I’ve been working hard on my memoir these days. Here’s a story about when I got saved during a revival at the Southern Baptist Church in my home town of Homer, Louisiana:
“Are you washed in the blood,
In the soul-cleansing blood of the Lamb?
Are your garments spotless,
Are they white as snow,
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?”
The revival at the
I kept very still, watching him cut his hand through the air to emphasize a point, compelling people with his fierce dark eyes to heed his words. “Don’t you know that Jesus loves you? Don’t you know that he hung on the cross because of your sins? That’s right–yours and mine. We put him there. Don’t you know that he wants you right now, tonight, to say “no” to sin and say “yes” to him? Won’t you do it now? Won’t you just step out of your seat and come forward?” I stared at him, in awe. I thought that he was the most gorgeous man I had ever seen.
I felt that Angel was looking directly at me. This was the last night of the revival, and I knew that the time has come for me to walk the aisle and be saved. The trouble is that I didn’t feel much like a sinner. Oh, I knew I was not perfect, but I tried to be. I tried to never do bad stuff. And then there was this thing about Jesus paying the price. I was clear that I was responsible for whatever sins I did commit and that nobody else could get me off the hook, not even Jesus.
“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, Calling for you and for me.” As the choir sings the familiar words over and over again, pleading for lost sinners to come forward, I felt invisible arms pulling at me. Angel Martinez had come down from the pulpit; he was holding the microphone on a long cord in one hand, the other hand is raised high into the air. “Don’t wait another minute! Say ‘yes’ to Jesus tonight! Won’t you come on now, as the choir sings, come on down the aisle.” My sweaty hands tightened on the hymnal. It is as though the whole congregation was singing to me alone: “Come home, come home, Ye who are weary, come home; Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, Calling, O sinner, come home.”
I was praying, as I did each night, that I would be able to find “God’s will” for my life. That prayer is the scariest, the most dangerous to pray, though, because no telling what God has in mind. I might be called to go to
Her feet move almost without her bidding out into the aisle, and she finds herself walking down to the front of the church, where the regular minister, Brother Skelton, is waiting to receive sinners. Angel keeps on preaching, ever more urgently. He wipes the perspiration off his dark forehead with a large white handkerchief. He twists, he points, his eyes search the room. He keeps asking people to come on down the aisle. “Bless you, Sister, bless you. Yes, the Holy Spirit is working here tonight! Jesus is calling! Won’t you answer Him now? Don’t wait until it’s too late.” The music continues its pleading, “Jesus is tenderly calling today. . . .”
As Brother Skelton clasps her hand and bends forward to hear, she whispers, “I want to join the church.” She feels very small.
“Do you believe that Jesus is your savior?”
“Yes, sort of,” she answers.
“What’s that?” he asks, cupping his hand over his ear and leaning closer. She can see his tiny dark eyes behind his thick, coke-bottle glasses.
“Yes,” she says, feeling more than a little guilty. She doesn’t really understand what it means for Jesus to save her, in spite of having heard two sermons on Sunday and one at Wednesday night prayer meeting, for over a year now. But she likes what she knows of Jesus. He would, she thinks, understand that she is as saved as she can be, at the moment.
The following Sunday night she is baptized, along with the others who were saved during the revival. Most are children younger than herself. They all wait in a line in their long white gowns.
When her turn comes, Brother Skelton lifts his chin and looks at her and stretches out one arm to help her into the baptismal fount. Without her glasses, she can hardly see where she is going. She moves tentatively down the steps and into the water, wanting to get the whole thing over with as soon as possible.
“Marilyn Jane has come asking to be baptized and asking for membership in this church. We rejoice in her decision to follow Jesus.” As she stands there looking down, with her hands folded like some awkward angel, the minister puts one hand on her head and raises his other hand in the air. Then he whispers in her ear, “Don’t be afraid. You won’t fall.”
“Marilyn Jane Fulmer, my sister, because of your profession of faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, I now baptize you . . . .” Stiff and uncertain, but held by the preacher’s arm, she let herself lean backwards and go under the water and then be raised to her feet once more. “In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Dead to sin and raised to walk in newness of life. Amen.”
She is embarrassed. The robe is sticking to her skin. Probably everybody in church can see her underwear, she thinks. Her hair is dripping wet, water is running into her eyes. She sloshes out of the fount, feeling like Mama-dog after a bath, only more naked.
You are supposed to feel different after you are baptized, but she doesn’t at all. “Raised to walk in newness of life.” She doesn’t feel new. She is still the same person, still sad, still feeling lost. But at least now she’s not different from her friends. And now she doesn’t have to feel guilty every time the invitation is given at the end of the church service.
