About Water, Stones and Hearts

I've escaped happily into a few novels this summer.  This one, which may be my last for the

season, is a gentle read, and is pretty much a perfect escape, in spite of the one fatal error I encountered on page 476 of the Readers Digest Condensed version.  The last sentence of the Vicar's sermon was the killer.

Here's a rather long but satisfying excerpt from Water, Stone and Heart, by Will North:

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At the top of the Valency valley, Andrew climbed over a stile in a stone wall, walked through the cemetery of St. Juliot's Church, with its lichen-encrusted headstones leaning this way and that, and ducked under its fifteenth-century porch.  He'd been looking forward to this moment.  He wanted to see what [Thomas] Hardy had done during the restoration of the church in the late 1800's.  But when he pushed open the church's heavy oak door, he found a small clutch of parishioners, Lee and Anne included.  A female priest stood at a raised pulpit.

He mumbled an apology and took a seat in a pew at the rear.

Heads turned to regard the stranger who had joined them.  Lee grinned at him and waved.  The priest looked across the tiny congregation and smiled.  "Welcome," she said.  "I was just about to tell one of my favorite stories."

The priest's informality won him over immediately.  Andrew smiled back and nodded.  She began.

"I'm sure you've all heard variations of this joke: A mountain climber loses his footing and begins to fall from a cliff--perhaps a cliff like those along the coast path here in Boscastle.  He grabs the branch of a shrub growing from the cliff face--perhaps it's gorse or heather--and it arrests his fall.  But the branch is slender and brittle, and he knows it will not hold him long.

"'Help!' he cries.  'Is anyone up there? Help!'

"And a deep voice answers, 'I am the Lord, your God. I can save you if you believe in me. Do you believe?'

"'Oh yes, Lord, I do--with all my heart, especially right now!'

"'Good,' says the Lord. 'Let go of the branch.'

"The climber hesitates. 'Is there anyone else up there?' he asks."

There was a faint titter of laughter in the congregation.

"The Bible tells a similar story," the priest continued. "In this case, Jesus has just performed the miracle of feeding the multitudes. . . ."

. . . .When the crowd disperses, Jesus tells his disciples to get into their boat and set across the sea.  He stays behind to pray and reflect and tells them he will join them soon.

"That night, a storm rakes the sea, and the disciples' boat is tossed for hours.  Finally, as Matthew tells us, on the fourth watch, early in the morning, they see Jesus walking toward them on the surface of the water.  They cry out in fear, 'It is a ghost!' But Jesus says, 'Take heart. It is I. Be not afraid.' Then Peter jumps up and says, 'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you over the water.'

"And here's where I think Jesus shows us his sense of humor--in a way not all that different from the joke we began with. What does he do? He says simply, 'Come.' And so Peter clambers out of the boat. He lets go with one hand. He lets go with the other. And he walks across the water toward his Lord.

"So here is Peter, striding across the surface of the sea, when he sort of wakes up and looks around. He sees that the sea is rough and the sky is stormy. And suddenly he is afraid. He has, to put it simply, a crisis of faith. He fears that the branch of salvation, like the branch our climber was clutching, is slender and brittle.

"What happens next? Well, it's useful to remember that the name 'Peter' means rock, which is exactly what he begins sinking like. 'Lord, save me!' Peter cries.

"And Jesus reaches out, pulls him up, and returns him to the safety of the boat. 'O ye of little faith, why did you doubt?' Jesus asks.  And the rest of the disciples, in awe, declare, 'Truly, you are the son of God.'"

The priest paused and rested her eyes on the villagers before her.

"We are only human," she said. "Our day-to-day lives test our faith repeatedly--in ourselves, in those we love, and in God. And sometimes we sink. What does Matthew's account of this episode tell us? That faith can buoy us up. That faith can calm the storm. That faith can produce miracles--big ones, little ones, it hardly matters. Faith can enable each and every one of us to walk upon the water of our lives. Faith can be our salvation."

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Did you notice the one fatal error?  Comment below and let me know what you saw here.  I'm curious. 

I'm also wondering if any of you have read this far.  It's a long blog post, and I often wonder if anyone reads even the short musings I post.  Are you there??  If you have read this far, whether or not you have a comment on the content, will you let me know you've read it?

Next post I'll talk about what I think is fatally wrong with this sermon. But I'd like to have your thoughts first.

Water, Stone and Heart, by Will North.