My Early Story (27)

 

Coming To Know Jesus - Three

 

My poor father didn’t know what to think about me. He hated what was happening, but I suppose he hated it because he wasn’t equipped to process and interpret it. I had no rules when living with him. I could come home anytime I wanted to, school night or not, and I was out some late nights. I was really a kid on his own, doing his own thing. The only constant in my life was my after-school job.

 

Now you might think that school was a constant, but school was chaotic for me. I had some interesting and nice friends, one from Greece, another from Guatemala, another from Thailand, and one American – the school had quite a few international students, after all, we were in N.W. D.C. We ate lunch together most days. I was also in Jr. R.O.T.C.

 

But in terms of academics, I really didn’t care.

 

Before Howard Wall’s question to me about being a Christian, I was reading philosophy on my own; I recall Plato and David Hume. Perhaps if I had a goal, it was to discover what the heck we were all doing here on earth.

 

I enjoyed my grocery job because I had a feeling of accomplishment, and I liked the people I worked with. Howard Wall was Native American, then there were Jewish folk (the owners were two Jewish brothers), your average white folks, a Cuban refugee, and African – Americans. I truly liked them all and they all treated me well. I was the only kid working there until I got my classmate Roderick a job. Maybe, looking back, it was also a safe place for me, a kid in an alcoholic family.

 

As I was coming to know Jesus I began carrying a pocket New Testament and Psalms with me. I’d read it in some classes (I had been reading philosophy in classes that bored me), and I read it during lunch and other breaks. While my international friends thought my turn to religion was a good thing, my best Anglo friend, like my dad, was upset.

 

One day, during a class break, I was sitting at the base of the flagpole reading the New Testament when my friend, Frank, came up to me and knocked the book out of my hand – he was so angry at me coming to Jesus.

 

I shared Jesus with my friends back in Maryland, where I had lived with my mom, two younger brothers, and Aunt Martha. One evening at my church in the Wheaton – Silver Spring area, I invited friends to come so we could talk about Jesus (the pastor let me use a room), and that’s what we did. Some came to know Jesus over those same months that I was coming to know Him.