This was the first time Janet had ever used prayer to preach to Dad about his temper and I could see he was getting very restless. He cleared his throat pretty loudly a couple of times. Janet prayed, “Lord we just come to You on Thine own day, this Thy Sabbath, and we ask for Thy forgiveness for all our sins during the week. Especially for the sin of anger. We thank Thee that Thou chastiseth those whom Thou lovest and we pray that we will all harken to Thy voice.”

Dad was staring straight at Mom and the way he looked at her must have gotten through to her somehow because she opened her eyes and looked at him. I could see them both because I was only pretending to have my eyes shut. Dad mouthed the words to Mom, “Shut her up.” Mom looked shocked but then Dad clenched his fist and shook it a little to show he meant it. He thought Mom was the only one who saw him but I was looking through my eyelashes and saw him do it.

Mom touched Janet on the arm. Janet faltered in her prayer and opened her eyes a little and looked at Mom. Since this had never happened before, someone getting a prayer stopped, we all exchanged glances, except Dad, who wouldn’t look at anyone. Rachael, who still had her eyes closed and was waiting for the prayer to end, turned bright red, blushing with embarrassment at the silence.

Then Dad cut off Janet’s prayer before she could start up again. He said, “Amen.” That made Rachael open her eyes and look a question at Mom, who shook her head just enough to let Rachael know not to say anything.

Dad sat up straighter and started to preach his sermon with his Bible open on his knees and his sermon notes on the bed next to him. He looked up once in a while and glanced at each of us the same way he would do at home when we had church in the living room. He preached in a loud voice as if there were hundreds of us there. He preached for an hour and a half about how God was a loving God but a just God nevertheless, so he had chosen some to be saved and some to be “Vessels of Wrath,” lost since before the beginning of the world. And how the Elect who believed could never be lost again no matter what and those predestined to perish, the Unregenerate, could never be saved no matter what.

Then he said that some people called our Calvinist doctrine of predestination “cruel” because of the part about people being chosen by God to be lost, and the part about The Total Inability of Totally Depraved men to come to God, unless He forced them to by His Irresistible Grace.