Rapture Ready

In the mid-night silence, I listened hard for the sound of their breathing.  The night air was quiet and still but for the lonely moan of a train whistle in the distance.  I strained to hear sleep noises from the bedrooms across the hall:  the steady rhythm of their breathing, their gentle stirrings; my dad’s familiar snore. I needed to know that my family was still there--that they hadn’t been raptured, and I hadn’t been left behind.

I had seen the movies at church, which I thought was odd, because in my church we didn’t go to the movies. But these movies were I okay, I guessed, because they taught us about things from the Bible--the end times, the rapture, the tribulation, the mark of the beast, and the antichrist. I can still see the scene of a woman finding her husband’s electric razor buzzing away unattended on the bathroom counter. He’d been raptured, we were to believe, and she’d been left behind.

I was terrified of being left behind. I knew that my family members were all believers. They’d been born again, baptized, and extended the right hand of fellowship. I was pretty sure I was too, but I started to have my doubts. I remembered going forward at the invitation of an elderly neighbor lady who hosted an after-school Bible club in her home. She told us that we all needed to confess that we were sinners and ask Jesus to forgive us. She asked if there was anyone who had not yet done so and invited us to walk forward and meet with her. In my five-year old understanding, I walked forward. I knew I hadn’t done the things she’d talked about and figured they were the next things I needed to do in life--things like learning to brush my teeth, tie my shoes, and start kindergarten. I guess I figured accepting Jesus was just the next thing on the list.

And so I went forward and the dear elderly woman prayed and then gave me a hard-boiled Easter egg to take home.  As it turns out that the egg was rotten, which isn’t really important to the story. It’s just really hard to forget the taste of a rotten egg, especially when that memory coincides with what might have been the occasion of one’s spiritual rebirth. I say might have been because years later as I thought back to that afternoon, something troubled me.

As I pictured myself standing with that dear, saintly neighbor, I couldn’t remember whether or not I had actually said the words.

I couldn’t remember if I had prayed the sinners’ prayer, if my own mouth had formed the words. I wasn’t sure if nodding my head in agreement counted. Once I started seeing the rapture movies, the ones showing in horrifying detail what would happen to people who only thought they were Christians, I figured the stakes were too high to remain uncertain. I was afraid Jesus was going to come back and I was going to get left behind on a technicality. And I didn’t know what to do.

I’d already made a profession of faith, walked the aisle, been fully immersed in the baptismal font at the front of the church, and received the right hand of fellowship. I thought it would be humiliating to have to start at the beginning and work my way back through the whole routine again. At the end of a week of summer youth camp, after night-after-night of altar calls with urgent pleadings and repeated choruses of I Wish We’d All Been Ready, my fears got the best of me. I stepped out into the aisle, made my way forward, and admitted my I’m-almost-certain-I’m-probably-not-really-sure-I’m-saved status. I returned to my church, donned the white robe once again, stepped barefoot into the cold baptismal waters, re-received the right hand of fellowship and re-joined the church. I was certain that, this time, I’d done it right. I was still terrified at the prospect of Jesus coming back but at least felt like I wouldn’t be one of those poor folks who would need to line up for a mark-of-the-beast tattoo.

I took me years to shake off that fear and begin to realize that Christ’s return is actually a good thing. While scripture certainly teaches about God’s wrath and judgment toward those who reject Him, the movie versions of those events I watched as a young girl weighed heavily on my spirit. As emphatic as those movies were about depicting the scary end-times things in the Bible, I wish they’d been equally or more passionate about highlighting God’s compassion, mercy, and grace. I wish I had known that a gospel that emphasizes only the judgment and fear of God is only half a gospel and, therefore, no gospel at all. I wish I had been shown the patterns throughout scripture of warnings about judgment followed by the encouragement of the hope of redemption.

I wish I had realized my early naïve response to Christ was a work of His grace, evidence of His Spirit whispering to my spirit, beckoning me to come to my loving Father. I wish I had grasped that the One who had begun a good work in me would be faithful in completing it. I wish I had been taught, as a young girl, to pray, Come quickly, Lord Jesus, while waiting for Him to make all things new. And I wish I had been able to rest comfortably, safe in the knowledge that I was held by grace, surrounded by the loving, presence of my family, and lulled into sweet sleep by the sound of that distant train whistle.

Joining Jen:

And emily