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# Sunday evening — October 25
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/sunday-evening-october-25/
- Published: 2026-10-25T23:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T22:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: Sunday Letter

*"God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." — Psalm 46:1*

It is Sunday evening and the week after Earl's birthday has been quiet.

That is what I wanted. Quiet. Not the quiet of avoidance — the quiet of having said the big thing and sitting in the room after. Monday the prayer was ordinary and I reported it because ordinary is worth reporting. Tuesday I walked the fence the way Earl used to walk it, except I noticed the wire and left it and Earl would have come back with pliers. Thursday I stood in a store on Main Street that is not my father's store anymore and remembered the stool and the bell and the smell of sawdust and motor oil and the potbellied stove he lit the first week of October. Friday I sat with the Twenty-Third Psalm and the word green, which is the bravest word in that psalm because the pasture is not green and the psalm says it anyway.

Yesterday I cleaned the house because I was tired of thinking. Today the children learned the prodigal son and Sophie said maybe the father couldn't go, and I have been teaching that story for forty-nine years and a nine-year-old just told me something I had not heard.

Next Sunday is All Saints' Day. Pastor Holloway mentioned it this morning — briefly, the way he mentions things that are coming so the congregation can prepare. I am preparing. I am thinking about who I will name. Earl. Mama. Daddy. Earl's mother, who gave us the wind chime. Maggie's husband, who died a few years before Earl and who I still think about when I hear "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" because it was his favorite hymn. The woman at church's husband, whose name I have learned and who I will say aloud for the first time on Sunday.

A very present help in trouble. I notice the word present. Not a distant help. Not a help that arrives later. Present. Here. In the room. At the table. In the kitchen where the coffee is and the dog is and the list is and the morning is.

Until next Sunday.