Life of Henry

He was now approaching his thirtieth birthday, a criminal, an addict, and a liar to the Lord. He had a wife. It didn’t stop him. He had a daughter. It didn’t stop him. His money was gone, his fancy clothes were gone, his hair was unstyled and coarse. It didn’t stop him.

One Saturday night, he wanted so desperately to get high that he drove with two men to Jamaica, Queens, to the only people he could think of with both money and product—drug dealers he used to work for.

He knocked on their door. They answered.

He pulled a gun.

“What are you doing?” they said, incredulous.

“You know what this is,” he said.

The gun didn’t even have a firing pin in it. Luckily, the dealers didn’t know that. Henry waved it and barked, “Let’s go,” and they gave him their money and their jewelry and their drugs.

He drove off with his friends, even gave them the valuables, but he kept the poison for himself. It was all his body wanted. It was all he could think about.

Later that night, after he’d smoked and sniffed and guzzled alcohol as well, paranoia set in, and Henry realized the dumb mistake he had made. His victims knew who he was and where he lived. And they would want revenge.

Which is when Henry grabbed that shotgun, went out front, and hid behind a row of trash cans. His wife was confused and scared.

“What’s happening?” she said, crying.

“Shut the lights!” he yelled.

He saw his daughter, watching from the doorway.

“Stay inside!”

He waited. He trembled. Something told him that for all the trouble he had escaped, this would be the night it caught up with him. A car would come down his block, and he would die from a spray of bullets.

And so, one last time, he turned to God.

“Will you save me, Jesus?” he whispered. “If I promise to give myself to you, will you save me tonight?” He was weeping. He was breathing heavily. If, with all the wrong he’d done, he was still allowed to pray, then this was as close as he came to true prayer. “Hear me, Jesus, please…”

He had been a troubled child.

A delinquent teen.

A bad man.

Could he still be a saved soul?