New Heart Church

by Jim Barringer

  Chapter Seven

  No sooner had I finished then there was a knock on my door. The people here didn’t believe much in privacy or quiet time, that was for sure. I cracked the door and saw Danny Tucker, hands in his pockets, smiling.

  “Hey, you mentioned something about checking to see if you had any writing samples still in your email inbox. Want to come up to my room and take a look?”

  “Oh yeah. I completely forgot about that. Thanks.” I followed Danny up to his room, on the top floor of the building, next door to the large meeting area where his house church met on Sundays. It was neatly decorated, a sizeable two-bedroom suite. The furniture looked like Salvation Army vintage, but as I sat down on one and sank into it, I couldn’t complain about how comfortable it was.

  “Elizabeth and I share this place,” he told me, standing over the desk and turning his computer on. We’ve been on our own together for the last twelve years or so.”

  “Twelve years? How old are you?”

  “Twenty-six. It’s a long story, I’ll fill you in sometime. The short version is that God is good. God is very good.” His computer chimed a start-up greeting, and he waved me over. “Come see what you can find.”

  I pulled up my long-neglected email account, scrolling back through the messages that had attachments till I finally found a paper I had written the year before. “Are you sure any writing sample will be good enough? This is a paper about Lewis and Clark.”

  “Yeah, that’s fine. It doesn’t matter what you’re writing about. I just need to see your style, how you use words, that kind of stuff. If it’s decent then I’ll ask you to write a review of a book or CD, probably one of the ones that I got recently that I don’t plan on reviewing, and see what you can do with it. If my editors like it, then you’ll get a review or two a month in the magazine. It won’t pay all your expenses, but it might open the door to other stuff, feature articles, or whatever.”

  “Man, I don’t know if I’m good enough to write features. I just like messing around.”

  “I guess we’ll see. Here, scoot out of the seat for a second.” Danny took the keyboard, forwarding the paper to his own email address.

  “I really appreciate your help with all this.”

  “It’s the right thing to do. We’re all a community in this building. When one of us is hurting, we all hurt.”

  “Hey now, I didn’t say I was hurting.”

  He looked up from the chair. “Aren’t you? You’re frustrated that you can’t find a job, short on money, probably worried about that.”

  “Sure, I’m struggling a little bit to find my feet after moving to a new city where I know absolutely nobody. I wouldn’t say that’s the same thing as hurting.”

  “I, on the other hand, would say that being frustrated and worried counts as hurting. Either way, you need help, I can help. End of story.”

  “I don’t mean to make it sound like I don’t appreciate it. I’m just not used to people going out of their way to help me, is all.”

  He smiled, moving from the chair onto the couch. “Maybe you should be.”

  “What?”

  “Maybe you should be used to people who make you a priority. Maybe you should be used to receiving love from the people who are close to you. That’s not the kind of thing that should be a rare treat, in my opinion.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that; I just stood behind the computer chair, hands on the back of it, and we looked at each other.

  “I’ve never heard that before,” I admitted.

  “Eli, let me ask you a blunt question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Where are you, spiritually speaking?”

  “Hm.” I didn’t have an answer prepared, so I stalled, trying to sum up what I believed. “Well, I believe there’s something out there, you know, God is out there. I believe in right and wrong. I don’t know what else you’re looking for.”

  “Oh, that’ll do for now. I was just wondering. Want to stick around and watch a movie? Elizabeth is coming back from work in a few minutes; we can make you some dinner and have a quiet evening in.”

  I started to answer, but Danny held up his hand to cut me off.

  “Actually, hold on a second. Let me try this again. Stay here, because we’re going to make you dinner. See, I’ve been talking to Stanley, and he told me that I can’t give you a choice, cause you’ll find some reason not to take me up on it.”

  I wanted to be offended, but looking at it from Stanley’s point of view, I could see where he came up with that. “I would like to think I’m less susceptible to peer pressure than that.”

  “But you’re not. Go turn the oven to four-fifty so it can start warming up.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh. “Since you asked me so nicely, I have no choice but to obey.”

  “See? You get it.”

  The next night, I clumsily lugged my guitar and amplifier up the stairs to the big room where the church met. Danny had been persistent in pressing me to come back for praise band practice, and finally I had caved. I still wasn’t all that excited about playing praise and worship music, but I hadn’t gotten the chance to play with anyone since moving, and late hours alone in my room, with the volume down to keep from bothering Stanley and my other neighbors, just weren’t cutting it.

  I wasn’t sure exactly what to expect, maybe an organ set up on one corner of the stage, perhaps a tambourine if they really wanted to cut loose. But as I pushed the door open, I saw a well-used electronic drum kit in the back, a violin sitting in a stand near the front, a keyboard pushed up against the wall, and room for me off to one side. The chairs between the doors and stage were still set up like they probably had been on Sunday, and a few seats toward the front were occupied by heads that swiveled to face me as I maneuvered my gear through the doors.

  “Hey, do you want any help with that?” One of them stood and came over to me, reaching for my amp. “I’m Jake Davies. Are you Eli?” Long brown hair fell over his box-frame glasses; he looked like he belonged in a Calvin Klein catalog rather than on a stage singing for Jesus.

  “That’s me. Good to meet you, Jake. What do you do in the band?”

  “I hit things. They couldn’t get me to stop so they put me on drums.”

  “You know what they say, you gotta do what you love.”

  “I do love me some drums.” He hauled the amp over to the stage and set it down facing the spot where I would be standing. “This work out for you?”

  “Yeah, it’s good.”

  By this point Danny was coming toward me. “Thanks for coming, Eli. We’ve got a pretty small band right now. Elizabeth plays the violin, and I sing. Hopefully we’ll get some more musically talented people in here soon, but for now, we’re making do.”

  “You sing and then preach?”

  “Yeah, I do. It’s not ideal but you do what has to be done, you know?”

  “Who plays the keyboard?”

  Danny chuckled. “Nobody yet. But we bought it anyway, as a show of faith. We believe that God will provide.”

  “That’s admirable.”

  “Yeah, you know, we like to give him chances to come through for us. The whole church sees this keyboard sitting empty, and when he finally gives us someone who can play it, they’ll all see that evidence of answered prayer.”

  I wasn’t sure whether to say what was on my mind, but while I was trying to decide, it slipped out anyway. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but aren’t there more important things to pray for than whether your church has a keyboard player? Like world hunger or poverty or whatever?”

  The others didn’t seem put off by me asking, and Danny just shrugged. “We pray for those things too, and we do what we can to help poverty and hunger. God’s got plenty of time for all of those things.”

  “Then why – you know, never mind. Let’s just go ahead and practice.”
/>   The songs were all new to me; I’d never heard them before, but they were pretty simple from a musical point of view. That made sense, once I thought about it, since the whole point was to make it easy for people to sing along and musicians of any skill level to be able to lead them, but I really despised their simplicity. I could almost play them on autopilot. The band sounded good, although I really wondered how they had gotten along without something to hold the melody down. Elizabeth was a tremendous violin player, but having only the violin must have been awkward.

  We broke camp for the night satisfied with how rehearsal had gone. We had a good sound together; the guitar and violin meshed in a way I hadn’t anticipated, and I was actually looking forward to Sunday.

  The next four days went by quickly. I spent two of them handing out job applications, although it was probably obvious to the hiring managers that I was merely going through the motions. I had lost confidence in my ability to land even the most elementary job. My college diploma was a forty thousand dollar paperweight. I still had no idea what about me was poisoning people, making them reluctant to even give me a chance. I had gone by a couple of the places I had applied, like that CVS whose manager had blown me off without a second thought, and the guy they hired to replace me was a pimply-faced seventeen-year-old. I could have done his job, for the same salary, and I had a college degree. What was the problem?

  Stanley had been gone a lot the last few days, and I kept sensing that he had something important he wanted to tell me, but he hadn’t yet done it. I couldn’t guess at what it might be. He arrived back in town Saturday night, but immediately went to his room and closed the door – a rarity for him. I didn’t want to disturb him, so I went to bed early, hoping to get plenty of sleep and be on top of my game for Sunday morning.

  I couldn’t have asked for a more beautiful morning when my alarm went off around 8. The slightest hint of frost clung to the outside of my window, dusting the leaves and branches of the trees I could see outside my window. Sunlight poured down from a cloudless blue sky. I didn’t know what exactly to wear, so I pulled on jeans and hoodie like I had seen Esperanza Nunez wearing the previous Sunday.

  My knees shook as I pushed myself up the two flights of stairs, and I paused to steady myself. Taking a deep breath, I walked through the doors of a church for the first time in a decade.

  Part Two