My Savior

I went with my friend Lois to the annual Christmas concert at the First Baptist Church in Garland. Church members put on quite a production. An 85-voice choir raised their voices for over an hour in a series of rousing choruses to back up soloists and a pageant with Mary and Joseph and a real, live baby who leaned against Mary’s shoulder and quietly looked around without a whimper until the end of his 10 minute appearance on stage.

Someone remarked to me that when she came to Texas, she thought there was only one First Baptist, the one in downtown Dallas, at that time the premier Baptist church in the World. Baptist churches are everywhere, small ones on neighborhood street corners and cathedral-size edifices on every major avenue. Since people moved to the suburbs, every community has a First Baptist Church– First Baptist Church of Mesquite, First Baptist Church of Rockwall, First Baptist Church of Garland – plus others with names like Faith Baptist Church, Gatewood Baptist Church, and Bobtown Road Baptist Church. There are no saints in Baptist churches.

Like all Baptists, the emphasis is on “accepting Jesus as your personal savior.” In the middle of singing Christmas carols, the preacher came to the pulpit and gave a short sermon, which began with asking each of us if we could remember a single event which changed our life.

I couldn’t help it. The big event that I remembered was the night in 1986 when I walked into a bar in Downers Grove, Illinois, and met John Durkalski. He was short, old (68), bald-headed, and pot bellied, and I felt about him the way Thomas Jefferson must have felt when Sally Hemings arrived in Paris, a beautiful, nubile 16-year-old who looked like his deceased wife. (Martha Jefferson and Sally were half-sisters.)

The Baptist preacher was telling us that when Jesus came into our hearts, he would change our lives entirely. John Durkalski changed mine. He became my second husband. Although he died in 1992, he still takes care of me financially. But even more important, at a time when I was depressed and abandoned, he brought joy into my life.

In Junior High we memorized Robert Browning's poem about Abu Ben Adam, who dreamed of an Angel who. making a list of those “whom love of God hath blessed,” asked Abu Ben Adam is he loved God. “Nay, not so,” said Abu Ben Adam, “Write me in as one who loves his fellow men.”

I’m with Abu Ben Adam. When I see the havoc brought by Katrina, earthquakes in Haiti, and floods in Pakistan, I can’t believe a loving Heavenly Father would permit such things. There are also evil men in the World, who preach hatred of all who disagree with them.

But I also believe evil is counter-balanced by good men, Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Buddhists, who seek to help others on both a world-wide and personal level. I was lucky in meeting one of them in 1986 in a bar.