Page 12 of Sing with Me

“Why? You have a house in Atlanta.”

“Well, I might want to come to the coast from time to time, and I don’t want to stay with Mom and Dad.”

“It will be nice to see you more often,” Brinley said. “You’re my only brother left.”

“Why is life so tragic, Brin? I mean, Parker left behind two kids. I have two motherless kids now.”

“God is still sovereign. That is all I know.”

“If He is sovereign, why didn’t He stop the tragedies?”

“Do we know the mind of God? Did we make the universe?” Brinley asked. “Do you remember what Job said when he lost his sons and daughters?”

Diehl could remember if he wanted to. Yet in his heart, he felt that he had wandered so far away from God that maybe he was at a point of no return.

Would God take him back?

“Job 1:21 says, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, And naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ Job 1:22 says, ‘In all this Job did not sin nor charge God with wrong.’ The last thing we want to do in a tragedy is to blame God.”

Diehl considered himself sufficiently lectured and he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. “When did you become so religious, Brin?”

“It’s not about religion, and you know that. It’s about my relationship with God through Jesus Christ. When I accepted Him as my Lord and Savior, that was a one-time event called salvation. After that comes sanctification, which is a lifelong process.”

Diehl was quite sure that he had believed in Jesus Christ. However, he stopped right there. He hadn’t grown as a Christian.

It was too hard.

Much too hard.

He thanked Brinley for the new invitation to dinner on Saturday night, and then hung up. He found the garden hose. The leftover water still inside the pipe was warm. He hosed down the birdbath and let the water run until it cooled down. He wanted the birds to have cool water.

He looked around for the sparrow who had flown into his bedroom this morning but he didn’t see any birds. They were probably cooling off in the massive oak trees in the area.

If left to anyone else, they might cut down these trees and build another beach house. Brinley wouldn’t. However, if she sold the house, there was no telling what the new owners would do. And where would the sparrows go?

He tried again to recall the verse in the Bible about the sparrow. He couldn’t remember. And there was his younger sister Brinley, who remembered verses.

Diehl felt that he wanted to return to the days when he had been much closer to God’s heart. Back to the days when he studied his Bible and attended church.

In the days before Isobel…

No one dared to tell him to his face, and it was too late now since Isobel was dead, but Diehl stopped going to church after he met Isobel.

Back when he and Brinley had been in high school, they went to church with Grandpa Brooks, who had been a Christian. Oddly enough, no one else was saved—until Diehl went to college. An evangelical student witnessed to him, and he believed in Jesus.

After college, he went to graduate school to get his MBA, met Isobel, and the rest of his married life revolved around her—even during those years of separation and divorce.

It was all about what Isobel wanted.

Not about what God wanted.

If Isobel didn’t want to go to church, they’d skip. If Isobel didn’t want to tithe, they didn’t.

After a while, Diehl wondered if Isobel was a Christian. She had insisted she was, and that she believed God would be fine with whatever they did.

Would He, really?

Perhaps Diehl knew better, but he had been so besotted with Isobel that there was no way out for him. Had he been trapped in a snare that he wasn’t even aware of it?

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