Soggy-that’s how spring snow is. The wind got up its roar in the night, blasting the north windows with rain, snow and sleet. The sun has not deigned to put in an appearance yet. Little calf was curled up on the straw with her mamma and the horses were in the corral with their butts to the north…the bulls were holed up on the south side of the wind break. If I could, I’d put on some kind of movie marathon-maybe Lord of the Rings or Firefly, Harry Potter or The Man From Snowy River…

I’ve been buried in a book recently and had to read this last bit several times-it struck a chord with me. The main character is beyond her wit’s end: husband in the next room dying, living in a foreign land, and facing the end of everything she knows. She goes to the chapel in the dark of a long winter night and sits in this sanctuary, begging God to show her the way. There is a Bible on the pulpit and she goes to it, turning the pages randomly, searching for words to give her comfort and to guide her-even as she prays in her deepest heart for God to speak to her.

She ends up in the Psalms-finding struggle, sadness, despair and then a lifting up, a vindication, joy. She takes the words back with her, but recognizes as she steps from the chapel, that time had stopped in that sacred place for her. She’d found the presence of God there, and though she longed to stay, she found as she walked back to her room that God was still with her. She spoke to the pastor, reassured by his words that both sin and grace begin with a conscience decision. She was able to go on and find her way through this terrible struggle.

I’m not sure we get enough of this sense of faith in today’s fiction. I think that maybe readers long for this in their pleasurable fiction reading, and that it is just as modern as vampires, wizards and lottery style games.