It got very quiet up in the mountains. He was trying to pray, but it wasn’t easy. He’d climbed for hours into the mountains. He didn’t really believe that climbing a mountain would bring him closer to God. At least not consciously. But he wanted to get through. He had a complaint. God needed to…
The old woodsman held out his hand. The village chief looked at it, looked at the river. Looked at his wife, his children, and the villagers behind him. It was raining. It had been raining for days. The waters were rising. Not even the oldest villager could remember when the river had been this high….
The first pastor was annoyed and impatient during Miriam’s visit. He had a large and active church, and had thought he was making an appointment to talk to a member about some church problem. When she asked for the appointment, Miriam had said, “It’s about a problem and what the church can do about it.”…
“Your youth group is a miserable shadow of the one we had when Fred Martenson was our youth pastor!” The words rang in David’s ears as he stood on the sidewalk outside the church’s administrative building. His next move was to walk to his car, get in, and go home. That seemed like a good…
*“You know what I think is wrong here?” The question startled Ward. He was sitting on the porch of his house looking out at a beautiful view from the top of a hill. He and his visitor both had glasses of iced tea. They had just finished a wonderful meal. He had enjoyed showing his…
“So why did you want to see me, Charlie,” said the elderly man after the preliminary social amenities were completed. “It’s been what, 25 years?” His tone was friendly, but his face showed disappointment. “I wanted you to see what we have happening here. Thirty-five years ago I received my call to ministry in your…
She wasn’t comfortable with this visit, but it was her duty. He had lost his son just three weeks earlier and she had conducted the funeral. The death had been sudden, tragic. The man had lost his wife only three years earlier, and his son was his life. At the funeral he had been devastated….
[This is a work of fiction, Copyright © 2009, Henry E. Neufeld. Any resemblance between the characters in this story and any in the real world is purely coincidental.] It was a small hotel room in a small town, and Jack had driven three hours on small county roads to get there. Now he was…
The first time that Yagac approached the shrine he was carrying a stick he had cut from a tree and sharpened. “What do you bring for the god?” said the aged priest. Villagers said he had been at the shrine more than a hundred years. He looked it. “I bring this spear,” said Yagac, his…
Once in a lifetime, perhaps, a king’s knight would ride over the hill to the south of the village. His armor would be gleaming, his clothing immaculate, and his weapons beyond the comprehension of the villagers. He would come to the center of the village, order that all the young people be assembled, and then…
