Jacob Have I Loved Religion Quotes

"Captain. That's against the commandments."

He took another futile swing before he answered. "Call, I know those blasted commandments as well as you do, and there is not one word in them about how to speak to tomcats. Now stop trying to play preacher and help me catch that damn cat and let's get him out of here."

Call was too shocked now to do anything but obey. He ran out after the cat. I started laughing. For some reason, the Captain had at last said something I thought was funny. I wasn't just giggling either. I was belly laughing. He looked at me and grinned. "Nice to hear you laugh, Miss Wheeze," he said.

"You're right!" I screeched through my laughter. "There's not—I bet there's not one word in the whole blasted Bible on how to speak to cats."

He began to laugh, too. Just sat down on the kitchen stool, the broom across his knees, and laughed. Why was it so funny? Was it because it was so wonderful to discover something on this island that was free—something unproscribed by God, Moses, or the Methodist Conference? We could talk to cats any way we pleased. (8.25-29)

"Ohhhh, Lord," Grandma cried out. "Why must the righteous suffer?"

"We're all safe, Momma," my father said. "We're all safe. Nobody's suffering.

She began to cry then, bawling out like a frightened child. My parents looked at each other in consternation. I was angry. What right had she, a grown woman, who had lived through many storms, to carry on like that?

Then the Captain got up and went to kneel beside her chair. "It's all right, Louise," he said, as though he were indeed talking to a child. "A storm's a fearsome thing." When he said that I remembered the tale I'd heard about him cutting down his father's mast. Was it possible that a man so calm had once been so terrified? "Would you like me to read to you?" he asked. "While it's still quiet?"

She didn't answer. But he got up and, taking the Bible from the bedside table, pulled his chair in close to the candle. As he was flipping through for the place, Grandma looked up. "Tain't fitting a heathen should read the word of God," she said.

"Hush, Momma!" I had never heard my father speak so sharply to her before. But she did hush, and the Captain began to read. (10.51-56)

Since the day we were born, twins like Jacob and Esau, the younger had ruled the older. Did anyone ever say Esau and Jacob?

"Jacob have I loved ..." Suddenly my stomach flipped. Who was speaking? I couldn't remember the passage. Was it Isaac, the father of the twins? No, even the Bible said that Isaac had favored Esau. Rebecca, the mother, perhaps? It was her conniving that helped Jacob steal the blessing from his brother. Rebecca—I had hated her from childhood, but somehow I knew that these were not her words […]

I took my Bible from our little crate bookcase, and bringing it over to the light, looked up the passage Grandma had cited. Romans, the ninth chapter and the thirteenth verse. The speaker was God.

I was shaking all over as I closed the book and got back under the covers. There was, then, no use struggling or even trying. It was God himself who hated me. And without cause. "Therefore," verse eighteen had gone on to rub it in, "hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth." God had chosen to hate me. And if my heart was hard, that was his doing as well. (15.7-8, 11-12)