could sing hymns and listen to organ music all day, and often Rev. Prunesma preached sermons that made her think about something other than the judgmental eyes of her mother or the shuffle of hungry steers. Man does not live by bread alone: at its best, that’s what church was all about. Going to church also gave her the chance to wear clothes that made her look like somebody who didn’t live on a farm. It wasn’t as arrogant and pretentious as parking an expensive car in front of church, and it did give her a taste of the future when she planned to be out of here.
The Krayenbraaks walked down the aisle in their usual long-long-short-long order—Father, Mother, Aldah, Alice—and sat in their usual pew: left side, sixth from the front. People said Alice resembled her father more than her mother, and she thought about that as she watched his dignified and stately walk that he reserved for church. Compared to her mother, he looked well groomed when he went out into public. Alice had never known him when he wasn’t bald, but he still fussed with the little hair he had left. You could have held a carpenter’s level to the edge of his sideburns.
In church, her father did not look like a farmer, and she hoped she did not look like a farmer’s daughter. She knew they both looked different when they were on the farm. On the farm, he had an undignified but still controlled, pumping-forward efficiency in his manner. When she was working outside with him, she thought she looked like somebody who was following the mandate of the hymn that said, “Work, for the night is coming.”
The church sanctuary was a no-nonsense place of worship. Simple and huge is how Alice thought of it—like a large auditorium. The ceiling slanted in straight lines of wooden rafters above them to a peak that was fifty feet over their heads. The smooth oak benches had no cushions, and though narrow arched windows lined the walls, the stained glass patterns were simple designs that did not hint of “graven images.” A large wooden cross stood against the wall behind the lectern, which was centered on the raised pulpit—centered to remind everyone that in this church the preaching of The Word was central to the worship service.
The church didn’t have a choir, and it didn’t have any fresh flowers or stenciled banners. Bright colors of any kind would be a distraction. The congregation didn’t want their house of worship cluttered with any New Age garbage. Of all the churches in Dutch Center, this was the one that had the largest number of farmers and the smallest number of the local Redemption College students.
Just as the organ prelude was ending, the Reverend Prunesma walked in from the front of the church, followed by the eight-member consistory of elders and deacons, who seated themselves with their families. At the same time, some young people—probably students who would be starting at Redemption College in a few weeks—also walked in. In her mind, Alice quietly forgave them: they didn’t know that you should come early enough to be seated before the minister and consistory arrived. But then, after the ushers had already sat down with their families, there came the Vangs, the very last people to enter—Mai leading with Nickson and Lia close behind. Such short people, but such quick, confident steps. Rev. Prunesma was already standing behind the lectern, but he waited, smiling benevolently, as the Vangs made their way to the front of the church and sat down in what was usually old lady Waltersdorf ’s pew.
Alice watched the Vangs through the opening benediction and opening hymn. They were familiar with the order of worship, and even recited the Apostle’s Creed without having to read it. At least Mai and Nickson did. Their mother kept looking down.
After the long congregational prayer, after the church offering with two collection plates going around—one for the General Fund and one for Christian Education—and after the follow-up hymn, Rev. Prunesma’s sermon began. His text was Psalm 23, the familiar “The Lord is my shepherd” passage. Alice knew Psalm 23 as well as she knew the Lord’s Prayer. She knew it as well as “Little Bo Peep.”
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he began. “Brothers and sisters in the Lord, what does that familiar text mean to you? ‘Shepherd.’ What does that mean to you? Do you see a large bearded man with a heavy staff ready to strike you down? Does a shepherd strike his sheep? Does a shepherd beat his sheep into submission? No! No! That is not what King David is saying in this passage. Shepherds do not strike, they do not whip, they do not poke, they do not abuse. No, shepherds guide their flock lovingly.”
He opened his arms as if to embrace the whole congregation.
“What about that big long staff we see in pictures of shepherds? you ask. Does that thing look like a bullwhip? Does it look like a cattle prod? No! This staff is used for giving direction, not for beating. The shepherds of David’s time only used their staffs aggressively to ward off lions. For you, His people, the Good Shepherd uses His staff to ward off the lions of temptation. With you, His sheep, He uses His staff as a gentle prod to keep you moving down the path to glory.”
The Rev paused, rubbed his hands together, and stepped to the side of the lectern.
“But. But,” he went on with sentences that he chopped into questions: “Does this mean?—that He is a cozy companion? Does this mean?—that He is someone?—who has no expectations?—from His people? Is this what it means?—to think of Jesus?—as the Good? Shepherd?”
He shook his head slowly but emphatically. “Oh no. Oh no.” He raised his right hand and wagged his forefinger. “Jesus is not your chum! Jesus is not your pal! Jesus is not your buddy! Jesus is the Lord God Almighty, ruler of heaven and earth!”
His voice bounced off the ceiling and reverberated through the sanctuary. Alice loved that energy, even though what he had just said contradicted the soft image of God that he had been extolling a minute earlier. Rev. Prunesma was showing his true colors: he was no softy. He was proclaiming the majesty of a fearsome God. A gentle shepherd and an almighty God—not exactly a Holy Trinity, but a Hefty Duality.
Through the brief silence that followed the reverend’s exclamations came the sound of beating wings: the Rev’s voice had startled and launched a starling from somewhere in the back of the church, and it flew in short, urgent bursts over the congregation, smacking into one window and then another. When it landed on the baptismal font and started drinking, the Rev continued his sermon as if nothing had happened. The starling sat still, seeming quite content with its current situation.
Thrilling as Rev. Prunesma’s exuberant digression and the flight of the wayward starling had been, the duller truths of the world sat next to Alice. Aldah was bored. She may have been the only person over ten in the entire congregation who did not know Psalm 23 by heart. Rev. Prunesma’s loud exclamations did not stir her, and, to Alice’s surprise, neither did the starling. Her mother had given Aldah two pink peppermints to get her through the sermon. Aldah put them in her white handkerchief and chewed on the prune-sized bundle until sweet pink juice oozed into her mouth. Her mother pretended not to notice, so Alice wasn’t about to stop her either.
Rev. Prunesma was going through Psalm 23 line by line, explicating every sentence. It was mostly a dull walk through references to the Hebrew and Greek, but when he got to the “still waters,” he had Alice’s full attention again.
“‘He leadeth me beside the still waters.’ When we think of still waters today, we think of tepid water. But here, David is contrasting ‘still waters’ against the alternative of tempestuous, dangerous waters. This water, we should believe, is clean and calm. Clean and calm.”
His repetition and emphases were puzzling. Rev. Prunesma worked at making the Old Testament relevant to the present, but was he hinting that the clean waters of Psalm 23 were everything that cattle feedlot runoff holding tanks were not? Was the Rev suggesting that farmers were at odds with the message of Psalm 23 by turning calm waters into stinky polluted waters? Was he about to lecture the farmers in
