An Amish Christmas Quilt by Jennifer Kelly; Beckstrand Charlotte; Long Hubbard Page A

off to sleep almost immediately. In his dream, he was in the back workroom of the cabinet shop, sanding the top of a table, when a bright light came through the window. The glare and intensity were so strong that he dropped his sander to shield his eyes, wondering if there’d been some sort of explosion and if he should take cover. Then he sensed a presence.
    Peering between his fingers into the light, Seth thought he could make out a mighty set of wings that nearly filled the room. The being’s face was so compelling and ethereal, yet so powerful that he dared not look directly at it. “Who are you?” he rasped. “What have I done that—are you . . . taking me away from this life? I’m not nearly ready—”
    Fear not.
    While the presence didn’t seem to move its lips, Seth heard the words as plainly as if one of his brothers had spoken them—not that Micah or Aaron would use such archaic language. It occurred to his dream-immersed mind that anyone in the Bible who’d been visited by an angel had heard these exact words—people like the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist’s father, and the shepherds keeping watch over their flocks by night.
    Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife . . .
    Seth sat bolt upright in his bed. He was breathing rapidly, his heart racing in his chest. As the familiar shadows of his bedroom furniture became apparent to him, he realized that he was alone and unharmed. He took stock of what he’d just experienced. Those words he’d heard, Fear not to take unto thee Mary thy wife , had been spoken by an angel of the Lord to Joseph, who was considering what to do after his fiancée, Mary, had revealed she was pregnant.
    Seth let out the breath he’d been holding. While the dream had felt so real , it was merely his imagination again. The words had surely come to him from Christmas sermons and evening devotional readings of the Decembers in his lifetime—nothing more. His mind was just going into overdrive the way it had when he’d fixated on Sol’s misbehavior. He should just let it go—forget the dream and get back to sleep.
    Yet Seth lay awake, still feeling the powerful glow and the impact of his vision. What if it really was an angel of the Lord, coming to you ? The Bible’s full of such visitations, yet we tend to think they don’t happen to ordinary folks in this day and age.
    And why wouldn’t they? another part of his mind challenged.
    Who am I, that an angel of the Lord would visit me ? Seth reasoned. And yet . . . hadn’t every person in the Bible been going along his or her way, unaware of the miracles that would come to pass and the part he or she would play in them, when the angel appeared?
    As such questions and counter-questions filled his thoughts, Seth knew it was useless to try to sleep any more. What if he was going crazy? Should he tell someone about this dream—and to whom could he possibly entrust such a vision? It wasn’t as though he were engaged to Mary Kauffman, and she wasn’t pregnant, so the details didn’t really add up. He was making way too much of a figment of his imagination.
    Maybe he should confide in Bishop Tom . . . or Ben Hooley. Those men would know better how to interpret his dream, or they could counsel him about how to react to it. Or maybe they would gently tell him that angels tended to be phantoms of women’s imaginations—
    Why do you need any affirmation? Why can’t you believe that God still speaks to us today, and that too often we’re just not listening—or we dismiss His message because we don’t want to hear it, or to be bothered with it?
    Seth considered that option. The safer, saner thing would be to keep the dream to himself . . . to see how things worked out with Mary. What would it hurt to play Joseph in the living Nativity? It was just for a few hours on Christmas Eve, after all. It would make Mary happy, and