In This Moment by Karen Kingsbury

Author:Karen Kingsbury
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Howard Books

14

Luke had a pit in the center of his stomach.

The hearing was in less than an hour at the Indianapolis Civil Court. Like he’d told Wendell last Monday, typically he didn’t take a case unless he had a good feeling he could win it. The way he felt about his other current cases. Like the one that involved a teacher at Clear Creek High School who had blown the whistle on a group of students, including his niece Jessie.

Jessie was a sixteen-year-old sophomore at the school, and part of the cheerleading squad. Every week before the football game, she and the other cheerleaders created a paper banner to encourage the football team. The banner always included a Bible verse.

Now the teacher had contacted the school district, and the school district had ordered Jessie and the cheerleaders to stop making mention of the Bible verse on the signs. Never do it again, they were told.

Well, that was a violation of their religious freedoms, and Luke didn’t mind saying so. He had written a letter to the school district, and he fully expected the situation to settle out of court. The school district would not want a public battle, which they would certainly lose because it didn’t line up with the three-part test.

But that was not the case with Wendell Quinn.

The good news—which he’d repeatedly assured Wendell about—was this: There would be no jail time for Wendell. “At least at this point, people don’t get sent to jail for reading the Bible or praying in a public place,” he had told Wendell when they met last week at Hamilton High. “But you could lose your job at any point.”

Wendell understood that. He told Luke how James Black had promised to fire him if Wendell continued the club. But so far the district had kept him on.

Wendell had smiled. “The apostle Paul said to consider it pure joy whenever we face trials of many kinds.”

If that was Wendell’s role model, it was working. Luke couldn’t believe how joyful the man was, how sure that somehow God was going to give them a miracle. Luke only wished he felt the same way. As a lawyer, he’d seen several cases go his way when they shouldn’t have. But even then he had been mostly sure he would win.

This case was the opposite. He was almost certain they would lose. Something even Reagan and Luke’s father had recently expressed concern about. But truly, if Luke lost this case, he’d be okay. The religious freedom incidents would keep coming, and he would keep getting better at defending them. Barring some landmark decision against religious freedom from the Supreme Court, Luke would have a job in this area.

But Wendell . . . Wendell could be out of work tomorrow. The situation was that serious.

Luke surveyed the courtroom. Like most it was plain, with yellowy wood-paneled walls and two rows of chairs, six to a row, for the times when a jury was needed. The spectator section held another

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