I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Tag: just a little talk with jesus

  • Payday Someday – Part 2 (from Deep in the Heart)

    Payday Someday – Part 2 (from Deep in the Heart)


    Sunday School at the First Baptist Church of Richards was boring, as usual. But the Sunbeams class was interrupted by a surprise visit from the revival preacher himself. Our teacher, Miss Mary Foster, was obviously thrilled to have him single out our class for a personal visit. He was a short stocky man with a round face, black wavy hair, big smile for Miss Mary Foster as he stepped briskly into our room without knocking.

    Good morning, Miss Mary and children, he said. My name is Brother Hector Rodriquez and I am preaching your revival this week. I’m very happy to be bringing God’s Word to you. I came by to tell you that you must be very good in the services, listen carefully during my sermons because I’ve heard some of you are not saved yet. When he said that, he paused and looked intently at each of us as though he knew which ones were lost. His dark brown eyes smoldered, and his bronze skin seemed to radiate heat. I thought he looked like he was about to explode. His whole expression was disturbing and unsettling, but no one in the room moved. We had been struck by human lightning.

    I’m going to tell you about your sins and what you must do to keep from going to hell, he went on. I’m sure no one wants to go to hell, do they? Eight small heads in the tiny room shook back and forth because we had been taught about hell in Sunday School plus I had heard the word mentioned by my Uncle Toby at home when his walking canes got tangled. Brother Hector seemed satisfied that we would be excellent candidates for his persuasive powers. Very good, he said. I must leave you now to prepare myself to receive the Holy Spirit in time for my sermon. He turned away from us and left the room. I was relieved to see him go and silently promised to be nicer to Miss Mary Foster in the future. Give me boring Sunday School lessons over the intensity of revival preachers any day. I began to feel a sense of foreboding in my bones.

    The quartet from West Sandy was singing Just a Little Talk with Jesus with great conviction, and Charlie Taliaferro was playing the piano so fast for their accompaniment people said later they thought they saw smoke rising from the keys on the church piano. The church was packed with visitors from the Methodist Church that had canceled their services to come hear our revival preaching. I sat between my paternal grandparents Ma and Pa on their usual pew toward the middle of the small sanctuary as the special music ended and the deacons got up to collect the offering for the revival preacher. I surveyed the sanctuary to locate my family. Dude was sitting with Uncle Toby a couple of pews back. Uncle Marion had finished one of his cigarettes in the parking lot behind the church, slid in late like Mama predicted in the kitchen at our house that morning, and was in the very last row. Mama and Daddy were sitting in the front pew so they could get up when it was time for the invitation hymn that Daddy would lead after the preaching because Daddy had the loudest male voice in the church and Mama would play the organ with no pipes because that’s what she always did.

    Oh, and there was Miss Inez Wood and her son Warren in their usual spot halfway back. Miss Lonie Fulghum and Miss Edna Kelly were in their favorite pew under one of the six four-paddle black ceiling fans in the church. They claimed to have no tolerance for hot air which must have been another reason Mama thought they were odd. Scattered around the church were the Methodist visitors who didn’t know where they were supposed to sit since the Baptists were so particular about their favorite places.

    Brother Hector Rodriguez was about to take center stage in the pulpit. He looked very pumped up, almost like a prize fighter getting ready to spring from his corner of the ring. Evidently he expected this contest to be a fierce struggle. He was about to wrestle the devil, and the stakes couldn’t be higher. All of our souls were resting heavily on his shoulders. He took off his coat and placed it on the pulpit chair. He loosened his tie; I saw his starched white shirt already had sweat stains under the arms.

    Brothers and sisters, he began in a somber tone. The Holy Spirit has placed a message in my heart for you today. I call it Payday Someday. All of you are lost like sheep without a shepherd wandering in the wilderness of your own sins. If you don’t repent, I can promise you will have a day of reckoning with the Lord Almighty who is the great check-casher in the sky. He listed many of the sins he knew would be our downfall and reminded us of Adam and Eve’s Payday experience when they were banished from the Garden of Eden. He droned on and on with rhythmic intensity and increasing volume. He was definitely on a roll. I checked to see if Miss Inez Wood was awake and was disappointed to see that she was. No help for relief there.

    The preacher moved on to higher ground. One of the sins that was most horrific to him was the sin of unnatural affection. My radar zoomed in at this, and I tuned back in to listen as he raved about men lying with men and women lying with women, or something like that. A vague feeling of unease and guilt began to spread through my seven-year-old brain. I glanced to see if anyone had changed their expressions. Did anybody know I was the person he was talking about. How had he figured out from Miss Mary’s Sunday School class all I could think about was that little Methodist girl Tinabeth?

    Something in his dark eyes had exposed my innermost longings. Now he knew my secret life. God help me if he told Mama. I was panicky, and I needed desperately to formulate a plan. Brother Hector warmed to his subject. This was a sin of the first magnitude that would result in the deepest pits of hell. (Excuse me, which level of hell was that?) He was sorry to be the one to tell us, but some of us were doomed. Payday Someday was today. Now. This very minute. He was shouting at us – his eyes were on fire. He was waving the Bible in his hands while his whole body shook. Sweat flowed down his face. He slammed his Bible on the pulpit lectern and closed it with a resounding thud. He shut his eyes and began to pray for our souls.

    After the prayer, he nodded to Daddy who stood and walked up the three short steps to the podium to lead the invitation hymn Just as I Am; Mama took her place at the organ without pipes to play softly for background music. Brother Hector Rodriguez made his pleas for us to renounce our transgressions and turn to the Lamb of God who made us all new creatures and forgave our sins. At his instruction, we all bowed our heads and closed our eyes as we sang the familiar words. Verse after verse. I could feel the tension and discomfort growing as the music slowed for the last verse. The Methodists were the most nervous since they had shorter songs in their hymnals. Clearly my grandmother had been right about the revival preacher. No one was leaving until a soul was saved.

    Finally, one of the boys in my Sunday School class walked down the aisle to say he was saved. It was seven-year-old Mike Jones, the brown son of our regular pastor whose wife was a Filipino woman he met in Hawaii during the war. Mike was crying and visibly shaken, but we all breathed a collective sigh of relief as the service came to a successful conclusion with the addition of a new name written down in glory. Hallelujah. Can I get an Amen?

    I avoided getting in the crush of people lining up to shake hands with Brother Rodriguez after the service. Everyone wanted to congratulate him on a wonderful beginning to the revival. As I eased my way through the crowd and out of the church, I was already feeling the first twinges of the stomach ache that would most assuredly prevent my coming back for the evening service. I knew I had to convince Dude to tell Mama I was too sick to go.

    ********************

    The writing instructor at Midlands Technical College asked her students in the fall of 2006 to write about a vivid memory we had from our childhoods – Payday Someday was the result of that assignment for me and inspired my first book Deep in the Heart: A Memoir of Love and Longing published in 2007, dedicated to Teresa, the little girl who said yes.

  • The Special Music


     

    033

     Backwoods Baptist Church

    Order of Service

    Typical Sunday, 1950s

    Call to Worship                                                                          Reverend Jones

    “On Jordan’s Stormy Banks I Stand”                                             P. 156

    Bible Verses                                                                              Reverend Jones

    “There is Power in the Blood”                                                          P. 232

    “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”                                                            P. 311

    Offertory Prayer                                                                        Reverend Jones

    Offertory           “Great is Thy Faithfulness”                    Organ and Piano Duet

    Special Music                                                                     To Be Announced

    The Sermon                                                                                 Reverend Jones

    Invitation           “Just As I Am”                                                       P. 268

    Benediction                                                                                  Reverend Jones

    The congregational singing was enthusiastically lusty in the hymn singing led by the male member of the church who had the loudest voice in the days before “paid” ministers of music performed that job.  In my Southern Baptist Church in the backwoods of rural southeast Texas, that man was my daddy. He led the singing with gusto and could carry a tune with the best of them.  No hand waving was necessary for him. He just reared back and sang, and the sixty or so people in the little church sang with him.

     Reverend Jones was always sincere in his prayers but took way too much time in his sermons so I busied myself with unwrapping pieces of Wrigley’s Spearmint or Doublemint Chewing Gum that my grandmother wisely provided for me.  I can still smell those gum aromas today and never see the white or green wrappers without thinking of Reverend Jones’s distaste for sin.

    My mom played the piano or organ while my dad led the singing, so the preparation for the music on Sunday morning and evening was a major part of our lives. Some people might say my family provided the entertainment portion of the church services every Sunday, and Reverend Jones was the spiritual provider. I’d probably say just the opposite.

    The highlight of every service was the Special Music.  Whatever restlessness and whispers and other noises in the pews that took place in the early part of the service were quieted by the Offertory instrumental music. When my mom hit the last note of that song – whatever it was – a hush took over the sanctuary and everyone waited in suspense for the solo or duet or trio or quartet that sang the Special Music that would set the stage for the sermon. It was great theater, like the finale in a musical before the final curtain falls.

    Since my mom accompanied whoever sang, she practiced with them on Wednesday nights after prayer meeting and Daddy and I had to stay late to wait for her.  It was like we belonged to a special club that held a regular meeting on Wednesday nights, but instead of a secret handshake, we knew a secret song. I loved those practice times and all the people who sang.

    My favorite, though – and everyone has a different favorite – was the quartet singing. The quartets were sometimes mixed with two women and two men and sometimes were all men.  “Just a Little Talk with Jesus” was a toe-tapping hand-clapping rousing harmony  that made me want to jump with joy while “Sweet Beulah Land” was a haunting melody that evoked powerful images of sadness and loss. Sopranos, altos, tenors and basses…we had them all on Wednesday nights.

    My daddy led the singing for many years in the next larger church they belonged to when we moved, but he retired from that volunteer position when the church hired a minister of music.  Luckily, he was happy singing in the choir after that.

     My mother played the piano and/or organ for sixty-five years in the churches she belonged to and saw ministers of music come and go while she kept playing the beautiful Offertories and accompanying the Special Music. She was never happier than when I enrolled in a Southern Baptist Seminary to study church music and then became a minister of music in my adult years. She loved to play for me when I visited her church and often asked me to become the Special Music for her church on Sunday. We practiced on Wednesday night.

    My church-going days ended more than thirty years ago and most of my musical family is gone with them, but I still remember them and the little church where we sang with great love and true affection. Talk about special – with my apologies to Jesus, I’d much rather be able to sit down and have a little talk with them tonight.