At the ripe old age of fourteen, I was smitten by a girl with long, shiny brown hair and a sweet smile. She lived upriver from our place, so I had the joy of riding as her seat mate for eleven miles and thirty some minutes from our school to my bus stop. The ride home each school day was something I really looked forward to.
When she asked if I would like to go to church with her, I decided I would indeed. After several Sundays, I remember the preacher, who was really on a roll, asking if anyone wanted to be saved and blessed by Jesus. My girl friend (I thought of her that way by then) took my hand and led me down the aisle. And so I was saved…from what I was still not too clear about, but if she thought it was a good idea, I did, too.
There I was, a brand new Christian with a pretty girl friend. I felt like I had life by the tail. But to my chagrin, when we next met in church, she was sitting by a young man, and it wasn’t me. And she took to riding the bus as his seatmate, not as mine. So, being fourteen and embarrassed and confused by feminine wiles, I became a Christian and then stopped going to church in just a few short, jarring weeks.
I sort of put that memory away until last year. I was fishing with a couple of old classmates when one of them (I won’t spill the beans as to whom) asked if I remembered her. He said she had asked him to church and had gone to dinner with him a couple of times.
I played it straight, by which I mean I didn’t laugh when he said he was going to church now, but she wouldn’t go out with him anymore. He said he couldn’t figure out what was going on. I wanted to tell him, but I was afraid he might be angry if I told him that here she was, some sixty-four years later, still vamping for Jesus.
Amen
Rod
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