A New Dawn Over Devon
Read A New Dawn Over Devon Online
Authors: Michael Phillips
Tags: #FIC042030, #FIC042000, #FIC026000
© 2001 by Michael R. Phillips
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
Ebook edition created 2015
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meansâfor example, electronic, photocopy, recordingâwithout the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-2957-1
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 coincidental.
Cover illustration © Erin Dertner / Exclusively represented by Applejack Licensing
Prologue: The Secrets of Heathersleigh Hall
4. A Little Girl Named Chelsea
11. Invisible Scratches of Character
12. What
Might
God Do vs. What
Won't
He Do
13. The Most Difficult Forgiveness
14. For God So Loved the World
17. Difficult Thoughts About the Future
18. Crumholtz, Sutclyff, Stonehaugh, & Crumholtz
22. How Far Should Accountability Go?
26. Light Goes Out of the Fountain
28. Hang On to the LifelineâGod Is Good
34. I Want to Be Good Like Daddy Said
35. Secret Garden-Room of the Heart
40. Preservation of the Doctrine
45. The Mother and the Motherless
56. Amanda's Unwelcome Proposal
66. New Resident in Milverscombe
81. New Bank and the Stable Roof
85. The Banker and His Thoughts
86. Excitement in Milverscombe
ReconciliationâThe Highest
Truth
This series of books you have been reading has many themes. But mostly it is a story of reconciliation.
I did not intentionally set out to write about reconciliation. But perhaps because I believe that reconciliation is God's ultimate purpose in the universe, and that such is the ultimate destiny and climax of every human drama, such a theme simply emerged as the Heathersleigh story unfolded.
All stories and all lives must tell the story of reconciliation if they are to accurately reflect the human condition and the highest truth in the universe. That high truth is simply this, that God will make all things right in the end.
However, during our brief sojourn on the earth, we each are called to live out incomplete portions of that great story. Most human lives contain heartbreak. We live in a fallen world. We are sinners who are rebellious and stubborn and independent of heart. Therefore, it is occasionally difficult not to rant against God for the bitterness of our lot. I must confess myself guilty as well. But we only do so because we lose sight of the fact that we occupy but one tiny role in that universal story whose glorious ending is yet to be told.
That ending is reconciliation, restitution, healing. God is good, and I repeat: He will make all things right in the end.
Foundational and intrinsic in reconciliationâbetween ourselves and God, and ourselves and othersâis forgiveness. There can be no
healing without forgiveness. Therefore, any story of reconciliation must of necessity also be a story of forgiveness. God is ever sending his forgiveness in pursuit of us in our waywardness, that he might bring us back into the fold of his eternal familyârestored, forgiven, and whole. For such a purpose did he send his Son Jesus Christ to die and make atonement for our sinsâto send his love and forgiveness into our midst, to reclaim his creation and bring it home.
Accepting this divine forgiveness, however, as important as it is to salvation, is often only the beginning of healing. As we struggle to incorporate forgiveness into our daily lives, learning to forgive
ourselves
is one of the most difficult aspects of the cross to appropriate in a practical way. We may not face exactly the same struggles that confront Amanda Rutherford. Yet if we are honest with ourselves, I think most of us will admit to great difficulty in bringing forgiveness all the way inside.
But Amanda's life demonstrates that it is never too late to accept God's forgiveness, to forgive oneself, and then to pray for a restoration of the years the locusts have eaten.
God is in the business of working personal, private, invisible miracles of healing and restoration. More than any other of his magnificent works in the universe, this is what God
does
:
He heals hearts.
He fixes human brokenness.
He brings sons and daughters back to their fathers.
He restores.
He makes whole.
He sends his forgiveness after his wayward, hurting, broken, lonely children, like a probe of light, to pierce deep into those private regions of anguish and hopelessness that have been covered over for years. He says, “My child . . . I love you, I understand, I not only forgive the world of its sins through my Son, I forgive
you
. Now you can also forgive those who have hurt you, because I forgive them . . . and you can forgive yourself. Rise up and be my childâbe whole, be clean, be restored, and walk in forgiveness.”
It is never too late to have a happy childhood, though the pain may have stolen its memories from you for a time, or your own wrong attitudes may have caused you to lose sight of them along the way. It is never too late, because the probing miracle-working spade of divine forgiveness can go back and retill the soil of memory and
bring new life to long buried flowers within the garden of your soul, whose pleasant fragrance can fill your later years with sweetness no matter what may have come before.
It may surprise you when I say that one of the characters I find most intriguing in this entire series is Bishop Arthur Crompton.
He was originally but a minor character whose role in my author's brain never extended beyond that of a brief walk-on appearance. He wasn't supposed to get under my skin. But he did. And I found my heart growing very tender toward himâsin and false motives and hypocrisy and allâas he aged, and as he began looking inward.
Don't you suppose this is how God looks at usâ
tenderly
, in the midst of our foolishness, our hypocrisy, our selfish motives, and our sinâ
gently speaking
through conscience, through circumstances, through the maturity that the years gradually bring,
quietly waiting
for us to begin asking the right kinds of questions about what our lives have been about. And when we do, he is there as our own loving Father to accept our humble regrets, to listen to the quiet prayers no one else in all the world hears, and do what he can to make sons and daughters of us, even though our years living for self be many, and our years obeying his voice be few.
As I myself grew tender toward Bishop Crompton, it opened a new window of understanding toward God's love for me, and for all men.
Arthur Crompton, therefore, though a minor character, typifies this reconciliatory work of the heavenly Father in the lives of his childrenâa man gone wrong, a man who gave lip service to the service of God for most of his life, but a man whose heart was finally softened in the end by the incessant wooing of his Father's loving, tender, forgiving, restoring voice.
With regard to the criticism certain to result from Timothy Diggorsfeld's discussion with his church leaders, I would emphasize again, as I did in the introduction to
Wild Grows the Heather in Devon
, that Timothy Diggorsfeld's ideas represent a historical point of view commonly held in the late nineteenth century. I hope you will be able to read this as an accurate slice of perspective into the church of one hundred years ago without wrongly assuming an attempt on this author's part to promote a controversial doctrine. I happen to find it interesting to explore the various issues which concerned the Church of that time. Whether or not one personally embraces Diggorsfeld's views is far less important in my opinion
than that we follow his example of not being afraid to ask what our loving Father might do. I hope the same will always be said of me, irrespective of whether I happen to agree with all his conclusions.
If you are interested in my own personal feelings on the matter in more detail, I refer you to the postscript at the end of this book.
Michael Phillips