A Rhinestone Button (23 page)

Jocelyn opened the door to the side of Pastor Divine. She smiled her apologies for being late as Divine went on
talking, then tiptoed in front of him and took the seat next to Job. She smiled at Job, nodded. She wore a khaki T-shirt and shorts and black leather sandals. The smell of coconuts around her. A shine over the tanned skin of her chest.

“So you got the Holy Spirit working through you,” he said. “And I’m sure everyone in this room does. How do you go about using that Spirit to bring people to the Lord?” He tapped his eyebrow. “You start with the eyes. The eyes are the mirror of the heart. What we’re talking about here is
discernment
. The Holy Spirit will lead you to read pain, fear, arrogance and failures in the eyes of others. And you’re going to read sin in the eyes, guilt. I’ve gotten so good at this, I can just walk down the street and look into people’s eyes and tell what’s going on in their lives. I can tell when someone has murdered.”

Several people in the group said, “Oh!” Job caught Jocelyn’s eye. She smiled and raised her eyebrows.

“You see arrogance there,” said Pastor Divine, “walk away. You see satisfaction there, don’t waste your time. Revival happens when people come to a place of humility, inner need or depression, when everything is taken away. It’s the Lord’s way of making us ready to receive him. You’re not going to bring a guy to the Lord if he doesn’t think he’s thirsty for God. You’ve got to make him see that he’s thirsty. It’s just like teaching a calf how to drink from a bucket. And how do you do that, Job?”

Fear like cold water shot through Job. Penny took his hand in both of hers and patted it. Job looked around, saw Jacob nodding, urging him on. All other faces blurred. He felt his stomach cramp.

“A prospective convert is just like a Holstein calf,” said Divine. “A Holstein calf won’t want to drink from a bucket. Its nature tells it to hold its head up, bunt its mother, suckle. So what do you do to get a calf to drink from a bucket?” He waited for Job to answer. A second chance.

“I raise Herefords,” said Job. “You don’t have to teach them to drink from a bucket.” Penny let go of his hand, crossed her arms and shifted her weight so she was leaning towards Rod. Jacob, too, crossed his arms and wouldn’t look at him. Job realized too late that he’d just undergone a test, of sorts, and had failed.

Divine spoke directly to Job, instructing him as he might a child. “You put your fingers in the calf’s mouth and as it’s sucking you bring your fingers into the milk, drawing its muzzle into the bucket. Then, once it’s slurping, you take your fingers out.” Divine turned to the rest of the group. “That’s what you’ve got to do with a prospective convert. You’ve got to lead his head down into the bucket. You’ve got to teach him to bring his head down before the Lord, to be humble, to submit. All right. Let’s get an expert up here to show you how to do it. Jacob?”

Jacob made his way to the front of the room and Divine wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “Everyone, this is Jacob Sunstrum. In case any of you haven’t heard, Jacob’s heading up our halfway-house project, setting up a place so the people you bring to the Lord today will soon have a place to live and learn about the Lord.”

Divine pulled up a chair and sat. “All right. So I’m sitting here, reading my newspaper.”

“Hello,” said Jacob.

“Hello.”

“I wonder, sir, where would you go today if you were hit by a bus and died?”

Pastor Jack sat forward, addressed the group. “There, see, a direct approach. Don’t beat around the bush.” He sat back, resumed acting. “I suppose I’d be dead.”

“Yes sir, but where would you go? Heaven or hell?”

“Well, I don’t know.”

“Have you been born again?”

“Born again?”

“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and personal saviour?”

“Well, no. I guess I haven’t.”

“Then you’ll be going to hell.”

“Hell? I don’t want to go to hell.”

“No rational man would. It’s a terrible fate. Wouldn’t you prefer to go to heaven if you had the choice?”

“I suppose, I would. Yes.”

“I can see in your eyes that you’re feeling badly about something. There’s something haunting you that you wish you hadn’t done.”

“Excellent,” said Pastor Divine. “See what Jacob did there? He brought my head down to the bucket, made me realize I was thirsty. How’d he do that? Guilt! I can’t stress this enough: make use of guilt. It’s the best tool in the evangelical toolbox. Everybody feels guilty about something. Make them feel the guilt in their bellies; fire it up! Make them thirsty for God’s love. Make them frightened that they’ll starve without it! Because they will! They’re going to experience eternal death without God’s love. Promise them salvation, the final solution for guilt. Then
you’ve got them.” He turned to Jacob. “How you going to do that for me?”

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done, how serious the thing is. God will forgive you. He already knows all about it.”

“He does?”

“Yes, and he loves you anyway. He accepts you anyway, just as you are.”

Pastor Jack turned to his audience. “See what Jacob did there? He made the sinner feel that he could be forgiven, loved, accepted. That’s what every sinner wants. When you let the person know God loves him and accepts him, then they can’t help but be blasted by the Holy Spirit. It’s now that you want to lead the sinner to God. Go for it, Jacob.”

“God wants you to come to him. He wants you with him in heaven. If you’re serious about wanting to go to heaven, then I would lead you in a prayer right now. It would take less than five minutes.”

Pastor Divine sat forward and addressed the group again. “See there, he made it clear it wouldn’t take long. People don’t have a lot of time these days.” He sat back and looked at Jacob. “What kind of prayer?”

“You’d repeat after me, asking the Lord Jesus into your life, to forgive your sins and give you a clean heart. Then you’d have the same salvation that I have. I’ve been born again. I know where I’m going when I die. I’m going to heaven.”

Pastor Divine stood, put the newspaper on the chair. “There, see? Simple. If they’re worthy, they’ll ask Jesus into their lives. If they’re not ready, let your peace come back to you, but either way, finish things up with a prayer. All right. Any questions?”

Penny put a hand up. “What if they don’t want to receive the Lord? Should we keep on talking to them, to convince them?”

“Keep in mind there’s lots of reasons why they may not be ready to receive. Maybe they don’t like you. Maybe they had a stressful day. Like Job said, you don’t teach a Hereford calf how to drink from a bucket. There are some people you just can’t bring to the Lord. Don’t even try to talk to busy people. If someone starts arguing back, planting the seed of doubt in your mind, don’t say another word. You’ll waste your time, you’ll waste your energy and sometimes they can slime you with their ideas. The devil’s already got them. All you’re doing is arguing with the devil. Just smile and walk away.”

“But should we, like, focus on hell?” said Penny. “Like what’s waiting for them if they don’t accept the Lord?”

“Sure, mention hell,” said Divine. “But you don’t have to scare them to death. It’s more important to listen carefully to people. See where they’re hurting. Make them feel you care about them, that you’re their friend. Let them know God loves them. That’s leading their head down to the bucket. Let the Holy Spirit lead you to the despondent, the depressed, those with the ruffled look of the unemployed, the people he’s broken and prepared for you. When they’re desperate, they’ll do anything to stop feeling that way. They’re empty vessels, just waiting for God to fill them. That’s what we need to be ourselves—desperate. Because when we’re desperate, God can work through us. Do I hear an amen?”

Rod pulled into the parking lot of Bonnie Doon Mall, and his passengers gathered in front of the van. Job stood close to Penny and tried touching her hand to see if he’d been forgiven for failing in front of the group that morning. But Penny pulled away, crossed her arms and shifted her weight to the other hip, away from him. “I think we should pair up as boy-girl teams,” she said. “That way we can minister to either gender. I’ll go with Rod and you go with Jocelyn. Seeing as how you and me are mature Christians, and Rod and Jocelyn are new to this. You all right with that, Job?”

“I guess,” he said, seeing that he had no choice in the matter.

“Let’s bow our heads in prayer,” said Penny. “Lord, please arrange a divine appointment with the people you want us to witness to. Break our hearts for the people we encounter today, Lord.” When she was done, Penny clapped her hands. “All right. See you guys back at the van at five o’clock. We’ll see who gets the most converts. It’s like a scavenger hunt!”

Job watched Penny take Rod’s arm as they walked off. She was all but bouncing, pumped up on the excitement of the Lord. She seemed so far beyond doubt, a trait Job suddenly found annoying.

Jocelyn and Job headed up Eighty-second Avenue, walking past a Salvation Army thrift shop, over a bridge and past restaurants, a hydroponics shop and a rental place for gala parties and weddings. They found a corner grocery and picked up a package of Oreos. Job was handing money to the cashier when he saw Liv through the window, bending over the white buckets of flowers outside, with her henna-red hair draped over her face. Her East Indian-print skirt
was see-through in the sun, revealing her shorts and thighs. The bracelets on her wrist caught light. She gathered a bunch of red sunflowers from a bucket as Job grabbed his change and cookies and scrambled outside. He called her name before he saw she was a stranger. A chubby face and broad nose. Shining drops of water dripping from the stems of the flowers she held.

Jocelyn caught up with him. “What?” she said.

“I thought I saw someone I knew.”

“Who?”

“Nobody.”

They ate the cookies sitting together on a bench advertising the Full Gospel Businessman’s Association. Graffiti scrawled across the seat in bold black paint read
Please Post Propaganda Here
. Cars roared past, the thump of their stereos. But the city noise didn’t overwhelm Job as it once had. The colours the noise generated were faded, all but gone.

A man on crutches stepped in front of them. He was chubby, dressed in a blue shirt and brown vest, a cap that read
Ducks Unlimited
. He offered them a tract, a comic book of sorts, with a frightened-looking devil on the front, and the title “A Demons Nightmare.” Jocelyn waved a hand, said, “No thanks.”

The man shifted his weight on his crutches, and handed Job the tract. “Have you heard the good news of Jesus Christ?”

“Yes,” said Job.

“Have you been saved?”

Yes.”

“Are you sure you’ve been saved? Are you absolutely sure?”

Job didn’t answer. He picked up the bag of Oreos and he and Jocelyn walked on. The man hobbled after them a few feet. “But if you’ll just give me a moment of your time!”

Job flipped through the tract as they walked. A grinning evangelist in a suit and tie saved the soul of a tough-looking kid on a bench. But, urged on by the demons, the boy was tempted by friends back into his old way of life. Then, choosing a Wednesday-night prayer meeting over a movie on television, the boy was once again saved from a life of sin. He went on to save countless souls himself, much to the disgruntlement of the demons. The tract ended with the helpful reminder: “And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. Revelation 20:15.”

Job cast the tract into a garbage can.

They passed kids selling jewellery from blankets on the street and a ragged man standing on a street corner with his hand out to everyone who passed.

“Aren’t you going to talk to anyone?” asked Jocelyn.

“I was waiting for you.”

“You’re the mature Christian here.”

“I guess I haven’t seen anyone desperate enough.”

“You’re not going to talk to anybody, are you?”

Job scratched his cheek. “Probably not.”

“Want to grab some lunch? Those cookies just left me hungry.”

She led him to the pub of the Strathcona Hotel. A mime stood by the door, his white face painted over with red and blue stripes, acting as though he were a robot or a marionette on strings. Job wasn’t sure. An oversized black cowboy hat containing a few coins sat at his feet. “This is a bar,” said Job.

“They have these great double-wiener hot dogs. Two wieners wrapped in this huge bun. They’re famous for them.” She pulled him in by the sleeve. “It’s okay. Nobody fights here. They do, the regulars kick them out.”

The pub had a shuffleboard at one end and a dartboard at the other. A haze of cigarette smoke. The smell of beer. A dark room, without windows, filled with old-timers, the regulars, and university kids from the U of A. The hum of voices, which produced little in the way of colour for Job. Once he would have found the din overwhelming.

They got themselves a couple of hot dogs at the kiosk by the bar and sat at a small round table covered in red towelling. “To sop up the beer,” said Jocelyn when he pinched it.

A waitress came by wearing jeans and a white shirt. She had a cigarette hanging out of her mouth with orange lipstick around the filter, and she made Job think of Crystal. “You want something to wash that down with?” she asked.