A Place Called Destiny

by Emma Easter

  Soon, everyone joined in singing with him as he raised one song after another. He soon lost his self-consciousness and focused on God’s presence.

  Twenty minutes later, he opened his eyes to end the praise and worship session. He noticed that there were people outside the church walking away who had probably tried to enter without succeeding. An overwhelming sadness came over him. When he’d taken over as pastor of this church, his goal had been to see everyone in Destiny saved and attending church regularly. He had taken that goal very seriously, believing it was God’s will. Even though he was not an extrovert, he had done the rounds of door-to-door evangelism more than a few times. It had worked, as more people had joined the church. But now, it seemed as though everything would soon come to an end. Who liked to stand in church throughout the service, or sit on a cramped pew, or, worse, be sent away at the door?

  He noticed a few eyes on him, people with curious expressions on their faces probably wondering why their pastor was standing in the pulpit without saying a word. He immediately brushed aside his worry, opened his Bible, and began his sermon.

  After the Bible service ended an hour later, Keith went to the back of the church to greet his members as they walked out. He shook hands with some and hugged others. He promised to come visit a few of them during the week and said brief prayers for those who asked.

  An older couple, Kate and Marvin Carpenter, walked up to greet him. Kate, a plump woman with a constant grin on her face, said to him, “That was a lovely sermon, Pastor. You know I pray every day that the Lord will bring you a lovely girl to serve at your side.” She patted him on the shoulder like he was a beloved little boy. “It will happen for you soon,” she said.

  He pushed down his embarrassment and thanked her. It was not the first time she’d said she was praying for a bride for him. At this moment he was both amused and embarrassed, especially as Jenny was standing behind them, smiling.

  The Carpenters finally went on their way and Jenny came up to him. She reached out as usual and gave him a hug. “I will be in the office very early tomorrow,” she said, her arms around him.

  “That’s great,” he casually told her, and patted her back in a brotherly hug.

  When he pulled away from her, she said, “It’s my birthday on Saturday, Pastor Keith. I am having a party. Will you come?”

  Keith nodded. “Of course I will come… though I might not be able to stay for too long. The party will be at your house, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I will be there.”

  Her smile stretched from ear to ear. “Thank you, Keith,” she said.

  He raised his brows slightly, surprised. Not just because she was batting her eyelashes at him, but also because she had called him Keith. She always called him Pastor Keith, never just Keith. Had it been wrong to promise to attend her birthday party?

  He brushed aside his concerns. He was pastor of the church. It was his duty to marry people, attend birthday parties, dedicate babies, and officiate funerals. Thankfully, he’d not done the latter except once, for the oldest man in Destiny at the time. Jenny was harmless and he considered her a friend, having known her for years. There was no reason not to attend her party.

  Jenny was still looking at him, and he nodded at her to let her know she could leave. When she finally did, he went into his office.

  He sat down behind his desk, his mind still on Jenny. It wasn’t that he did not like her, because he did. But he liked her as a sister and nothing more. His parents had died early, but what little he remembered about them was that they were inseparable. They loved each other dearly and that was what he wanted with all his heart. He wanted to share his life with someone who made his heart pound; someone who would leave him tongue-tied when he finally met her; in whose presence the whole world would be painted in vivid colors. He wanted to be deeply in love.

  “Lord, will I ever meet that person?” he asked, and then sighed loudly. Since he wasn’t planning to leave Destiny anytime soon, and there was no one here for him, maybe he was truly destined to be alone.

  He put away his musings and packed up his things. Just before he stood up to leave the church, his cellphone rang. He looked at the screen and saw it was Mary.

  “Hi, Mary,” he said when he clicked the answer button.

  Mary sounded worried. “Are you okay, Keith?”

  “I am,” he answered. “What is wrong? Is it because of the news you gave me about my finances?”

  “No,” she snorted. “You are still in Destiny?”

  “Yes. Where else would I be?”

  “Didn’t you hear about the hurricane heading that way?”

  He sighed wearily. Why wouldn’t she just give up trying to get him to leave Destiny? “No, Mary. The hurricane is not headed this way. They’ve made that clear on all the news channels. You know that. You just want me to leave Destiny.”

  “Still, I’m worried, Keith. You know the weather report can be wrong once in a while.”

  “Mary, I will be fine. Nothing will happen here. We have never had a serious hurricane, and I’m pretty sure if we were in the hurricane’s path, the authorities would let us know.”

  “The authorities don’t know that a place like Destiny exists.”

  “Mary, please,” he said, exasperated.

  “Alright, Keith, I will call you tomorrow to make sure you’re fine.”

  Keith chuckled. “Okay, big sister, I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

  When he finally walked into his house, he felt lonely. It wasn’t a big house. It had two bedrooms, one of which he and Mary had shared when they were growing up, until they were too old to share. Mary had begun to share their grandmother’s room with her, while he’d remained in their old bedroom. It was the room he still slept in now. It had never seemed big to him, but today it did.

  He shook his head and scolded himself. That is what you get for obsessing continuously over finding a spouse. He needed to think less about his marital status and focus more on finding a way to raise money for the new church building.

  He spent the rest of the evening reading, making dinner, and eating alone — the latter magnifying how achingly lonely he felt. He ended the evening watching his favorite TV show. After that, he said a brief prayer, and then lay on his bed, looking up at the ceiling, loneliness smothering him.

  Chapter 5

  Keith woke up to pitch darkness and a horrifying sound. He sat up on his bed, rubbed his eyes, and listened in bewilderment to the noise that sounded like a dozen freight trains heading toward him. He reached for the light switch above him and turned it on. Nothing. The light did not come on. He remembered his conversation with Mary and fear gripped him. Was he in the middle of a hurricane?

  His heart knocked in his chest as he knelt on the bed and drew back the curtains. His eyes widened in astonishment and panic. It was overwhelmingly dark outside and a violent storm was raging. He had never seen or heard anything like it before. It felt like the heavens had been rolled back and the rain was pouring unforgivably on the Earth. Water began to pour in through the window, smashing into his face, and he quickly shut the windows and closed the curtains.

  “Oh my Lord, help us all!” he said. The weather report had stated that the hurricane would not make landfall in Destiny. “Only light showers,” the man on the news had said. But now Destiny was in the middle of a raging storm. The house began to shake, and Keith’s stomach dropped. It felt as though the house was shaking from its foundations and would be uprooted at any moment.

  He swung his legs off the bed and grimaced. His feet were nearly ankle-deep in water. Water had started to seep into his house. He stood up immediately. He had to get his flashlight from the kitchen. If only he had taken Mary more seriously… but then, most people in Destiny had believed they would be safe from the hurricane.

  He remembered his phone was beside him and picked it up. He pressed a random button and felt intense relief as light, though dim, illuminated his surroundings. Using t
he light from the phone, he slowly made his way out of his bedroom, wading through the water that was slowly rising in the house. The noise outside grew louder. He heard what sounded like trees smashing down on the ground and what he hoped were not houses being blown up by the force of the wind.

  He finally got to the kitchen, opened the cabinet, and brought the flashlight out. Thankfully, he had put batteries in it already. When he turned it on, the whole kitchen flooded with light.

  Keith sucked in his breath sharply as he looked around the room. There was water coming in from under the kitchen door and through the window, which had been shattered by a falling tree.

  Dread suddenly filled him as he remembered the people in the town, many of whom lived in houses much smaller than his and built with more flimsy materials. He began to pray fervently that no one would be hurt. He looked at his phone to see if he could call anyone, but as he expected, there was no service.

  The noise outside grew louder and then the kitchen door suddenly blew open, letting in a gust of wind and sheets of rain that nearly pulled Keith out of his home and into the commotion outside. With great effort, he finally managed to shut the door again and then quickly made his way out of the kitchen.

  He heard a horrifying sound outside, like his neighbor’s house being torn apart, and started to pray again that no one would be hurt while he waded through water again and went back into his bedroom. The winds kept howling, and then suddenly, as though God had snapped His fingers at the storm, everything ceased. The awful noise, the pounding rain, and the winds falling silent.

  Keith opened his bedroom door and stepped out. He began to tour the whole house. The other bedroom, his grandmother’s, seemed untouched except for a torn curtain and a hole in the window. He kept going from one part of the house to the other. The kitchen, as he had guessed, was the worst hit. It was almost destroyed. Keith lifted up his voice in thanksgiving to God, because apart from the kitchen, most of the house seemed intact. Except, of course, for the ankle-deep water that had entered the house.

  Twenty minutes later, the waters began to recede, and Keith breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully the other houses in Destiny had been saved as his was. But he couldn’t shake the dread he felt as he fervently prayed for the safety of everyone in town.

  He opened his front door and saw that it was still completely dark outside. Shining his flashlight into the darkness, he gasped and his heart almost stopped. The destruction outside was indescribable. There were plants and wood floating on the water everywhere, as though a giant had scattered them around, as well as felled trees and cable wires.

  He turned to his left and his heart twisted. Just as he had imagined minutes ago, his neighbor’s house had been completely destroyed. He stepped out of his house and waded through the waters outside. He saw his car some distance away. Miraculously, apart from debris scattered across it, it looked undamaged.

  He headed for his neighbor’s house, his fear growing the closer he got. The house was a heap of rubble. Who could survive this? he thought. This neighbor, made up of a family of four — Rob, Trina, and their two kids — had lived in this house for a long time.

  His heart raced with terror. Lord, please, no. And then his fear eased some as he remembered Rob had told him he and his family would be visiting his in-laws this week. Hopefully they had left already.

  He reached the destroyed house and began to yell Rob’s name and then his wife’s. He called out to their two children, a precious eight- and five-year-old who he had grown fond of over the years. He tried to dig through to see if there was anyone in the house, hoping there wasn’t. But it was useless. There was too much debris. He would call them immediately once the phone service was restored just to make sure they were okay.

  People began to appear with their flashlights, wading through the water like he was. He smiled when they came near, recognizing most of them. He spoke to Lucy, who owned the small clothing store a short drive from his house, and Andy the baker. He saw others deep in conversation with each other — Bob the carpenter, and Carol, the owner of the bookstore where he bought books and study materials every week. Fear and worry were etched on all their faces.

  Some more people gathered with flashlights, brightly illuminating the surrounding area. They talked with dread in their voices about the storm and how much damage had been done to the town.

  “The library is gone, pastor,” Lucy said. “I saw the ruins on my way here.”

  Bob said to him, “You’re lucky, Pastor Keith. Your house has very little damage. Many people in Destiny were not so lucky. Thankfully, so far I haven’t heard of any casualties, though I think some people were hurt. Unfortunately, the phone lines are dead, so we can’t call anyone yet to verify.”

  Matt, one of the builders who had been working on the new church before the work stopped, walked up to him with a devastated look on his face. “Pastor Keith, there’s something I need to tell you.”

  Keith looked quizzically at Matt. “What is it?”

  “Unfortunately, the church buildings were destroyed completely.”

  Keith’s heart sank to his feet and he couldn’t speak. Finally, he found his voice and said slowly, “Which church building, Matt?” He braced himself to hear what the answer to his question would be. The pain he felt would not lessen no matter which one had been destroyed, but he hoped with all his heart that it would not be the new church building. Even though it wasn’t finished yet, that building was the future, the old, the past. The old building held a special place in the hearts of everyone in Destiny, but a lot of money, time, and prayers had been sunk into the new building; a lot of his hopes and dreams for the future. If that building had been destroyed… He didn’t even want to consider it.

  Matt was looking at the ground, clearly reluctant to answer Keith’s question.

  “Which building, Matt?” Keith asked again. His heart knocked as he waited for Matt to answer, and yet he did not want to hear what that answer would be.

  Matt lifted his eyes to Keith’s and slowly said, “I am so sorry, Pastor. Both of them are gone.”

  Keith shut his eyes as pain shot through his heart. He felt like gathering Matt’s words from the air and stuffing them back into the young man. But he could not do that. He had to face the reality of what he’d just been told.

  “I’m sorry, Pastor,” Matt said again.

  Keith opened his eyes, turned around, and went back to his house. He felt weak as he opened his door and walked in. Most of the water had seeped out of the house already, and apart from the carpet that would need to be stripped, the house was okay. But that did not assuage the hurt in his soul. He had believed with all his heart that God wanted a new church to be built so the people of the town would have a sanctuary with enough space to worship in. Now, not only was there no money to complete the building, it was completely gone. Everything he had worked on for months, had sunk money into, all the donations from the people of Destiny from the little they had, all was gone.

  “Why, Lord?” he cried out. “I thought you wanted me to build a bigger church for your people. Now we don’t even have the old one to worship in.” Now that both buildings were gone, what would he do? He was a pastor and that was what he was good at; what he had thought he would do for the rest of his life. But now, it felt like he had no future or purpose.

  He swam in doubt and self-pity for a long while and then he heard a still, small voice in his heart. “The church is not a building, Keith. It’s the people that make up my church.”

  Keith’s eyes widened at the words he heard in his heart. He pressed his lips tightly together and then sighed. He felt awful for wallowing in self-pity when his home was still intact. A lot of the people in Destiny had lost their homes. He prayed with everything in him that it was the only thing they had lost.

  “Lord, forgive me,” he said, and then stood up. He strode out of his house with renewed determination. Outside, he gathered together the people still on the street and announced that they we
re all to go out and help as many people as they could with whatever they needed. Surely there would be people who needed help. There weren’t enough emergency personnel in Destiny and more hands would be needed. Rescue teams from out of town would probably not get here for hours, if not days. They were the only help some people in the town might have.

  He firmly put his worries and fears about the church and his future behind him. Everyone separated into groups and he went around the town with two men, Theo and Kyle, helping out where they could, going through the rubble to see if there were people who needed rescuing. Buildings could wait, but people couldn’t. People were the true church of God and they were who Keith knew he needed to concentrate on now. Hopefully everyone in the town was alive, because if they weren’t, he didn’t know how he would handle that.

  As for his future, he would leave it in God’s hands, where it belonged.

  Chapter 6

  Rachel cradled her baby, Emily, in her arms and sighed sadly. Today was the day the elders were going to come to take her to the Restoration House. Pain shot through her heart and she looked down at her daughter. She kissed her little girl and sighed again, tears running down her cheeks. “I am going to miss you, little one,” she said, and then couldn’t contain her agony anymore. “Lord, can’t you do something about this?” she cried out, not caring if anyone could hear her. She had spent only a month with her precious child, and now they were going to be separated. Who knew when she would see her daughter again?

  Mike came and smiled down at her. She looked up at him, despising him. He was actually going to allow her to be separated from her baby. He had promised they would escape somehow, but the weeks had passed and he hadn’t done anything. When she asked him why they were still in Fallow Creek, he’d waved her away without a word.

  “The elders will be here any minute now to take you to the Restoration House, Rachel,” he said. “Have you packed everything you need?”