When You Sing a Love Song - Staci Stallings Page 0,1
100 on my math test.”
“Did you?” Taylor backed up but still held the girl. “Well, that is amazing. What’d I tell you about just needing to know how to translate math?” Love for the child overflowed from Taylor as her gaze slipped around the precious face.
“I know, and Mom is helping with my times tables. I’m all the way up to my sevens now.”
“Your sevens? Wow.”
“Charlotte,” their father said, and Taylor looked up to find the steel blue eyes and harshly angled face staring them down from across the lobby. It was strange because the man didn’t sound mad or even really annoyed, but his face belied whatever emotion he was actually having. “Let’s go.”
Charlotte dutifully started away from Taylor but suddenly had a change of heart and came back. In a breath her little hand was in Taylor’s. “Come sit with us.”
“Oh, Char. I don’t…”
“No. Please,” Charlotte said. “Please. Pleeease!”
They were making a scene, and Taylor didn’t really know how to make it stop. “Well, okay. But just this once.”
Back in his room, Greg did a quick calculation and realized the Graysons were probably in church. Truth be told, this was not a phone call he felt equal to making. Nelson was right. Paige was probably going to kill him for saying anything to her parents, and while him taking the bullet for his friend was admirable, it was no less daunting.
He dropped onto his bed and shook his head. This was a mess.
Taylor ended up somehow between Charlotte and Emme with their parents on the other side of Emme. She had seen Greg in this position in his family more than once, and it felt strange in a right kind of way. There was no explaining that, so she settled in for the readings and just accepted it as best as she could.
It was three words in that the name hit Taylor. King Nebuchadnezzar. It couldn’t be. However, as she listened even closer, there was no doubt. The king made a golden statue in the desert, and all were required to bow down to it.
Taylor could hardly keep from laughing. Had they ever read this story when she was present before? It was possible, even likely, considering she never paid enough attention to catch more than the ones about Noah, Moses, and Jesus.
“If you do not worship it, you will be immediately thrown into the fire,” the reader read.
Too bad she couldn’t call or text Yoli and tell her about this. At least not now. Yoli would never believe it. Or she might, Taylor wasn’t sure. So much about all of this was still a mystery to her. For all she knew, Yoli might have called them and told them to read this reading today.
She listened even more intently to see if what Yoli had said was true—that the fire burned the ropes but did not harm the men. The king in his rage had the fire turned up to burn seven times hotter than normal, and Taylor smiled wondering if Charlotte could calculate how hot that might be if she knew what the starting x was. So many lessons. So much understanding.
“The furnace was so hot that the flames of the fire killed the soldiers who took up Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, and these three men, firmly tied, fell into the blazing furnace,” the reader said.
Without her doing it, Taylor’s mind went forward to the coming week. It felt like they were being thrown into a fire, a hot, blazing fire of evil that they might not survive. She easily saw Chris, her tormentor, as the king, and the lawyers as the soldiers ringed around the pit of their coming demise. Taylor pulled in a breath, focused now. She needed to know, now more than ever, that Yoli hadn’t gotten the story wrong.
“King Nebuchadnezzar leaped to his feet in amazement and asked his advisers, ‘Weren’t there three men that we tied up and threw into the fire?’ They replied, ‘Certainly, your majesty.’ He said, ‘Behold! I see four men walking around in the fire, unbound and unharmed, and the fourth man looks like the Son of God.’”
The breath left Taylor in whoosh. So it was true. All Yoli had told her was true. The men were thrown into the fire because they would not bow down and worship evil. Their fate was all but certain, except that their refusal to let go of God had in fact brought Him with them into the fire. Unbound and unharmed.