The Bare Pantry Hymn

Clara Montrose stood in her kitchen on a January morning in 1934, staring at three nearly empty shelves. The drought had taken the wheat. The blight had taken the garden. Her husband Earl had lost his job at the grain elevator when it shut down. The milk cow had gone dry two weeks ago.

She opened every cupboard door — a half bag of flour, a tin of lard, a jar of pickled beets her mother had sent from Topeka.

Her daughter Louise, barely seven, padded into the kitchen in bare feet. "Mama, what's for breakfast?"

Clara looked at those shelves the way Habakkuk must have looked at empty fig trees and barren vineyards — cataloging everything that was gone. Then she did something Louise would remember for the rest of her life. She wiped her hands on her apron, closed her eyes, and began to sing: Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father.