If you don’t floor the gas, you won’t make it. It’s a matter of trust. Trust in your tires, trust in the hill, trust in the gravel. Is it packed tight enough? Never mind, no choice. If you waver, you roll right back down the hill and onto the road, where someone is driving 70 miles per hour to get to the highway back to Jackson.
Union Paradise Church sits atop a hill off a two-lane road near I-55 in Vaughan, MS. Most of the homes along the desolate strip are hidden behind trees, only the occasional years-old campaign sign left to break through the green carpet.
Once the gravel plume subsided, I put the car in park next to the church, where I was meeting the preacher. A sheriff’s car pulled in behind me.
“For your safety and for mine,” the preacher told me. To be fair, I had cold-called him. The sheriff didn’t respond when I asked how he was doing.
The church itself hasn’t seen an in-person service in nearly two years, but they hope to soon. Their membership has steadily fallen year after year, and it’s a good Sunday if 10 people log onto the zoom call. But even as the cemetery, consistently decorated, grows and the pews fade under the summer sun, they still hold out hope.
“God always finds a way. And he will this time. We just have to see what that way looks like.”
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