Whispers of the Heart by Ruth Scofield Page B

She wondered who had composed it.
    Breathing deeply, she forgot her uncertainties and went to unload her things.

Chapter Eight
    T he early layout of the wall worked well enough, but Autumn spent almost an hour her first morning measuring and arranging and blocking exactly how each scene would appear. She wanted it to be perfect. It took her more than four days to complete the final loose sketches. She’d refine each as she was ready to paint it, she decided.
    Stretching her muscles, she climbed down from the twelve-foot ladder she’d been using to view the overall effect. Her leg felt bruised where she’d leaned into an aluminum step for too long.
    Pastor David had apparently forgotten to find her a scaffold for the high work; it sure would be easier on her if she had one. Less tiring, and she could work faster. She hadn’t taken time to remind him.
    Outside the windows, she saw a landscaping truck pull up to park behind her car. That side street usually wasn’t a busy one; she realized she’d stayed later than usual this morning.
    Ten after ten, her watch showed her. Much later. She’d been caught up in finishing the first phase details and hadn’t noticed how late it was. True to his promise, Pastor David had kept her hall quiet and off-limits to whatever work crews were on-site.
    She’d need that scaffold very soon. It would be better to let the pastor know now, she decided.
    She could brave staying a few minutes longer. The midmorning traffic lull would give her time to get home without bringing on a panic—and it wasn’t driving that caused her usual problem, anyway, or motor traffic.
    Pastor David wasn’t in his office. Wandering down the next hall, she pushed open a side door into the newer sanctuary. Immediately, she heard his voice, gentle yet strong.
    Preaching on a Thursday morning? Or was he only practicing a sermon?
    When she moved farther into the huge auditorium, though, she spotted nine women sitting on the first and second rows in the side section. Nine women huddled in this one wing of the huge structure, half of whom were elderly, two young, one holding a baby, and three women of between young and middle age.
    The tiny gathering seemed dwarfed in the huge structure.
    A couple of the women looked to Autumn like street people, dingily dressed and wearing bulky clothes. Two wore fashionable dress and makeup, as though taking time out from business. The in-betweens simply looked comfortable with a splash of lipstick and simple, but neatly clean clothes.
    Faces of all hues stared at her momentarily, but quickly returned to the pastor. They had come to hear him talk. Or teach.
    David, wearing faded jeans, sat casually facing them on a bench pulled up to make the gathering less formal. His open Bible lay on his knee. When he spotted her, he waved her to a seat and kept on talking.
    She slipped into the third-row pew, just behind the young woman with the baby sleeping in her lap. Nothing about the gathering felt intimidating.
    â€œSo imagine this boy with the loaves and fishes,” David was saying, “who had gone to hear Jesus speak and taken his lunch with him. I can just picture his surprise when the disciples asked him to share it, can’t you? ‘What?’ he might have asked. He had enough for only one. Yet he gave his food to the disciples. Did he expect to be part of a miracle? You know he didn’t.
    â€œNow we know by the scripture,” he continued, glancing at the various women with a direct gaze, “that the disciples didn’t expect much of a miracle right at this time, either. They were too busy grumbling at Jesus to close His teaching for the day so everyone could go into town to find something to eat and a place to sleep that night.”
    Caught up in the story, Autumn vaguely remembered hearing it when she and Spring, at ten, went to a summer Bible school. The account of one of Jesus’s many miracles had always