My Personal Testimony |
I was "saved" by principles that are no longer held by the Christian Right. |
I will never forget the day that I received Christ as my personal savior. I was six-years-old attending a Vacation Bible School (VBS) class. VBS was a way to get kids out of their Mother’s hair for a week or two in the middle of summer. I did not want to go because it was taking me away from summer time freedom. However, each day, once I was there and interacting with the other kids I was happy to be there. Little did I know that VBS would teach me a lesson that I would never forget, no matter how many people try to take that lesson from me.
It was a bright summer day in my quiet Los Angeles suburb as I went off to Vacation Bible School the day that my life would change. The year was 1967. Each day at VBS, aside from crafts, singing and punch and cookies, we were taught a lesson about God. I cannot recall the lessons from other days at VBS, but the lesson on this day I will never forget.
The teacher told a story using large illustrations that were taken from a Christian “tract”. The name of the story was “Somebody Loves Me”. The story was about a poor, little, “brown” boy, a Latino, who was abused by his Father and sent to wander the streets begging for money to support his Father’s drinking habit. No one helped the starving child as he wandered the streets in a driving rain storm. No one would help him because he was poor, wet and Latino. He was scum. At this point in the story I just could not fathom how anyone could turn away a child just because they were poor or because their skin color was different from their own. This was my introduction to racism for which, to this day, I lack the capacity to understand.
The little boy died alone on the street that night as the rain pelted down. However, God knew his plight and an angel came down and took him to heaven. Words fail to describe how moved I was by the love of a God that would not judge the boy the way the people had and loved him and took him to heaven. I wanted to have that God as my God and right now!
After I prayed to receive Christ as my Savior the teacher had us sing the song, “Jesus Loves the Little Children of the World”. She said, “We usually sing the song as ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white they are precious in His sight…’ but today we are going to change the words to include the little brown boy from the story. So we will sing the song this way, ‘Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world, red, BROWN, yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight…” Wow! I was as light as a feather! We were changing the words to include the little brown boy! I was very pleased that these people around me and my new found God had such a deep understanding of true love and the capacity to love deeply.
When I prayed to take Christ as my Savior that day I did it with the belief that I was taking on the characteristics of Christ which meant that I would have the ability and intelligence to love as deeply as God did for the little “brown” boy in the story. One thing is for certain, when I finished asking Christ into my heart I was filled with a deep love and concern for humanity that was put there by God. That love is still with me today and it inspires me to write.