Langston Hughes’ “Salvation”
Langston Hughes has just experienced peer- pressure of the worst kind (family). Hughes has lied, in order to satisfy is aunt; with this lie Hughes has also hurt his salvation, he may never believe in Jesus for the rest of his life.
Understanding where he is coming from is very easy for me. I once was in his shoes (belief in Jesus).As a young boy my dad died, I was fourteen, and man-oh-man was it hard for me. My dad was my best friend, how many kids could say they skipped school once and awhile and went fishing with their dad, but the death of my dad made me rebel against Jesus and God, my thought was” why did you take my dad from me!” I was under the impression that Jesus didn’t care about me or my life, didn’t the all-mighty know! I need my dad to guide me through these teenage years, so I rebelled to the point of almost dropping out of school and throwing a way a chance to play pro baseball to hang in the streets, one night at car cruising spot in Hollywood, Ca. it all changed.
It was about 7:30pm, I saw this brown Mazda 323 go by, in this car were two young ladies, and there were nice real nice, I waved to try to get them to stop, they kept on going down the street and around the corner, and then out of no-where the little brown Mazda pulled up. Her friend jumps out of the car and ran toward me and wanted to talk to me, (I directed her to my friend pointing at him) I ran right by her and jumped in the passenger seat of the car, started talking to her friend, which is my wife now. We talked for hours (until 4:00am). Years had gone by, she got married and so did I, but we kept in touch through those years. My first marriage didn’t workout to well and I had gotten a divorce (didn’t make it playing baseball), a few years later she too had gotten a divorce, throughout these years I was still a little pain in the butt; you could tell me a thing, but every time I went to see her; her mother would say “boy you need Jesus” I’d look at her mother like she was crazy. I’d say to myself “that women’s crazy and I don’t need Jesus I got Don and that’s all I need to get by”. A few years go by and I got a good job in Stockton, Ca. I moved from Los Angeles to Sacramento.
Cynthia’s (my wife) mother saw me and said “Don, why don’t you go to church with me?” I replied “I’ll think about it” let me tell ya, I shouldn’t have said that, she rode me until Sunday morning, so Sunday morning has come, we went to church, it’s great! I said to myself “I could get into this” as service was coming to end, they always ask as the church sings. “would you come, turn your life over to Jesus?” as I’m clapping I fell a tug on my elbow, I looked at my mother-n-law like; don’t pull me or rush me in to something; now as I’m clapping and singing another tug, but this time it was different, I saw her hands, she was clapping. Now I have this puzzled look on my face, the next tug put me in the aisle and down to the front I went crying and felling liter as I’m getting closer to the front to receive prayer and Jesus. I didn’t see him, but I felt him. Six years later I saw him.
God and his son work in mysterious ways, God has a plan for your life, just remember it’s not when we think we are ready, it’s when he says we are ready!