The Prayer Chest: A Novel about Receiving All of Life's Riches

August Gold; Joel Fotinos

ISBN 10: 1602832994 ISBN 13: 9781602832992

Publisher: Audiogo, 2007

Synopsis

Joseph Hutchinson is a man who knows the reality of tragedy all too well; his life has been filled with misfortune and adversity. A widowed father of two, living on a farm that is about to be taken from him, Joseph embarks on an unexpected journey that will bring him face to face with his greatest fears, and ultimately with his greatest discovery: a mysterious wooden box hidden in his attic over one hundred years earlier. This box, The Prayer Chest, contains the three secrets of prayer that will change his life and the lives of everyone around him. What starts out as a journey to save his children and himself turns into a quest through which he discovers the power to make every prayer come true.

About this title

About the Author

August Gold is a nationally recognized inspirational speaker and frequently keynotes at conferences nationwide. She is also the author the books The Prayer Chest, Prayer Partners, and the award-winning children's book Where Does God Live?, among others.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER 1
Easter Day, 1883

It was a moment filled with hope, the moment Daniel was born.

“Not one Hutchinson man has made it to middle age,” Joseph whispered into the ear of his sleeping newborn son, “—yet.”

Many Hutchinsons married, some started families, all worked the farm, but none made it further than a few years past their twenty–first birthday.

Everyone in the small Long Island town whispered under their breath that it was God’s will. Some shuddered, saying it was a curse or the evil eye. Others insisted it was simply plain, old bad luck.

No explanation made sense because the Hutchinsons were the best kind of people you’d ever want to meet. There was nothing they would not do for you, and everyone in town had a story to tell about a good deed done for them by a Hutchinson. But for all their good deeds, in the end, the Hutchinsons could not keep their boys out of harm’s way.

On the day Daniel was born, all of his ancestors’ unfulfilled dreams shifted onto him. The accumulated hopes of generations were laid upon his innocent shoulders before he had taken the first drink of his mother’s milk. Maybe with him the spell would be broken, and the Hutchinson men would live into old age. Joseph Hutchinson was counting on it.

“You have a lot to live up to, Daniel,” he said rocking his son in his arms, if indeed he was to live at all.

Joseph’s father died at twenty–five years of age. It was a straightforward fall off a horse that should have given him nothing more than some scratches and a good story to tell the children at the noon meal.

“There’s no reason for the fall to have taken his life,” the doctor had said.

But there it was, he was a Hutchinson, and his time had come.

Ten years later, Joseph inherited the farm from his mother, who had worked so hard to keep it afloat by herself that it was probably more the cause of her fatal illness than the “weak heart” the doctor blamed. Plain and simple, she was worn out.

A week after laying his mother to a well–deserved rest, Joseph took over right where she had left off. He quickly learned that he would not be working the farm; the farm would be working him.

“You had better be strong.” Joseph addressed the baby he cradled protectively in his arms, his firstborn son whom he had helped his wife, Miriam, birth twelve hours earlier.

***

Miriam had not recognized the labor pains that grew worse over the course of the afternoon. She shrugged them off as a bellyache from a bowl of oatmeal too hastily eaten at sunrise. After all, the baby wasn’t due for a month.

Moreover, she was preoccupied with her work in the field. Farmwork was exacting; everything was precisely timed in preparation for the harvest. Neither she nor Joseph could afford to take an afternoon off as the land hardly provided enough for them to make it through the year.

It was for this reason that Miriam’s mother had pleaded with her not to marry this boy. Miriam could recite their argument by heart...

“I don’t mean to meddle, sweetheart, but if you ask me—”

“But I haven’t asked you, Momma,” Miriam sighed.

“Honey, Joseph’s prospects are dim,” she lowered her voice lest she be overheard, “and he’s cursed. All the Hutchinson men are. Everyone knows it.”

“I don’t care about everyone.” Miriam was convinced that her love was strong enough to save him from the Hutchinson fate. “Nothing matters but that I love him.”

“I’m sure you do. Joseph is a handsome young man, but marriage is for life.” She knew that death was only a concept to her daughter; Miriam was still a baby when her father died. But she pressed on anyway. “Who will take care of your children should he—” she searched with care for the next words, “pass unexpectedly?”

“The Bible says that love is stronger than death, Momma. Are you saying that the Bible isn’t true?”

“I won’t argue the Bible with you—”

“Then maybe you’ve just forgotten what it is like to be young.” Miriam tried every argument she could think of.

“Don’t put me in the grave just yet. I am not that old.”

“Joseph has dreams, Momma. One day he’s going to be more than a farmer—so much more!”

“I’m all for dreams, Daughter, but it is reality that puts food on the table.”

Miriam stopped arguing and put her whole heart into begging. “Please say yes, Mother.”

All the women in her family had minds of their own, and her daughter was no different. Yet she couldn’t help but smile. For all of Miriam’s timidity, once she set her heart on something, it was already hers. “He seems to be a good man, that Joseph Hutchinson.”

“Oh, Momma, thank you,” she squealed with relief. “From the day I set eyes on him at the county store I knew that he would ask me to marry him.” And she knew, too, that she would say yes.

“It sounds like love...,”Mother said, drifting back to the moment she had laid eyes on the dashing gentleman with the pencil-thin mustache thirty years her senior who had taken her heart. “Love at first sight.”

“Exactly,” Miriam exclaimed. Love at first sight is exactly what it was with Joseph Hutchinson...
Miriam was surprised when her water broke in the cornfield, and by the time she reached the house she did not have the strength to make it up the single flight of stairs to her bed. Other than her feather mattress, the Hutchinson farmhouse had little to offer in the way of comfort. Inside, like the outside, was a study in simplicity and efficiency. There was the front room where they sat and the kitchen (with a cellar beneath it) where they ate, with a stone fireplace covering one entire wall. On the second floor there were two bedrooms spacious enough only for sleeping and dressing, and atop that a cramped attic nestled beneath the steeply pitched roof. Miriam lay down on the cushioned bench in the front room and waited for her husband to come and wash up for the noon meal. She could do no more than wait.

She did not have to wait long. Forty minutes later Joseph sauntered into the kitchen, clenching a raggedy bunch of wildflowers in his fist.

“Miriam,” he called out, “I have a gift for you.” One day he promised himself he’d be able to afford real gifts, not ones stolen from the earth.

Miriam’s mother had tried to prepare her for the pain of childbirth, but nonetheless Miriam cried out with the intensity of it. “I’m here.”

She did not want to be doubled over in front of Joseph, but the contractions were coming faster and were harder to bear.

Though she was only in the next room, her answer sounded weak and far away. He moved toward her voice, and when he saw her chalky white complexion and her lips drained of color, he ran to her side, dropping the flowers and falling to his knees.

“It’s just labor pains, Joseph—” her words cut short by another contraction that shot through her body.

“It can’t be. It’s a full month early,” Joseph explained, as if declaring it made it so. He laid his hands on her swollen belly that felt near about to burst. But what if she was right? He shuddered with an animal fear that all men feel at such a time, when they know they are powerless to stop nature from taking its course. “Miriam, I am telling you it is too early.”

She couldn’t help but laugh—at seventeen, her husband was still a boy. “Early or not, our baby is coming.”

“But, Miriam,” he said, trying to reason with her, “you don’t understand. There is no time to get the midwife. Even if I fly, I won’t return with her in time.”

He stood up and began to pace the length of the front room. “What shall we do?” he asked, his voice cracking with emotion.

“You will have to do what has to be done, Joseph.” She said it just like that, as if birthing a baby was something Joseph had done just the other day.

He looked at her incredulously.

Miriam knew her man; he was capable of rising to the occasion.

Joseph’s panic increased, but he knew she was right.

“There’s something I must do first, and when I come back, I will be your manly midwife.” With something to do he no longer felt powerless.

She smiled at his attempt at humor, envisioning Joseph in an apron doing her bidding.
***

When Miriam first laid eyes on him in the county store, it was she who was wearing the apron, and she doing his bidding. Naturally, she had heard the gossip about the curse, but here was Joseph standing before her just as handsome as he could be. “Can I help you find what you’re looking for?” she asked.

“I think I might’ve already found it,” Joseph responded with more boldness than he knew he possessed. “I’m Joseph Hutchinson,” he said, offering his hand.

She took his hand in both of her own as if it were a prize she had just been awarded at the fair.

Her gentle touch urged him on. “Would you like to take a walk with me on Sunday afternoon?”

“I’ll have to ask permission from my mother.”

“Do you think your mother will like someone like me?” he asked with the confidence of a man twice his age. The last time Joseph was smitten by love he’d lost his senses, but with this girl he seemed to have full dominion over them. “What do you sa...

About this edition

• Publisher: Audiogo
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1602832994
• ISBN 13: 9781602832992
• Binding: Audio CD
• Number of pages: 1