Up in front Grandpa and Grandma were feeling the same joy. "The storm sure bloomed the place up," Grandpa said.
Grandma sighed in deep contentment. "Takes a wrathful storm to make us 'preciate bonny weather, don't it?"
As the Beebe family took their seats in the rapidly filling church, the men of the Coast Guard filed into the front rows.
"Paul!" Grandpa whispered loud enough for the whole congregation to hear. "There's Lieutenant Lipham. He's the one rescued you the day you snuck over to Assateague and your boat drifted away."
The lieutenant turned around, smiling broadly. Paul's cheeks reddened.
Maureen had secretly brought the birth announcements to church so that she and Paul could fill in the hour and date, everything except the name. But they never even opened the package. From almost the beginning of the sermon, they leaned forward, listening with every fiber.
"The earth is the Lord's," the deep voice of the preacher intoned. "He hath founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the floods."
And just by listening to the resounding voice, Paul and Maureen could see God commanding Noah to build the ark, big and flat-bottomed, and they could see the flood waters rising and the animals marching in, two by two.
"God is in the rescue business," the preacher's words rolled out, "and every believer is a member of His rescue force. Today we pay special tribute to the United States Coast Guard. In the sight of God, men who do not know the harbor of His love are like men lost at sea, grasping for something or someone to save them. The Church is God's rescue force, just as the Coast Guard is the government's rescue force."
The preacher half-closed his eyes. "On Thursday night," he said, "when the last of the refugees staying here in our church had been taken to their homes or to the mainland, I walked down the streets and saw the havoc and the emptiness of our once lovely island. Yet no Chincoteaguer had lost his life, and I paused to thank God.