Chapter 29

Yirmeyah

It was the first Sunday in August that we made our proposal to the church. I had to help Cassie up the steps to the platform. It was difficult for her, but she insisted. She wanted to do everything that she physically could, and difficulty was no obstacle. What she simply couldn't do she didn't even attempt, but something that just required that I lift her left side up a few steps she refused to back down from. Whatever else might be wrong with my wife, she had sand.

Once she was with me behind the pulpit, her breathing calming down from the exertion, I addressed the church. "As y'all know, Cassie's been hunting for something that she can do to further the Lord's work. With her disability there's not much she can do physically. She's told me the things she's thought of and had to discard because they take two good hands, or two good legs. One thing that she can do, and she's found is necessary, is running a book ministry.

"Y'all have been very gracious to us over these three years. You've paid me more than I ever expected or would have asked for. You leased the parsonage and are still paying the rent on it, just so we'll have a place to live. You've helped out as you could with the medical bills, and Cassie and I are more grateful for that than we can ever tell you.

"But not every church can afford that kind of thing. This church couldn't, not when I came. It's only been the growth over these three years that's enabled y'all to carry these burdens, and I know just how strained our bank account has been. There are churches which can barely afford to pay a pastor. I've known churches where if the pastor didn't have outside work, he'd have had to quit pastoring. I guess half-time and quarter-time churches are a thing of the past. But I've known plenty of churches that have never had a full-time pastor in 100 years or more of existence. And Cassie's got an idea about that."

Cassie was leaning on the pulpit with her right hip, though her belly took some of the weight too. It freed her hands to gesture – both of them. She used them both as she spoke, although the weak left hand didn't coordinate well with the strong right one. "What I'd like to do is put together a ministry to supply books at little or no cost to pastors who can't afford to buy them. I never knew, until Yirmeyah told me, that some pastors can't afford a library. But it turns out that his library is mostly a gift from his father and grandfather, and if he'd had to buy the books he has he could never have done it, for even the ones that are still in print would have cost more than he's ever been able to afford. Yirmeyah's library is the result of three generations of accumulation – first his grandfather, and then his father, and then him, all adding to it a little at a time.

"But what about pastors who don't have fathers who can give away their libraries? They have no way to put together the kind of materials they need to be more effective preachers and teachers and counselors. They have nowhere to turn.

"I want us to give them somewhere to turn, a place where they can request books and get them for, at most, the cost of postage. Now that requires money on the giving end, and as Yirmeyah said, you have given sacrificially already to support us when we could not have made it otherwise. I'm going to ask you, now, to give to support others. We've benefited from your love and generosity more than we really understand, and now we want to spread your love, which is God's love through you, to others. We've looked into the matter at some length, and we know about how much it'll take to put together a supply of valuable books, in inexpensive editions, and advertise our services, and mail out books. It won't be cheap, but we would make the church the guardians of the ministry and the church would govern the funds, and our goal is to have every single dime that comes in, go directly toward the ministry. Neither Yirmeyah or I want any additional money for this – though Yirmeyah insists that I tell you this is my idea and that he's supporting me, rather than the other way around, as though I need credit for anything, which I definitely do not. The only outlay we envision is to buy the books, and to store them, and to send them out.

"What we're asking now, this morning, is that you consider this idea. We'll pass out information about it, what we're thinking of and what we expect it would cost and how we'd like to do it. And next month – not this month, but in September, so you'll have plenty of time to think it over – we'll ask for your input as to whether we can or ought to begin this ministry. I have to tell you that I believe it's God's work for me. I believe that God gave me this disability so that I'd take my eyes off of other things, and turn my heart toward His work, and that this is the work that He wants me to do. But I also believe that when God has a work in mind He calls His people to it, and that if this really is what He wants for me to do He'll put it in your hearts as people of God and as a church to do it too. And we'll hear from you what you've heard from God, in September."

I had been proud of my wife for a long time. But I've never been prouder of her than I was at that moment.

Cassie

The church came through, more generously than I had ever hoped. And someone in the church, I still don't know who, must have made a phone call or two, for we got a large anonymous donation from someone who had never been at Hopeful, and on top of the donation a promise of money every month. We started small, yes, but not as small as I had expected we would, and with a lot less cramp in our finances than I'd thought we might have. At Yirmeyah's insistence we called it the Cassie Hudson Book Fund, but at my insistence the letterhead we bought just had the initials – CHBF. He might want to trumpet me to the skies and praise me to the heavens, but I knew myself better than that and knew that I deserved none of the glory, and refused to promote myself anymore than I had to. It was Jesus I wanted to glorify, not a young woman barely mature enough to be a woman.