For Time and Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B

be done yet. I haven’t even started supper.”
    “Just one chapter.” Still unused to talking, I had to cough before I could continue. “We could have tea and biscuits in the parlor. Like a regular social.”
    “I suppose there’s time before your father gets back,” she said, standing. “I’ll drop these on the back porch and get the water on.”
    Alone again, I went to the window and leaned clear out, craning my neck to see if I could get even a glimpse. Nothing. But even his absence held a hint of promise.
* * *
     
    “Well, aren’t we a couple of fine ladies in the middle of the afternoon?” Mama sipped her tea, eyebrows arched high over the steam.
    “I suppose we are.” My own tea was cooler, tempered with milk.
    “Now,” Mama said, setting her cup on the small table beside her and lifting our Bible into her lap, “do you remember where you were?”
    I nodded. “First Samuel. Chapter 3.”
    Mama turned to the page and started to read, but I had to stop her after the first verse.
    “What does he mean by ‘there was no open vision’?”
    She thought for a moment before answering. “It says the word of the Lord was ‘precious,’ so I suppose it means that not everybody could understand it. Or hear it. God was only speaking to a certain few.”
    Satisfied, I sipped my drink as she continued to read. After the first verse, it became a familiar story, that of young Samuel being called from his bed by the Lord. Only Samuel didn’t know it was the Lord at first and thought it was the old priest Eli. Mama read it like it was a story, not the Bible, and I wished for a minute that I could do all of my Bible readings this way. Or even just sit and let her tell me the stories without reading at all. Surely she knew them all by heart. Since I didn’t have the page in front of me, I couldn’t count down to the end of the chapter, and I was somewhat startled when her voice silenced.
    “That’s it?”
    “One chapter at a time, Camilla.”
    I knew it was time for me to answer the question of what this chapter teaches about being a better Christian. But I wasn’t ready to think about that just yet. Instead, I wondered about what Nathan said about following a new prophet. Samuel was a prophet because the Lord spoke right to him.
    “How come in the Bible God is always talking to people, but now he never does?”
    Mama thought for a minute, her eyes turned up to the ceiling, her hand running softly over the open page. “It was an older time, I guess. Closer to Creation. Maybe he was nearer. Maybe people needed to hear him because they didn’t have the Bible to read.”
    “Has he ever spoken like that to you, Mama? right out loud?”
    “No, darling. Not like that. Not right out loud.”
    “But he could if he wanted to?”
    “Of course. He can do anything.”
    “Then why doesn’t he? Wouldn’t it be easier if he did? Then we could just listen to him and know what to do.”
    Mama laughed. A treasure so rare I wanted to keep it forever. “Your father and I tell you what to do every day, and sometimes you still find ways to be disobedient. That’s why we have the Scriptures. No matter what our parents—or anybody else—tells us, we’ll always hear God’s voice in these pages. This is where he tells us what we should and shouldn’t do.”
    “But the world has changed a lot since those times.”
    “Not so much,” Mama said. “Not in ways that matter. People still seek him, and he still loves us. Remember that, Camilla, all your days. If nothing else, know that he loves you. And because you love him, you must obey his teachings.”
    I don’t remember ever feeling as close to my mother as I did that afternoon. Like the whole world just stopped for a moment to let us talk to each other. Sometimes I think of how things might have turned out so different if we’d had a chance to do that more. If I could have known every day of my life that we could slip into our parlor and talk about God’s love and