The Land of Decoration

paper. He made dinner. He washed up. Then he got the look he gets when he’s about to make something and went into the garage. In a while I heard sawing, and I went into the middle room and closed the door.

My heart was banging as I opened the glass doors. This was a sin, but a sin in service to a greater good, so in the grand scheme of things it could be overlooked.

The first book I took down was called The Gentile Times Have Ended. It was full of charts and numbers, and I put it to the side. The next book was called Gog of Magog: The Arch Deceiver. That didn’t talk about miracles either. I took down another. A pile began to form beside me on the carpet. I could still hear Father sawing. Every so often there was the sound of the blocks toppling to the floor. My heart was beating so loudly that the room was vibrating.

I was beginning to think I would never find anything about miracles, when I came to a book with a dark- green jacket and a bush, pale green and burning, pressed into the cover. It was called Gifts in Men.

Inside, there were pictures of people walking on water and the dead coming to life. A man was praying in the belly of a fish. Another in a fiery furnace. Another in a lion’s den. The book spoke of gifts and signs, of messengers and callings. Miracles, it said, were God’s calling card, His credentials, seals of divine mission. It said: For where miracles are, there certainly God is. I sat cross-legged on the floor.

What is possible with God is seldom possible with men, the book said. From times of old, faithful ones have known this. God knows no order of difficulty. There are no limits to His ability to intervene on behalf of His loyal ones. Age is no barrier to the outworking of God’s purpose. Remember the Midianite maiden who far from home afforded the cure of Naaman’s leprosy and the child Samuel who heard God’s voice night after night in the temple, warning of the downfall of Eli’s household. There is no knowing whom God will deem a suitable vehicle for the manifestation of His powers, nor how He will choose to reveal them.

My heart was still hammering hard but my blood was singing now and I felt very light, as if I was hovering a few inches above the carpet. The greatest period of miraculous activity was when Christ walked the earth, I read, but the Lord’s Day will also afford limitless possibilities for God’s expression of His Kingship. Christians should be on the watch for signs in the sun, moon, and stars and other supernatural indications that the end is at hand. This will be a time when to discerning eyes God’s hand will be seen at work in the lives of His servants.

God has been known to intervene in lives on more than one occasion when the supplicant is earnest and real faith has been demonstrated. It should be remembered that to skeptics acts of God will always be attributed to earthly sources. This should not deter faithful ones from taking heart. They are lights shining in the darkness, and the darkness is afraid of light. I held the book to my chest and closed my eyes.

* * *

I DON’T KNOW how long I sat there, but after a while I realized I couldn’t hear sawing anymore. I opened one eye. A pair of legs were standing in front of me. I opened the other eye. The legs were attached to Father’s boots. Father’s voice said: “What are you doing?”

“Reading,” I said, and stood up.

Father said: “How many times have I told you to ask before getting these books out?” He bent down and began piling the books one on top of the other. He opened the cupboard doors and slotted them back into place, thwack, thwack, thwack.

“Father.”

Thwack.

“Father.”

Thwack.

My breath caught me and hurt inside. “Father, it says here that we can still see miracles today.”

He sighed sharply. “What is all this miracle nonsense?”

I bit my lip hard, then I said: “I think something happened on Sunday. I mean last night. I think the snow was a miracle.”

Father looked at me, then he took the book and blew on the pages. He shut it with a snap and put it back with the others.

I said: “The book said we may meet with disbelief, that we shouldn’t be downhearted! It says most people don’t realize they have seen a sign—”

“Sign?”

Father shut the cupboard, took me by the elbow, brought me outside, and closed the door. He said: “I’m getting just a bit tired of this. It snowed because it does sometimes. Even here. Even in October. Now, that’s an end to it.”

My heart was making it difficult to breathe. “I heard a voice as well!” I said suddenly. “Like Samuel in the temple. It told me what to do.”

“This is making me cross now, Judith. You know how serious it is to lie.”

“I’m not lying!” I said. “I don’t know where the voice came from but I heard it!”

Father’s face was flushed and his eyes were very black. He said: “Judith, you’re always imagining this or that. You live in a complete fantasy world.”

“Well, this is real,” I said.

Father looked at me for a moment. Then he said in a low voice: “I don’t want to hear any more about this, d’you understand?” and he went into the kitchen and the door shut behind him. I looked at the door for a long time. Then I went upstairs and sat on the floor in my room and I looked at the Land of Decoration.

And though I was sad to begin with because Father didn’t believe me, after a while I was glad I hadn’t said any more, because it would be best to wait until I had more proof and for that I would do a test, to find out whether the snow was a coincidence. “And then we shall see,” I said to no one in particular.

“We certainly shall,” no one said back.

Why Seeing Really Is Believing

PEOPLE DON’T BELIEVE in very much. They don’t believe politicians and they don’t believe ads and they don’t believe things written on packets of food in the grocery store. Lots of them don’t believe in God either. Father says it’s because science has explained so many things that people think they should be able to know how everything happens before they believe it, but I think there is another reason.

I think people don’t believe things because they are afraid. Believing something means you could be wrong, and if you’re wrong you can get hurt. For instance, I thought I could climb the whole way round my room without touching the floor, and it hurt when I fell down. All the important things, like whether someone loves you or something will turn out right, aren’t certain, so we try to believe them, whereas all the things you don’t have to wonder about, like gravity and magnetism and the fact that women are different from men, you can bet your life on but you don’t have to.

I used to worry when Father said we shouldn’t believe in God blindly because the type of evidence for God is either too much (the apostle Paul says it is “inexcusable”) or not enough (Richard Dawkins, a scientist the Brothers like to argue with, says it is “superstitious bosh”). I used to worry it meant that I was thinking for myself. But believing isn’t just about evidence, and here’s why.

People take the same bit of evidence and jump to different conclusions. Mr. Williams, the headmaster, said I was “extremely bright” for my age, which is why I am a year younger than everyone else in my class and Mr. Davies says I have the best grasp of language he has ever seen in a ten-year-old. But Neil Lewis says I am a “spastic.” Mr. Davies told us about fossils and he said: “This is how living things evolved,” but Father says: “Mutations never survive.” Mr. Davies thinks religion is a mirage. He and Father had a debate at the last parents’ evening. Mr. Davies said I should be taught the facts about how the world came to be, and Father said those were only the facts as Mr. Davies sees them.