I once and still am a diligent student and I love reading. Most of all, back in the temporal vicinity of 1999, Grade 4, I loved devouring all the reference books I could get.
Thing was, I lived for the moment, for the present--- I was still only 9 years old back then and did not give much thought to the future, or to eternity...
The day was a Wednesday, July 28--- right after my school's Foundation Day Convocation. Almost immediately after the celebration, I dashed to the Library, eager to finish the book on biology that I'd started just that week.
I opened it to... I do not remember the excact details but what I do recall is that the chapter was explaining the behavior of wolves and how this demonstrates evolution's "survival of the fittest". If one is sick or injured, the pack would leave it so that they are not weighed down by the loss; the pack always cooperates to bring down big prey, etc.
Then, without even a creak, the door opened and I started from my seat. My nose must have been black with ink and my eyes wide with shock.
It was the Assisstant Directress of the school, Teacher Fe. She asked me what I was reading and I showed her. She frowned, musing, then asked me what i thought would happen to the soul of the ripped-up elk in the book.
My eyebrow twitched. What does happen to the souls of the dead, I wondered? I then ventured to answer that it'd go to Heaven if it was good and because it was persecuted by the wolves.
She gave a slight clucking of amused disagreement, then asked, "If you die today, where will you go?"
I do not remember the exact words I gave, but, the gist went, "I think, if my soul was fit enough, it'd..." I did not get to finish my bemused, stumbling sentence.
"Do you believe in Jesus Christ as God?"
"Yes"
"Did you know that He died so that your sins can be forgiven?"
I stood dumbfounded for a moment. My mind raced back to my first eschatological-existentialist moment. It was sometime in Prep, when, in my grandfather's car, we'd passed through a rather seedy part of town and I saw some "bad" graffiti. I accidentally blurted the thing out later on and got whopped by my parents.
As I lay in bed that night, aching both in body and in heart, I imagined a sort of spiritual half-life: every time I commit some "great mistake" or sin, half of my soul would go into Hell. I imagined that it would go on and on until so little was left to enter Heaven...
...like the rats that entered my room under the crack of the door. I looked at it and it looked at me. Between two seemingly shame-faced beings, there passed a knowing sigh...
My vision slipped back into the present with astonishing clarity. I saw Teacher Fe's wrinkled, bespectacled eyes boring into mine. It seemed that they were not merely gauging my response, but also gauging my spirit.
I finally answered, "No"
She then propounded to me the truly wondrous thing that Christ did for everyone. She went first into John 3:16's "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life", then from there went through the story Jesus. Not that my parents had not taught me about Him, it was just that they had yet to get to His sacrifice...truth to tell, I do not remember it rightly now.
Be that as it may, I listened, enraptured, and she guided me through the prayer of accepting Him as my Lord and Savior.
Ever since then, through trial and tribulation, I KNOW that I have grown in both my faith and my relationship with my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. I have undergone some really tough trials recently. I once believed that depression and a disintegration of resolve were things that true Christians cannot experience. Yet I am still human and I underwent these. Those dark days are over now for I know that help and forgiveness are just a prayer away.
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