I want to tell you a story. It’s about Moses and Samuel and Peter and Enos. These four men all lived in a thriving Amish community in western Ohio. It is a very tight knit community where everyone loves everyone. Indeed, it is like a great big family. It is truly beautiful.

But look past the story. Do you see how it is when we all look to each other for affirmation? Do you see the emptiness of following our peers? Have you noticed how we all wait on the next step in life to make us happy? Have you ever thought that those whose example we follow may not be who we think they are? My challenge to each of you is, stop it. Be yourself. Find happiness and contentment now, because time certainly won’t bring it. It is my experience and belief that this can be found in an incredibly deep way in the Creator. Yes, I chose to put this story in the setting of an Amish community. But it happens everywhere. Do these things really happen? Yes, they can and they do. Emma is my classmate.

“Please note that while this is a subject that lays very closely to my heart many of these words are entirely satirical. If you do not know what this word means you may check the dictionary before commenting.”

Moses is 18. He is in the prime of his life. The muscles on his arms…well they look more like stovepipes, you know? Everybody loves him. Especially the girls. Sometimes on Sunday afternoons they will gather in corners giggling and arguing about who they think Moses likes. Of course, they get it all wrong. He is at the point in life where he has to decide if he wants to stay Amish or not. His dad Aaron, thinks he should. But Moses really does wonder how it would feel to drive a big diesel truck. Moses knows full well that if he leaves the Amish he will wind up in hell and that would positively be a bad thing, but lately he has begun doubting whether God is really that strict. It would be an awful shame to not have a bit of fun if you could squeak by with it. He looks at his neighbor Samuel. He can tell that Samuel is truly happy and loves being Amish. Samuel is obviously contented. Moses often thinks that if he got married like Samuel he would feel like a real man. He would feel like he fit in. A sense of belonging. Fulfillment.  And Peter. Moses just lives in awe of preacher Peter. Such a good man. He just makes you want to be Amish. And when he looks at Enos the bishop he feels the deepest reverence. Enos has fearlessly led this community of Amish along the proven and safe road of tradition for decades. Moses thinks Enos will have a special place in heaven.

Samuel is 28. When he was 22 he got married to the only girl he ever loved. Her name is Bertha and she wears round, wire-rimmed glasses. They have 4 cute little children. But he feels empty. He is not sure why. He felt that way when he was Moses’ age but he assumed that if he got married and settled down he would be fulfilled. He thinks maybe once he gets his own dairy farm he will be happier. Especially when Eli and Henner are old enough to help. So life goes on, as Samuel waits to become happy.

Peter is almost 50. He has worked hard all his life and is very successful. He has about a hundred acres of Buckeye soil and most of it he uses to grow grain and hay to feed to his thriving Black Angus herd. The cows are incredible. Their black hair shines like ebony. People say Peter polishes them but they know it’s not true. You can’t catch and polish over 200 beef cows every day. His wife Magdalena is sweet and portly and known clear over to the Indiana line for making the best meatloaf in the state, not to mention her shoo-fly pie tastes as good as what those Lancaster folks make. They have 9 children, the two oldest married, and they have three little cute-as-a-button grand-children. Peter was ordained as a minister five years ago. It’s widely whispered among the men that he will likely be the new bishop once old bishop Enos dies. But deep down Peter just feels so empty. He is a third cousin once removed to Moses and lives a quarter of a mile away as the crow flies. He admires Moses. He often hears Moses sing those sacred old German songs at the top of his lungs when they are both in the back 40. He feels like Moses has a depth and a grip on life that he himself doesn’t have. Samuel also lives in Peter’s church district and Bertha is Magdalena’s niece. Even Samuel, Peter just thinks he is so solid. After all, not once has Samuel had to make a church confession for breaking the rules. Peter’s face still turns red when he remembers all the confessions he had to make in his younger years. Excessive phone use. Hiring taxi drivers when it wasn’t necessary and he thought no one would find out. Trimming his beard. There was that time he drove an English neighbor’s truck. As the now deceased bishop Amos had told him, ”Be sure your sin will find you out.”  And when Peter looks at Enos, he is truly impressed. What a man. What a legacy. That man is obviously walking in the ways of the Lord and is perfectly contented. Peter is the preacher so he must lead by example and it wouldn’t do to show his doubts.  But there are times when he is preaching that the feeling of hypocrisy makes his throat so dry he almost chokes. Maybe it is old age that brings contentment. So Peter pulls down his hat, eats more meatloaf and re-doubles his effort.

Across the creek where Enos lives, times looks like it would go real slow. That’s because Enos goes real slow. He uses a cane these days but he gets around pretty good. He even whacks stray cats with his unvarnished oak cane whenever he gets a chance, never mind he fell in the barnyard last week when he did that. His wife Ella, fussed something awful at him for the way his overcoat looked but he was too embarrassed to say what happened so he made up a story about Harvey, (his son-in-law who took over the farm) having used his jacket to warm up a newly born calf from the muddy field next to the creek. But time goes real fast for Enos. It seems but a moment ago that he was Moses’ age. He still grins at times when he thinks of all the fun he had. He did his share of heroin. Some of the hangovers weren’t that fun. He had been seeing Ella for nearly a year but on the side he kept seeing an old flame Millie, from Holmes County. It was pretty easy to get around and he still misses his 1964 Pontiac GT. It was deep purple and had 325 horse power. It was in 1968 that he was forced to shape up. He had just come back from a night in Holmes County with Millie when Ella told him she was pregnant. Of course he had to sell his car, join the church and get married all in a month or two. He grieved the loss of Millie and the car deeply but he made the best of it. But the worst of it was a week after Ella and him were married, Millie contacted him to say she was pregnant. He told Ella he has to go to Holmes County on business where he was thankfully able to talk her into having an abortion.  He remembers thinking he would feel different when he was married. He would feel good. He would feel mature. He would feel Amish. That didn’t work. So he thought maybe when they have kids.  That didn’t work either.

There is one thing that Enos often wonders about. That would be his secret son Charles. When Enos Junior, their second son was born they hired a maid girl, Emma, from up in Geauga County to help them. Junior was rather sickly and spent weeks in the hospital while Ella faithfully took care of him there. Somehow Enos and Emma really hit it off and spent some nights together. He was glad Ella never caught on. But to his dying day he would never forget Emma’s white, horror-stricken face when she told him she was pregnant. He did his best to talk her into an abortion but she was done listening to him. She left and two weeks later he was relieved to hear that she had run away from home and taken a PanAm flight to London. Enos was blown away and often wondered how she managed that. Ella just couldn’t understand why such a sweet girl would forsake the faith and cried uncontrollably the day they received the news that she was excommunicated and shunned. It seemed like Ella felt they were to blame for Emma’s downfall so she always kept after her family for news. It was Ella that brought back the news that Emma had a son Charles. Later Ella brought the news that Emma got married to an Anglican pastor in London. And many years later that Charles got married, and that he was a professor in some for seminary, whatever that might be. Enos knew that Charles was his son. He wondered what Ella would say. Oh well, no point in telling her now.

After this Enos tried even harder to be a good person. He was so upright and traditional that he won respect far and wide. Becoming a preacher was hard to accept but he saw it as punishment from God to help atone for his sins. He thought it would bring peace and fulfillment. It didn’t. Being ordained a bishop didn’t help either. He loathes himself for it, but doesn’t know what to do. The system obviously works for Moses, and Samuel and Peter, so Enos keeps thinking he just isn’t trying hard enough. Sometimes he wonders if his sins were too great to forgive, but he can’t even say it out loud. But oh, what he wouldn’t give to be 18 again, or to find peace. Sometime when he has nothing else to do, he gets one of his sixty-two grand-sons to drive him over to the cemetery. He looks at the gray concrete markers of his relatives lying under the weeping pines and tries to imagine that he will be there in a few years. That’s when an icy grip clutches his heart so he can hardly breath. He is scared. He feels like he isn’t ready to face God but he just doesn’t know what to do. At night he has fitful dreams. He dreamed he was preaching and saying we are made of dust, when it began to rain. He was horrified to see that the rain completely disintegrated him and reduced him to a pile of fine dust as his hollow soul floated away. On winter days when he sits beside the fireplace sipping his scalding hot, flavorless coffee, and blowing clouds of smoke from his pipe to the white ceiling like Gandalf, he sheds a few tears. Ella thinks it’s because God is touching him. But it’s really just because he is so frustrated with life. He spent his whole life waiting to feel happy and as his steps slow he has this sinking feeling that he will never find it. But he has hope. He always felt like getting to heaven was sort of like shooting a deer when he was hunting. You take a shot. You hit or miss. He hopes that by luck he will hit those pearly gates. Sometimes he thinks of Ella’s second cousin’s nephew Jonas who claims that he knows he will go to heaven. Right up and claimed he met Jesus and talks with him every day. Then he started going to the Baptist church. That’s proof that he doesn’t even know about Jesus. Then Enos prays in German for the lost soul of Jonas. It makes Enos feel a bit better. Enos is a broken old man on the inside, waiting for death. But you would never guess.

Will you become like Enos?