The Amish keep their Sunday Sabbath with great care and commitment. Nothing made, nothing sold, just prayer, simplicity, and community.

The Amish worship Christ and follow his pleas for forgiveness, and for a caring world, and for helping the poor and the vulnerable.

Each Sunday, the community travels by carriage to a different family, where they pray and sing and worship together past lunch. Moise’s children travel in two carriages, they follow one another.

I came into my office after seeding for hours and heard the dogs bark – the signal a carriage is coming – and I heard the most beautiful sound of children singing, on the way home from church,

They were Moise and Barbara’s children, heading home after church.

I think it was an Amish hymn.

The two carriages swept past my window and the sight and sound were so beautiful they almost pulled me out of my study and out into the road. They were gone in a blink but the sound of their voices trailed behind them, echoing across the farm.

The sound was deep and rich. It was a holy sound, a joyous sound, a heartfelt sound, mixing with the clip-clopping of the horses’ hoofs, carried by the wind, bouncing off the hills.

The children were dressed in their bright church clothes, and one of them waved to me, sticking his or her hand out of the carriage. They know I love to take pictures of the carriages, but never of Amish faces.

How important these images have become to me. I see them out my study window almost every day.