Page 27 of Sing with Me

If it wasn’t her turn to bring breakfast to Sunday School, Skye would sit somewhere else, but the back seat was closest to the food table. That way she could get up every now and then to tidy up the table without interrupting class.

The seats were in a semicircle facing the board, so Skye couldn’t see Diehl’s face. Just as well. She told herself to keep him in the professional compartment—the work zone. She tried to be friendly with him to make him feel at ease in Brinley’s beach house. From what she had heard, he wasn’t one to talk to strangers much. Skye considered herself and Marlo as strangers in Diehl’s vacation home.

It made her wonder why he had wiped a tear from her face on Friday afternoon. Why had he done that?

Matt was talking! Skye scolded herself for letting her mind wander.

“Today, we’re going to talk about praying for one another,” Matt said. “The Bible says in 1 Thessalonians 5:17 that we are to ‘pray without ceasing.’ There’s time involved in that. But what kind of time? As you turn to our text for the day in 2 Timothy 1:3, I’m going to tell you a story.”

A chorus of “Uh oh!” rose up the room.

Skye liked listening to Matt teach. He was funny and kept everyone awake with his tales of woe on the road, searching for lost pieces of Americana that he might add to his antique store. Somehow he always found a biblical lesson in his interesting everyday life.

It made Skye wonder if her life was interesting enough to make Bible lessons out of it. Hopefully good lessons and not tragic ones.

However, back to Matt, one never knew what story he was going to bring up. It seemed like no one at church was immune to being the subject of Matt’s stories. And he knew almost everyone at church.

“I don’t want to pick on her but…” Matt stepped to the side of the lectern. “We go way back, so I don’t think she minds.”

She.

Skye waited for the victim—uh, subject.

“I’ve known Skye Langston since kindergarten.”

Oh no! Don’t pick on me.

Not today. Not with Diehl in the room.

Skye held her breath. She wanted to impress her new client. She hadn’t burned his dinner yet.

“I knew she was going to be a chef someday because at five years old, she challenged me to eat fried ants.” Matt couldn’t contain his laughter.

Not that story!

Skye rolled her eyes.

Diehl glanced back at her, a grin on his face.

He was cute from this distance.

Exactly. If she kept her distance, all would be well.

“Let’s just say that her grand idea was to barbecue an ant in the sun under a magnifying glass and feed it to me, the tester.”

“You mean taster,” someone said.

“Well, tester, taster. Homophones, both.” Matt chuckled. “At the very last minute, holding the magnifier in her hands, she started to cry.”

Skye looked down at her Bible. It had been so long ago that she hardly remembered the episode. Mom and Dad were still alive then. The wreck that had taken their lives happened years later when she and Sebastian were in high school.

She drew a deep breath, trying not to recall that awful night.

“You know what she did?” Matt asked. “She decided to set the ant free. And she fed me her PBJ lunch instead.”

“Generous,” someone said.

“That’s right. Skye is someone I know who is very generous. She goes out of her way to help everyone, and if you let her, she will cook for the whole town. But we won’t let her do that, will we? We all need to chip in.” Matt looked around the room. “As a community, when we share the burden of helping one another, being extra kind to one another, we are doing good work as unto the Lord. Likewise, when we all pray for one another, the blessings of God flows to all.”

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