The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club)

She pleads silently, Never grow old, never die, knowing it’s too much to ask. My rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

This is a part of me. Like the goldsmith’s wife whose face is scarred by smallpox, or the potter’s son whose foot is turned. This is me. This is who I am.”

All water is connected, and her world is limitless. He stands at the limits of his. On her sixteenth birthday, she hears a commotion

She pleads silently, Never grow old, never die, knowing it’s too much to ask. My rock, my fortress, my deliverer.

In that sheltered, sacred nook between his arm and chest, she’s at peace. “Forgive me, Lord.” She thought

But such memories are woven from gossamer threads; time eats holes in the fabric, and these she must darn with myth and fable.

It comes free with a splash, a pink jewel, a miracle that something so beautiful can emerge from water so murky.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” Cowper says, stepping forward and smiling, “we are merely renting these bodies of ours. You came into this world on an in breath. You will exit on an out breath. Hence, we say that someone has . . . ? ‘Expired’!”

The chaos and hurt in God’s world are unfathomable mysteries, yet the Bible shows her that there is order beneath. As her father would say, “Faith is to know the pattern is there, even though none is visible.”