From Penniless to Prosperous
by Melanie Hemry
Jessie Johnson pulled himself up off the sagging sofa in the trailer house where he’d crashed since losing his job.
Aug. 4, 1998, he figured, was as good a day to die as any.
Denton, Texas, as good a place as any.
Homeless. Jobless. Hopeless. He couldn’t think of a single thing to live for. The ounce of cocaine he’d taken should do the trick.
Staggering outside, he sat on the steps of the deck, feeling his heart pump like a jackhammer. No breeze dispelled the August heat. It clung, cloying like cheap perfume in a crowded room. The strangling heat made it hard to get a deep breath. Or maybe that was the cocaine.
“Do you believe in God?”
Jessie opened his eyes against the glaring sun.
It was his friend’s girlfriend, high on something.
“Sure,” Jessie said, “that tree is my god. The moon is my god. Everything around me is my god.”
“Those aren’t God!” she insisted. “Jesus Christ is the only way!”
She carried on, preaching Jesus.
It was not a subject Jessie wanted to hear. God and Jesus wanted nothing to do with him. Of course, that wasn’t big news. Why should God care what happened to him if his own parents hated him enough to abuse him? If it was possible to literally beat the hell out of a kid, he should have been awarded sainthood. He’d tried to commit suicide twice as a child. Where his family began, his sister’s boyfriends had finished. One family member started giving him marijuana when he was 8. Maybe it was supposed to ease the pain.
It hadn’t.
That same year, a neighbor had taken him to church. Sitting in the cool sanctuary and listening to beautiful music, hope had sprung to life. Could God help him?
Jessie still remembered that day. The pastor said something like, “Don’t you know that people who do wrong won’t get to heaven?” He talked about people who were sexually immoral. Greedy. Drunk. It probably included drugs too, but he didn’t remember.
Still, the message had been clear to Jessie’s 8-year-old mind.
He was doomed to hell.
* * * * * continues on p. 14 * * * * *
BVOV : 13
