each a good sermon like he always does, and it
wouldn't hurt even a school teacher to hear a good sermon maybe once a
week.

8

Two or three times while our minister was preaching a very interesting
sermon which a boy could understand, my thoughts flew away like they
were birds with wings, and for quite a while I didn't even know I was
in church on account of I was far away in my thoughts. As you maybe
know, our minister was Sylvia's father, and Sylvia was a very polite,
kinda pretty girl with a good singing voice and always had her hair
looking very neat and pretty with a ribbon or something on it like
girls wear in their hair, and she was Big Jim's favorite girl. I was
sitting beside Big Jim, and Dragonfly was beside me, with the rest of
the Sugar Creek Gang in different places in the church, our parents
not letting us all sit together if they could help it, on account of
the minister got more attention himself if we sat in different
places--not that any of us tried to be mischievous in church--in fact,
we always had to try not to be.

Right that second Sylvia's kind-voiced pop was talking about how
wonderful it was, when you knew you had done something wrong, and were
sorry for it, you could pray right straight to the Lord Himself and
confess your sins right straight to Him, and He would make your heart
clean.... "The blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, will cleanse you
from all sin, _right that very minute_," Sylvia's pop said, and it
seemed like a wonderful thing to believe, and made me feel good all
inside of me....

And then almost right away, he went on to say, quoting another verse
from the Bible, "Come now, let us reason together, saith the Lord,
though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though
they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." I had learned that
verse by heart once in a summer Bible school. And all of a sudden, my
thoughts were flying away, and I was remembering Poetry's pet lamb,
which you know about if you've read _The Sugar Creek Gang in School_,
whose wool was NOT white one morning when the lamb fell down in a mud
puddle, and I was remembering Poetry's funny poetry which was,

"_Poetry had a little lamb,
Its fleece a dirty black,
The only place
its wool was white
Was high up on its back_"....

Also I was at that very minute reminded of another poem which I had
seen yesterday, which was written on yellow paper and which had been
pinned w