Land of the Brave and the Free (The Journals of Corrie Belle Hollister Book #7)

Michael Phillips

Description

Pursued as a Union spy inside Confederate territory, Corrie's desperate attempt to escape on horseback is cut short by the sound of gunfire and the excruciating pain in her back from a bullet. Mercifully, the fear and pain are quickly overtaken by darkness as the reins slip through her fingers. When Corrie slowly awakens from weeks of unconsciousness, the first face she sees belongs to Christopher Braxton, the young man who found her nearly dead on the roadside and carried her to safety. As she is nursed back to health, Corrie finds that the physical damage to her body is not nearly as difficult to treat as her lingering amnesia. Beginning with the single letter in her pocket, Corrie and Christopher struggle to piece together the limited clues to Corrie's past.

Informations

• Publié par: Baker Publishing Group
• Date de parution: 02 janvier 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781493413492
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 1993 by Michael Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2018
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4934-1349-2
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To Anke Peters,
one of the most special of God’s women it has been my privilege and honor to know, with prayers for the deepening of His character and being within you all the years of your life. In you I have seen a heart that has always hungered for truth and the things of God. It makes me proud to know you, for you are truly a “daughter of grace.”
I love you.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Part One
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
Part Two
12. Me Again!
13. First Pieces of Common Ground
14. What to Do . . . Next?
15. A Name from the Past
16. Acquaintance Renewed
17. Divine Appointments
18. The Ride Back to the Farm
19. Derrick and Christopher
20. More Mature but with More Doubts
21. Libby Prison
22. Sacrifice
23. Two Lonely Days
24. Christopher’s Plan
25. “I’m No Southerner”
26. One Lone Sentry
27. Dinner With General Grant
28. Back in Washington
29. Honored Beyond Words
30. A Surprise Letter
31. A Different Kind of Silence
32. The End . . . at Last
33. Appomattox Court House
34. Returnings
35. Good Friday, 1865
36. Hollow Words of Parting
37. Assassination!
38. Returnings, Departings
39. The Convent
40. The Letter
41. Tidings . . . Of Joy!
42. Two Faces
43. Correspondence
44. A Frantic Telegram
45. Thoughts of Belonging
46. The Town of My Childhood
47. The Old Broken Window
48. Memories from Long Ago
49. Agatha Belle Hollister
50. Under the Oak
51. To Belong Is to Trust the Father
52. Emptying My Hands
53. Toward the Setting Sun
54. Dear Christopher
55. Trying to Put the War in Perspective
56. Final Goodbyes
57. Going Home!
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Fiction by Michael Phillips
Back Ads
Back Cover
Part One
Chapter 1

I t’s been sixteen days now.
Sometimes I feel that my prayers go unheard. There is no change. The peaceful face still sleeps, only sleeps. I continue to sit here, gazing upon those features, wondering who this is—who and why and how did it happen . . . what does it mean? And I continue to pray.
But I grow fainthearted. I wonder if God does truly mean to restore and heal and make alive again, or is this the time when he has stepped across, as he does in every life, into the tide of man’s affairs to take another soul of his making unto himself?
If indeed this is such a moment, then my prayers are in opposition to his will and plan. Do I pray in opposition to his sovereignty?
Such difficult questions always seem to plague me—whether it be about an unknown face with sleeping countenance, or about mysteries in your word or uncertainties concerning your work among men and those who call themselves your people. No answers are quick to come.
And still the compelling in my heart grows stronger and stronger concerning this one whose being is presently in my hands, that pray I must. Surely this precious life about which I yet know nothing—surely it is not time for it to end.
My thoughts, as they so often do, beckoned me outside to the hills and fields and streams and trees I so dearly love. I grabbed up my New Testament, knowing that Mrs. Timms would watch over my charge well, and went out.
It was early afternoon. The sun was high and I wondered where its warmth had gone from the summer of such a few short months ago.
I left the house and took the path eastward, then abandoned it altogether. I jumped the fence bordering it, struck out across the wide pasture where some cows were grazing at the far end, working my way up the slight incline to the thin wood about half a mile away. Notwithstanding the early November chill that hinted at snows and storms and fierce blasts of hail even now beginning their slow journeys down from the arctic, the day was a glorious one to be out. The thin breeze that kicked up every now and then foreshadowed almost more by odor than by feel the approaching winter, adding a tingling sensation in both nose and skin to the warmth of the sun’s rays that was purely and deliciously pleasant. The great vault of blue overhead was unbroken save by a few slender wisps of white from the chimneys of some of the surrounding farms, but even these had diffused into nothingness before reaching a third of the way up against the horizon. Straight above me was nothing but the infinitude of distance, stretching into regions of space unknown by man, into the very heart of God himself.
I threw myself down in the springy, sun-warmed and sun-softened grass, breathed in deeply with pleasure, and let my eyes drift into the unknowable blue depth above me.
“Lord God,” I whispered, “where are you up there? Where is your home in the heavens that people are so fond of talking about in the pious tones of their prayers, when I feel you so vitally alive in the tiny place within my own being I call my heart? Do they know you there too, Lord? Or do they look up and speak of you with such lofty grandeur because they have not yet learned to look for you in the still quiet places within their own beings?”
All about me was quiet except for an occasional distant baritone low of a contentedly feeding cow. God’s voice is never easy to hear, never so readily discernible to the inner ears of my being as the sounds of his creatures are to the outer ears of my head. I often wonder why he made it so—that if he wants us to heed every whisper of his voice, why that voice is so soft to our human senses. But perhaps what he wants more even than our hearing him is our obeying him when we do not hear him. If his voice were too loud and his commands too unmistakable, perhaps the requirement upon our own wills would not be so great, and our obedience would thus be less.
Again, I found myself lost in obscure regions of God’s unknowable purposes. And one thing I did know, that I mustn’t lose sight of my purpose, which was clear enough, nor tarry too long before returning to it. I jumped up and continued my way toward the wood.
As I walked, my thoughts returned, as they often did, to reflecting on this terrible war and its claim on human life, on the untold suffering it has caused . . . and once again, as how many times before, to the question which haunts me: Did I make the right decision? Was my stand one that God desired me to take? Or was I then, and am I still wrong and out of step with the rest of God’s people? If God did indeed speak with his still small voice into my mind and thoughts, into my heart and convictions, then why did no one understand? Why was their denunciation of me so unequivocal and vicious simply because I—one of their own, a comrade, a fellow member in the brotherhood of God’s family—spoke out the truth I felt compelled to voice? If I was indeed wrong, as they say, why did they not take me tenderly to their bosom and, in gentlest love, seek to help me discover my error? If perchance I was right, why did they not humble themselves to hear my words, and themselves seek truth beyond their own selfish interests? But to cast me adrift with their heartless and cruel accusations, without so much as an inlet wherein to tether the leaking vessel of my faith, full of doubt and uncertain of the calling I was so sure of only a few short years before . . .
“God, O God—preserve me at all costs from bitterness and unforgiveness! Do not let me sink, my Father. Though I hear you not and see you not, do not leave me! Keep my soul safe and my mind clear and my heart uncluttered with hurts from the past. Lead me, O God, into your truth!”
Is truth too distant a commodity for God’s people to care about? Why do one’s own interests and one’s own safety and one’s own views and one’s own future take preeminence over what is true ? Surely among God’s people it should not be so. Yet then why do I feel so alone and seemingly at odds with those millions of others who make up what we call the body of Christ? And what of those more millions on the other side of the fateful line between North and South who also consider themselves right? How two governments can feel it their duty to war against each other is not so difficult for me to understand. But how God’s people on both sides can feel it their sacred calling to support this killing—that I will never understand. That it is right I cannot accept. That the truth of God is thus represented, I will not believe!
I sat down among the trees, took out my Testament, and opened it to the well-worn and familiar passage. I scarcely needed to read it, for the words were so deeply ingrained in my consciousness. Yet I never tired of letting the soothing words of the Master flow over me as a cool stream, my spirit uttering as I read the inarticulate longing of my deepest being that the Father of Jesus would answer, and answer mightily, the magnificent prayer of his son.
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through thy truth: thy word i