Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [99]
“Wade, what is it? What’s wrong?”
“I don’t want that nigger praying for me!”
I was too outraged to speak. I dropped Wade’s hand, waiting for Eli to drop the boy to the floor and leave him there to die. Instead, Eli rested his hand on my shoulder to calm me.
“Go on, Missy Caroline, you pray for him.”
“I can’t.” My voice shook with fury and contempt.
“Yes, you can, and you best do it quick.”
Somehow, I managed to do it. I prayed and recited the Twenty-third Psalm until Wade finally grew calm and slipped into unconsciousness. Then I stood and fled to Daddy’s library. I was trembling from head to toe. Eli followed a few minutes later, carrying the lamp.
“You all right?” he asked.
“I don’t understand people like him. How could he say such a thing to you? And why did you make me pray for him after what he said?”
Eli set the lamp down on Daddy’s desk. “That boy will have to face God pretty soon and give an accounting for all the hate he storing away in his heart. But you and I better not be storing any in ours. Let it go, Missy Caroline—right away, before it take root. Else we be just as bad as he is. The devil wants us to be like himself— telling lies and hating people. Jesus wants us to be like He is—loving our enemies and praying for them. Who you gonna be like?”
I sank into the chair behind my daddy’s desk, then leaned forward to rest my elbows on it and covered my face. “It’s too hard,” I mumbled. “All this work, night and day, with scarcely a moment’s rest—and then some of them are so ungrateful . . . insulting!” I exhaled, expelling my anger in a rush of air. When I felt calmer, I said, “Listen, Eli, you don’t have to do this anymore. Go home and go to bed. You’ve been working harder than any servant should be expected to work.”
I waited for him to leave, but Eli didn’t move. When I finally lowered my hands and looked up, he was standing in the same place in front of the desk, gazing down at me.
“Some of these men never once thought about Jesus their whole life,” he said. “But they crying out to Him now cause they hurt and afraid. Jesus wants to answer them. He wants to help that poor dying boy out there, but the only arms and the only voice He has is ours.”
I covered my face again, feeling very small and ungracious compared to Eli. “I can’t do this anymore.”
“You have to,” Eli said.
“Why?” I sounded like a petulant child, but I didn’t care. “Who says I have to?”
“Jesus is our Massa, and He say so. We’re here to serve Him, not the other way around. Your daddy ain’t saying to me, ‘Sit yourself down, Eli. Tell me what you want to eat. Let me wait on you.’ ”
“I thought the Bible says I’m God’s child.”
“Comes a time when every child has to grow up and get about his father’s business. Cousin Jonathan and Massa Charles . . . didn’t they grow up and go to work for their daddies? Time you grow up, Missy Caroline. Your heavenly Father needs you to be His servant.”
I was exhausted and demoralized and discouraged. All I could think to say was, “It’s too hard.”
“You bet it’s hard. Even Jesus struggled all night in the Garden. He didn’t want to die. But He prayed, ‘Not my will, but thine, be done.’ A servant does what his massa says and goes where his massa sends him and doesn’t quit until the job is done.”
I closed my eyes, thinking, Tomorrow. I’ll start all over again tomorrow. But Eli wasn’t finished.
“Every day a servant goes to his massa and finds out what he supposed to do that day. If a servant is in the middle of something and Massa calls his name, he don’t say ‘just a minute’—he drop whatever he doing and he run to stand before the massa and he say, ‘Here I am.’ Every morning we need to ask the Lord, ‘This where you want me today? This what you want me to do?’ If it is, then that’s where you have to be, and that’s what you have to do.”
“All right, Eli,” I said with a sigh. I knew he was right. And I knew I would have to pray about everything he’d said. But right then I simply wanted to be alone, to lay my head down on the desk and weep.