“It does, yes,” replied Brother Fowles, slowly. “And yet I wonder, who translated this? During my years here in the Congo I’ve heard so many errors of translation, even quite comical ones. So you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical, Brother Price. Sometimes I ask myself: what if those stripes are not wounds at all, but something else? He was a prison guard; maybe he wore a striped shirt, like a referee. Did Paul and Silas do his laundry for him, as an act of humility? Or perhaps the meaning is more metaphorical: Did Paul and Silas reconcile the man’s doubts? Did they listen to his divided way of feeling about this new religion they were springing upon him all of a sudden?”

The little girl sitting on the floor with Ruth May said something in their language. Ruth May whispered, “Donald Duck and Snow White, they got married.”

Father stepped over the children and pulled up a chair, which he sat in backwards as he loves to do whenever he has a good Christian argument. He crossed his arms over the chair back and smirked his disapproval at Brother Fowles. “Sir, I offer you my condolences. Personally I’ve never been troubled by any such difficulties with interpreting God’s word.”

“Indeed, I see that,” Brother Fowles said. “But I assure you it is no trouble to me. It can be quite a grand way to pass an afternoon, really. Take for example your Romans, chapter ten. Let’s go back to that. The American Translation, if you prefer. A little farther on we find this promise: ‘If the first handful of dough is consecrated, the whole mass is, and if the root of a tree is consecrated, so are its branches. If some of the branches have been broken off, and you who were only a wild olive shoot have been grafted in, and made to share the richness of the olive’s root, you must not look down upon the branches. Remember that you do not support the root; the root supports you.’“

Father kind of sat there blinking, what with all the roots and shoots.

But old Santa’s eyes just twinkled; he was having a ball. “Brother Price,” he said, “don’t you sometimes think about this, as you share the food of your Congolese brethren and gladden your heart with their songs? Do you get the notion we are the branch that’s grafted on here, sharing in the richness of these African roots?”

Father replied, “You might look to verse twenty-eight there, sir. ‘From the point of view of the good news they are treated as enemies of God.’“

“Sure, and it continues: ‘but from the point of view of God’s choice, they are dear to him because of their forefathers.”

“Don’t be a fool, man!” Father cried. “That verse refers to the children of Israel.”

“Maybe so. But the image of the olive tree is a nice one, don’t you think?”

Father just squinted at him, like here was one tree he’d like to make into firewood.

Brother Fowles didn’t get the least bit steamed up, however. He said, “I’m a plain fool for the nature images in the Bible, Brother Price. That fond of it. I find it all so handy here, among these people who have such an intelligence and the great feeling for the living world around them.They’re very humble in their debts to nature. Do you know the hymn of the rain for the seed yams, Brother Price?”

“Hymns to their pagan gods and false idols? I’m afraid I haven’t got the time for dabbling in that kind of thing.”

“Well, you’re that busy I’m sure. But it’s interesting, just the same. In keeping with what you were quoting there in your Romans, chapter twelve.You remember the third verse, do you not?”

Father answered with his teeth showing: “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought...”

“... For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office, so we, being many, are one body in Christ ...”

“In Christ!” Father shouted, as if to say, “Bingo!”

“And every one, members one of another,” Brother Fowles went on to quote. “Having then gifts that differ according to the grace that is given to us, whether prophecy, or ministry, or he that teacheth. He that giveth, let him do it with simplicity... He that sheweth mercy, with cheerfulness. Let love be without dissimulation. Be kindly affectioned to one another with brotherly love.”

“Chapter twelve. Verse ten. Thank you, sir” Father was plainly ready to call a halt to this battle of the Bible verses. I’d bet he’d like to of given Brother Fowles The Verse to copy out for punishment. But then the old man would just stand there and rattle it off from memory with a few extra images of nature thrown in for free.