“Jesus Christ,” Reverend Polk intoned, “died for our sins that we might have everlasting life. Without Him we are lost, doomed to the agony of hell fire and damnation. But there is still hope if you will reach out to Him, to the Holy Lamb – let Him come into your heart.”

“If any of you have not accepted Jesus as your personal savior,” the Reverend went on, “then step forward, come and kneel before the altar and be saved. Let blessed Jesus be the salvation of your mortal soul. Come forward now, friends, come.”

As the Reverend ended his plea, he cued the choir and the room filled with singing voices and soft organ music. In a moment there was another sound, a low rustling, and then one by one worshippers came forward to kneel before the altar, and Reverend Polk, to accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior. Joshua Cassaday was among them.

Joshua burned inside, aflame with the idea of being saved by the mysterious power of Jesus. Head bowed, he concentrated all his power on accepting Christ into his heart.

“Oh, Lord,” Reverend Polk prayed, after motioning the choir and organist quiet, “guide us unto the path of righteousness. Let us look to you with open minds and hearts. Send us your eternal blessing of salvation. Send us eternal bliss through your son, Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.”

The small group before the altar concentrated on finding salvation. They squinted their eyes and swayed lightly from the intensity of their effort. Joshua worked and worked to be saved but he couldn’t feel anything changing. A couple of people near him fell back in a faint; Joshua assumed they had been saved.

He concentrated harder, imagining his heart had a door – just as the cover of his two-page Sunday School program showed – and Jesus was waiting outside it, waiting for Joshua to open that door and receive Him physically into his heart. It was a reassuring image and Joshua worked to make it become a metaphysical reality. He wanted desperately to be saved. He flung the mental door to his heart wide open.

“Oh, Jesus,” he prayed to himself, “please save me, please. I want to be saved.”

Joshua waited, waited for the flood of warmth he expected when Jesus would enter his body, his soul; but nothing happened. Looking over at the others while Reverend Polk’s prayer droned on, Joshua could see that they had all been saved. It was working for them, why not for him?

He squinted harder and tried again and again to let Jesus come into his heart. He begged Jesus, pleaded with him, yet as Reverend Polk’s prayer ended so did Joshua’s hope. Jesus was not there, not in his, Joshua’s, heart. Something was wrong; nothing had happened, nothing at all.

Disappointed, afraid the others would know that he had not been saved, Joshua rose with them to receive the Reverend’s blessing. He could not understand why his efforts to welcome the Prince of Peace into his heart had failed. He kept his head bowed low as Reverend Polk concluded a final prayer welcoming the saved sheep into the fold of the blessed Shepherd of men.

Standing red-eyed before the Reverend, Joshua reckoned it was something in him that had stopped Jesus from coming in; and echoing the rhetoric from the only pulpits he’d seen, he felt keenly the loss of his soul to the devil.

He must be a bad person, he reasoned, else Jesus would have come into him like he did those other people. That the Savior of all mankind had not come into his heart was proof of Joshua’s own sinfulness and damnation.

Yet for all that, what troubled him most was that at the crucial moment when he had most prepared himself for Christ, at the most significant of moments, he had felt nothing. Nothing had happened at all, nothing. It made him miserable. He lowered his eyes and stared at the floor, the only thing lower than himself.

The services concluded, Joshua drifted forlornly out the door with the crowd of worshippers. They smiled and chatted in social groups outside the church, none noticing the little boy who weaved his way among them. Joshua was glad he was invisible to the adults; he knew he was worse than all of them combined.

Jesus had not chosen to bless him with His holy presence and Joshua knew that that meant he was damned forever; he had heard the preacher say as much so many times before.

Slowly winding his way towards his home, only a few short blocks from the church, Joshua seldom looked up as he walked. He was far too self-absorbed, far too concerned – he mourned greatly for the loss of his ten-year-old soul.