Prairie Storm by Catherine Palmer

Author:Catherine Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook
ISBN: 9781414362878
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2010-01-28T16:00:00+00:00

Elijah studied the vast prairie that stretched out on either side of the road and wondered how it compared to China. He didn’t know much about that foreign land, only that it was about as far from Kansas as a man could get.

A part of him really wanted to be there.

As the wagon rattled down the rutted trail between seas of bluestem, broom sedge, and switchgrass, Eli searched the horizon for the shingled roof of the little Hope church. He was headed back there to be a pastor again. Not a missionary. Not a traveling evangelist. Just the pastor of a little flock. Lily had warned him that meant weddings, funerals, planned-out sermons, and deacons’ meetings.

Oh, Lord, are you sure you wouldn’t rather send me to China? he prayed. Surely they don’t have committees in China. Or deacons. Or cemetery funds.

Eli reached down and picked a stem of purple coneflower from the side of the road and twirled it between his thumb and fore finger. The pale petals fanned out from the dark brown, prickly eye. In a few weeks, the petals would fall and the central black pod would cast its seeds across the fertile prairie sod.

Cast seeds, Elijah, the voice in his soul whispered. Spread my Word across the prairie. The harvest truly is great, but the laborers are few.

“Yes, Lord,” he murmured in response.

“What?” Lily Nolan straightened on the seat beside him. “Did you say something, Elijah?”

Embarrassed, he shook his head. “Just praying.”

“I guess I was dozing. It’s such a hot afternoon.”

With Mother Margaret at her son’s house in Topeka and the baby sleeping in the back of the wagon, Lily and Elijah had been sitting for hours in total silence. He felt uncomfortable alone with her. She was too pretty. She smelled too sweet. His thoughts kept meandering off the main trail and wandering around the notion of what it would feel like to take Lily Nolan in his arms and kiss her pink lips. He wanted to touch her hair too, all that long gold silk. And he wouldn’t mind the feel of her soft cheek against his neck or her—

“What were you praying about?” Lily asked.

Eli blanched. Had he been praying?

“Being the pastor in Hope,” he said, forcing his thoughts back onto the main trail. “I reckon it’s going to be hard work.”

“You’ll be tending lambs among wolves,” she said with quiet assurance. “That’s a terrifying responsibility.”

Eli shifted the reins from one hand to the other. No, he wanted to tell her. He’d been a pastor in Hope just long enough to realize it would be the tedium of the job that oppressed him. The same people with the same petty arguments and the same complaints day after day. They’d be pulling on him, tracking him down, sucking him dry. The grind of it all would do him in.

Nothing like being a missionary in China—or even a roving evangelist. In Hope there would be no unknown trails to explore, no hordes of unrepentant souls to gather in, no rugged wildernesses and savage tribes to tame.

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