Heathersleigh Homecoming

by Michael Phillips

  Both Amanda and Sister Luane gasped in shock. Neither had expected the sudden tragedy, and Hope uttered the startling words so abruptly and in such a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Killed?” repeated Luane. “You . . . you must have been—what about you . . . were you not there at the time?”

  “No, I was there. He hid me in a cellar just moments before the attack came.”

  She went on to tell of the ordeal in more detail.

  “And your . . .” Amanda said.

  “Yes, and I lost my baby.”

  Sister Hope smiled. “She would have been just about your age, Amanda,” she added softly.

  “I am so sorry,” said Amanda, recovering from the sudden and unexpected change in the story. She reached out and placed a hand on Hope’s arm.

  It was a simple gesture, but of great significance in that realm where eternal battles are won and lost in the tiny exchanges which pass during the course of a day mostly unnoticed. The tender heart of a compassionate woman was slowly coming alive within Amanda’s soul. She had reached out to comfort another living being in her sorrow, the very woman who had given refuge and comfort to her own aloneness. In so doing had she set a new course for her own future.

  “What happened then?” Amanda asked.

  “Eventually I returned to London,” answered Hope.

  “But how did you escape from the Maoris?” asked Luane.

  “I was in the cellar for two days,” Hope replied, “terrified and alone. Finally I summoned the courage to break my way out. Since Klaus had not returned, I feared the worst. I heard him putting a chest or something over the trapdoor after he made me go inside. It took all my strength, standing on the ladder, to dislodge it. I think it was the struggle to do so that sent me into premature labor.”

  “And when you . . .”

  “What met my eyes when I climbed out was so ghastly, I shall never forget it.”

  ————

  As the young pregnant missionary woman finally managed to push up the trapdoor, what remained of the chest above it crashed over.

  Slowly she lifted the door and climbed up into the light of day. But she did not find herself in her former home as she expected, but in the smoldering ruins of a dream now gone up in smoke.

  Mercifully, she did not immediately see her husband’s body, dead now two days.

  How she managed to survive those next horrifying hours she hardly knew. The natives were already feeling pangs of remorse for what they had done, and for a time their wrath was spent.

  There was still food and water in the cellar, by which Hope kept alive. Some of the native women had been watching to see if she might make an appearance. When they saw her, they approached and took her weeping in their arms. They knew well enough that she was in a woman’s way, and even the witch doctor was not prepared to murder a white woman in her condition.

  The village women assisted her as she gave birth to her child. But the little girl did not survive the night.

  The women of the tribe kept her safe until the British troops arrived, who had been called in to put down the uprising—which by then had spread throughout the region—and could take her back to Europe.

  In England once again, Hope had to rethink everything about her faith, her whole basis for conversion, and whether she really believed God was good at all. This was no everyday trial of minor discouragement. This was heartbreak and tragedy the likes of which altogether broke the faith of many.

  How could she believe in God’s goodness after what had happened?

  Over and over, she asked herself what kind of God had she given her life to.

  Why should she continue to serve him? How could she tell people of God’s love? Why should she tell people to dedicate themselves to him when he had taken from her everything she held dear? How could she be a missionary ever again?

  Such questions began a serious period of reevaluation. If her own faith was wavering, what basis could she possibly have to think of continuing with the mission? By now the great Charles Spurgeon had gone on to be with the Lord he had served. Hope had no one to whom she felt she could go to help her resolve what was becoming a crisis of faith.

  Thus she had to go to her heavenly Father himself and wrestle through her future at his throne, and there alone, in her own private closet of prayer.

  Eventually the questions went even deeper than her own missionary future. How could she even continue to consider herself a Christian at all after this? Did she even want to be?

  ————

  “It is impossible to describe,” Hope went on, “what it was like for me to sink to such a state. In one way, perhaps, it was even a blacker time of despair than my time at the orphanage. Because now the very thing I thought had delivered me from that earlier hopelessness was destroyed. Inside I felt something slowly ebbing from me, as if the water of life was trickling away and would eventually be gone, and that I would just shrivel up and wither into a pile of dust. For so long I had clung to the hope that someday life would get better. And then I thought that hope had been answered in my faith and my marriage.

  “Now it was all dashed away. I felt the hope that had sustained me all my life dying in my heart. As it did I almost felt like I was dying along with it. Finally I had to admit defeat, admit that I could hold out no longer, admit that life was cruel and unjust. I came to a point as his friends counseled Job to do, where the only course left was to curse God and die. There was no such thing as hope. Life is cruel . . . and then you die. My name was meaningless . . . it had always been meaningless.”

  30

  Whence Originates Goodness . . . and Why?

  Sister Hope sighed deeply. Obviously the memory was difficult, as Sister Gretchen had known it would be.

  “Thankfully,” she continued after a moment, “God had not quite given up on me yet, though I had nearly given up on him. I was out walking one day, in a busy part of London, just walking and thinking and wondering what was to become of me now, not even praying anymore . . . just thinking absently and despondently. There in the midst of the crowd pressing about me I looked down on the walk and saw a little boy sitting on the edge of the gutter, his poor little face in his hands, crying. He could not have been more than four or five.

  “I paused and stooped down. His little red cheeks were dirty and stained with the tracks of his tears. He cast up at me, with his big wide brown trusting eyes, a look such as pierced my heart with a hundred daggers of compassion. Then he whimpered, ‘I’ve lost my mum.’ And in that instant I loved that little boy with a new and different love than I had ever felt.

  “I stretched my arms around him as if he had been an angel, as perhaps he was, and slowly picked him up in my arms, kissing his tear-streaked cheek, and telling him that I would help him find his mother. And we did find her, too, more quickly than would seem possible. For no sooner had I begun to make my way with him to the policeman at the next corner than a shriek met my ears from a young woman speaking urgently to the man in the uniform. She glanced toward us with such a look of relief. The next instant the boy was scrambling down out of my arms and dashing off toward her.

  “I resumed my walk, as you may imagine, strangely warmed by the incident. Gradually my thoughts returned to their previous channels. But now I found my brain debating with itself. If life was cruel and meaningless, and no such thing as hope existed, then where had originated the love I had felt for that little boy?

  “Such a thing as love must exist . . . somewhere. I had felt it, been filled with it even in the midst of my own dejection.

  “Furthermore, what I had done now struck me as odd. Was there truly no such thing as hope? Then why did I not say to the boy, ‘You stupid little urchin, why do you sit there crying and looking at me with those big brown eyes! Don’t you know there is no hope? You will never see your mother again!’”

  The sisters began to laugh to hear Sister Hope speak so, knowing that such were the last words she would ever speak to anyone.

&nbs
p; “But no,” she went on, “I kissed him and took him in my arms, and told him I would help find his mum. Even in the midst of my own despair, I had given that little boy hope.

  “The realization shocked me. Where had it come from, this act of kindness I had shown? Though only moments before I had been saying to myself that life was cruel and hard and unjust and meaningless, from within my own heart had sprung an act of goodness, not meanness . . . of kindness, not cruelty . . . of hope, not despair. I did not think myself a worthy person as a result. Just the opposite, in fact. During those bleak days I felt anything but good. I felt like a wretch. Yet I could not deny that a moment of goodness and kindness had sprung forth from within me. And I now found myself questioning what could have been the origin of it. Why had a spark of goodness come out of the heart of a miserable, doubting, self-absorbed wretch? Where had it come from . . . and why?

  “The next thought that came nearly stopped me in my tracks, right there on that busy London street. If goodness existed within me, I said to myself, in the very midst of my despondency . . . then there must be a larger Goodness from which it had come. There had to be something bigger which truly was Good, some larger Love which had birthed the love I felt for that little boy.

  “Then finally came the idea which began to turn everything around. What if, I thought, God’s goodness and God’s love don’t necessarily remove the cruelty and suffering and injustice and pain from the world?

  “What if they were never intended to?

  “What if goodness still exists even though life is hard and cruel, and even though people suffer? What if God’s goodness wasn’t meant to take away the world’s suffering, but was meant to provide a refuge in the midst of it?

  “It was such a shocking idea. It made me realize that I had been expecting life to be good and pleasant and happy because I was a Christian. Now I began to wonder if I had been wrong.

  “If these realizations were true, then the only thing that God’s goodness would eliminate . . . was hopelessness. Because if God is good, there can always be hope . . . though there may continue to be pain and suffering and injustice and cruelty and heartbreak.

  “These thoughts did not end my doubts all at once. The struggles and long walks and tears continued. But before long I was talking over my doubts with God again, and asking him to give me answers and trying to listen to what he might say. Finally I had to accept—not had to, really . . . I did accept because I believe it is true with every fiber of my being . . . I believe the Gospels teach nothing else than this truth—but what I came to accept was simply this . . . that God is good.”

  A long silence followed.

  “Only that and nothing more,” Sister Hope added, “—God is good.

  “It does not mean that things in my life will always be good . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that my life will be an easy one . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that my prayers will always be answered in the way I would like . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that tragedy may not visit me . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that the human struggle is not difficult . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that there will not always be suffering in the world . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that there will not be times when I am so overcome by sadness at memories in my life that I must go outside and find a place to be alone and just cry for an hour . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that there will not continue to be many who will deny his very existence because of the pain and seeming unfairness of life they see all around them . . . but that God is good. It does not mean that there will not always be many questions for which we have no answers . . . but that God is good.

  “God’s goodness is the larger truth over the whole, the largest truth overspreading all of life—over cruelty, over suffering, over tragedy, over doubts, over despair, over broken relationships, over sin itself. Why God’s goodness doesn’t eliminate such things, I don’t know. Perhaps we shall ask him one day. For some reason our tiny human minds cannot comprehend, God has allowed suffering in his universe. I don’t know why. You and I might have done it differently. But then we are not God, so it is impossible for us to see all the way into the depths of the matter. We therefore cannot perceive the many ways in which the very suffering we rail against may in fact contribute to the overall eternal benefit and growth of God’s universe and its created beings.

  “We cannot see to the bottom of such things. So we foolish creatures look at the world’s suffering and say God must not exist, or if he does he must not care, or must be a cruel God. Yet I suspect that when we are one day able to see all the way into it, we will see that Goodness and Love lie at the root even of all the suffering that was ever borne by this fallen humanity of which we are part. The devil is presently having his brief illusion of triumph, but God’s goodness will reign in the end.”

  She paused, then added, “In short, the circumstances of life do not always seem to be good, but God himself is always good. Thus, though there may not always be happiness, there is always hope. That must be the basis for our faith—not that God gives us a happy life.”

  Again there was a pause.

  “Once I had resolved the issue of God’s goodness in the midst of my own personal loss—which was no easy matter, I assure you—and that my faith could not be based on what had happened to me, but in who God himself was, I then had another huge issue to resolve—my future. Gradually the Lord began to show me that being a missionary did not necessarily mean in service only overseas. There were many kinds of ‘missions.’

  “My first thought was that he was preparing me to serve him in London. I assumed that if I decided to continue on as a missionary, I would have to remain at the mission board office the rest of my life.

  “‘Oh, Lord,’ I cried out in prayer many nights, ‘please not London . . . anywhere but London!’

  “It was a terrific struggle, almost as great as the other. You cannot imagine how deeply I disliked the city. But eventually I had to relinquish my resistance to the idea. I knew he was asking me to lay it down. I knew I had to tell him I was willing to serve him wherever he wanted to place me . . . even right there where I was.

  “I will never forget the night I finally fell on my knees and said, ‘I give in, Lord. I will serve you anywhere . . . even in London.’ It was no happy decision. I wept after saying the words. It was the greatest sacrifice of obedience I have ever had to make.

  “And yet I knew God was good. My faith was now based on who God was, in his character and his goodness, not in what I expected or even hoped he would do for me. He was good, therefore I could trust him to do good in all things. So I could relinquish my future into his hands—not because he was obligated to make me happy . . . but because he is good.

  “A week later a letter came. It was from Klaus’s mother, saying that she had fallen ill. She had no one else to turn to but me. Her husband was gone. Klaus was their only child and now he was gone too.

  “So I left London for Switzerland. I came right here to Wengen, in fact to this very house, where Klaus’s mother had lived alone since the death of Mr. Guinarde.”

  Sister Hope glanced toward Sister Luane with a smile.

  “So you see,” she said, “there is really nothing more to it than that. The chalet belonged to my husband’s parents . . . and here I am.”

  Again she paused and smiled, this time nostalgically.

  “I moved in with Madame Guinarde and cared for her until her death about two years later. We became very close. I truly came to appreciate her as a mother, the only mother I ever knew. On her deathbed she said to me, ‘My dear Hope, I never had a daughter when I was young. But in these last brief years, you have been so dear to me that I feel you were always my daughter—’”

  Sister Hope’s voice broke as she said the words. She began quietly to cry as she continued.

  “Can you imagine what those words felt like to one like me,” she went on, “one who had never had a mother at all
? They pierced straight into my heart. I wept and wept as she was speaking. I knew she was dying, and that I was losing the only mother I had. As traumatic as it had been in the jungle, I actually think losing Madame Guinarde was more difficult. It touched such deep places within me. Losing a mother was almost worse than losing a husband and a baby.

  “‘This beautiful chalet of my husband’s will be yours now, Hope,’ Madame Guinarde said to me. ‘We were happy here . . . put it to good use. Make people happy here, dear Hope. My son loved you, and you have been so kind to me. Thank you, my dear daughter. Make people happy. Give them hope, as your name says. Give them reason to live.’

  “Later that same night she was gone.”

  By now most of the sisters, as well as Amanda, were softly crying along with Sister Hope.

  “You have had to suffer so much heartache,” said Amanda through her tears and sniffles. “I can hardly bear it for you.”

  Hope smiled. “You, dear Amanda—thank you,” she said. “I know you mean it, and the fact that you care so deeply means a great deal to me. But the Lord enables us to bear up under our sorrows. It is his means for making us strong, for turning us into his daughters. Therefore, I give him thanks for what I have experienced.”

  “How can you say such a thing? It has been so awful, so heart wrenching.”

  “I can say it, my dear, because God is good. I finally did learn that most basic of all life’s lessons. He is good, he is loving, and he is trustworthy. These are the deepest truths of the universe. These are the ingredients of the soil out of which has grown, and every day continues to grow, our salvation.”

  “Is not the cross the basis of our salvation?” asked Sister Luane.

  “I would say rather,” answered Sister Hope, “that the cross is evidence of our salvation.”

  “I don’t think I understand what you mean.”

  “I sometimes envision the cross as a living tree,” Hope replied, “with living roots stretching deep down below into the depths of the rich black earth of God’s own nature, which is love, goodness, and trustworthiness. I see the very shape of the cross stretching up out of that earth into the air and sunshine of life, reaching toward the sun because it is alive, with arms outstretched in praise for the soil beneath it in which it is planted, and in praise for the Light above which makes all the universe radiantly and eternally alive.