keep them coming please.
On 7/28/2014 10:24 PM, Poppa Bear via Faith-talk wrote:
> Hello to those who have been following, here is the second installment to
> one of my unfinished stories. Keep in mind, this is still first draft
> material. Enjoy.
>
> Chapter 2
>
>   
>
>      Luke stepped into the small house from his morning walk to the smell of
> fried hash and caribou sausage. Wiping mud off of his feet at the door, a
> smile spread across his face. The small house was wide awake, and the
> bustling commotion of children shuffling through the little house, getting
> ready for another school day was both refreshing and amusing to Luke.
>
>      "Where are my gloves, did anyone see them? I had them right here," one
> little girls voice asked. While another voice piped up, "I bet you I can
> beat you to school this time." Which was followed up by a snappy response
> of, "Yeh right, I could hop to school on one leg faster than you could run."
> Then the first child gained a small victory in her search as she jumped up
> from under the table with the prize of a tattered brown glove in her hand
> and world on her brother and sister, "here is one of my gloves! Now where is
> the other one you guys?"
>
>      Luke had just returned from his morning walk. It had almost become a
> ritual, putting on his old worn leather walking shoes that felt like a
> second skin, sliding a book into his pocket and taking a nice long stroll
> every morning. He never grew tired of the chirping chattering birds,
> watching them dart to and fro, or the steady sound of his feet falling on
> the ground, and filling his lungs with deep breaths of the cool morning air.
> He also liked to pray while he walked. As he would gaze at this or that,
> whatever it might be from the landscape to the faces of his fellow human
> being it seemed to remind him of God's never ceasing hand at work, and this
> awareness stirred up prayers of thanksgiving and requests of all different
> kinds that he would take before his heavenly father.
>
>      His morning walks In the small sparsely populated village of Stebbins
> Alaska were generally very quiet.  In Stebbins there were no paved roads,
> stop signs or street lights. Most people road on ATV's and snow machines and
> there were only a hand full of pickup trucks that were occasionally driven.
> The lack of the constant deafening and buzzing sounds of the city life
> allowed him to experience a similar solitude that he had learned to
> appreciate as a young boy in the Appellation Mountains.
>
> As soon as the children saw him come inside their faces lit up and they
> surrounded him. He took a moment to run his hands through the thick dark
> hair of each child, ruffling the girls hair which immediately sent them
> scrambling back to the small mirror which hung over an aluminum wash basin
> in the corner of the small room. He then exchanged a few play punches with
> little Calvin, a rough and tumble 4 year old who was all boy from head to
> toe.
>
>      "Morning brother!" was the greeting that Luke received from his host
> Marvin. Marvin was an Alaska native in his early 40's and a widower raising
> his 4 children on his own, with the occasional help of his
>
> sister, Doreen, who was generally facing a daily trial of trying to provide
> for an alcoholic husband and a four year old daughter who had suffered from
> fetal alcohol syndrome, which was the result of Doreen being an alcoholic up
> until the birth of the little girl, when she became a Christian.
>
>      Marvin had been a Christian for about 17 years now. He had lost his wife
> 3 years ago. The loss had been so devastating that for a long time
> afterwards the battle not to pick up a bottle had been a dangerously
> difficult struggle.
>
>      Luke's arrival in the village had been nothing less than a miracle for
> Marvin. Marvin and Luke had clicked right from the start. Even though the
> two were different ages, from different cultures and had been raised
> thousands of miles apart, it was if they were brothers who had spent their
> entire lives together.
>
>      Luke had been invited to the village by an Alaskan missions Pastor. The
> man's name was Eliot Stags. Stags was from Connecticut and as a young man
> felt a calling on his life to become a bush Pastor in the small native
> villages of Alaska.
>
>      When Stags was a teenager he played basketball for his high school and
> had traveled to various states in the country playing tournaments and
> eventually landed in the small city of Bethel Alaska for a week long
> Tournament. At that time Stags was a young Christian still wondering where
> he could serve the Lord. His father had been the head Pastor in a rather
> large 3000 member church in their upscale neighborhood and Eliot new that
> his dad was hoping to pass the rains to his son one day, so the boy had been
> torn throughout his last two years of high school.
>
>      After his senior year he would be choosing a college and the golden
> chariot wheels of time would be spinning faster, carrying him towards the
> ever present fork in the road that would either place him under his
> demanding father for many more years to come, or thrust him into a different
> and all together unpredictable direction, that more than one young man has
> tentatively chosen with not altogether pleasant results, being willing to
> venture out onto any path to break free from a dad who was, to everyone
> else, perfect and almost God like with a tongue of the purest gold, except
> to his family who spent much of their time without a loving leader to
> nurture and Sheppard the small weary flock in the four walls of their home.
> Eliot had burned with anger on more than one occasion, watching his tired
> and lonely mother struggle to fill up the gaping holes in their lives to
> make up for an absent father who put his church before his family.
>
>      When the young Eliot arrived in Bethel he was struck with the look of
> innocence in the faces of many of the youth. As he and other members of the
> basketball team visited smaller neighboring villages he was also struck with
> a deep depression that lined the faces of the older natives. He saw more
> than one native stumbling through the snow as if they were just aimlessly
> wandering with a blank look on their face. Eliot came to understand that
> when intoxicated, some would just wander off into the bush in a drunken
> stupor and end up lost, lie down on the hard snow covered ground and die of
> hypothermia.
>
>      Eliot's heart was full of genuine compassion as he saw the combination
> of a guileless youth with an older generation unable to fend off the
> influences of alcohol and depression. Upon learning that substance abuse,
> suicide and depression was the norm in many villages and that almost no
> villages had full time Pastors his future started to take shape.
>
>      Five years after his first visit Eliot Stags returned to Alaska with a
> Pastorate degree. He made a personal vow to seek out permanent spiritual
> leadership for every village in Alaska. This was 18 years ago and Eliot was
> still attempting to fulfill that vow.
>
>      Eliot had met Luke at an event in Virginia that was to decide whether or
> not certain Virginian tribes would be recognized by the Federal government
> and receive the same benefits that other Native American tribes were
> allotted throughout the country. The event had been supported by the
> Virginia Council of Churches and both Luke and Eliot had been drawn to the
> gathering by various circumstances.
>
>      One early morning Eliot had noticed Luke sitting on a large log reading
> a book that had been a real encouragement for Eliot over the years while
> ministering in the bush. It was a book titled, "Gates of Splendor." Striking
> up a conversation about the book both men had found much in common and spent
> the next few days in the company of one another.
>
>      By the end of the event Eliot had invited Luke to come to Alaska. He had
> shared his vision with Luke for all of the native villages to be supplied
> with a spiritual leader, a Sheppard to teach and preach the word of God. His
> plea was so sincere and his passion so strong that Luke told Eliot that he
> would think it over and pray about it.
>
>      For your average person the idea of dropping everything and flying to a
> small remote village in Alaska for 6 months would have been fairly absurd to
> say the least, but  for Luke, he had strove to make it a way of life to
> trust in and walk with the man from Nazareth who was more than a carpenter.
> Perhaps the lines from an old Puritan prayer could describe his desires more
> accurately, "  I have no master but Thee, no law but Thy will, no delight
> but Thyself, no wealth but that Thou givest, no good but that Thou blesses,
> no peace but that Thou bestows. I am nothing but that Thou makes me. I have
> nothing but that I receive from Thee. I can be nothing but that grace adorns
> me." With such divine principles shaping his life, he had found after many
> years that Gods faithfulness was more reliable than any 401K, benefits
> package or government promise. As long as he held onto Gods hand, even when
> things were not so clear and the waters grew muddy, the sometimes high
> rolling waves of confusion never drowned him.
>
>      If a situation felt like it would be one ware Luke could be called to
> compromise in order to fulfill the request, he rejected it. If it was a
> situation that drew him because of a compensating reward more than for the
> opportunity to help and serve he would not accept it unless he could put the
> need to help as a greater priority than a monetary gain. Making decisions
> like this had helped to train him to be wise in his faith and witness the
> reality of the living truths that were written in the ancient book known as
> the bible.
>
>     After a long evening of praying, examining his own heart and his motives,
> asking God if there was a reason for him not to go, and finding none, he
> consented to a 6 month stent. On hearing the news Eliot was ecstatic, as he
> seemed to be witnessing Gods hand once again, stretching out into the middle
> of Virginia to raise up another partner to share the work in the villages.
> He told Luke that it would take him about 4 weeks to set everything up and
> Luke said that would be fine.
>
>      Luke had no living family members he knew of so he didn't have to deal
> with the emotional struggle of considering if he should or could be away
> from his family for extended periods of time. Also, he was not in gauged in
> any particular ministry at the moment. He had been assisting at a small
> mountain church in a coal mining town in Virginia for the last 9 months. The
> Pastor had been attending dozens of Doctors visits and sitting at the
> bedside of his sick wife while she recovered from a devastating battle with
> cancer. Thankfully she was better now and his assistance was no longer
> needed there.
>
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