Rapture Practice

by Aaron Hartzler

  “It’s an object lesson I’m going to teach the kids at the campfire this week.”

  “Object lesson?” he asks.

  “Like a parable,” I explain. “An earthly story with a heavenly message.”

  Jason is nineteen. He has blond hair and blue eyes. We’re both standing at the sinks wearing only shorts and flip-flops. He rinses his razor under the faucet, then lifts his chin and slowly draws the blade up toward his square jaw.

  “And in this earthly story, a chicken has a heavenly message for us?” he asks.

  “Well… yes,” I say with a grin. “Cluck-elujah, amen.”

  Jason leans on the sink with both hands and laughs. “You’re hilarious, Hartzler.”

  I’m the youngest counselor at Timberlake Ranch Camp this summer. Founded by a former student of my father’s, Timberlake is built around a Wild West theme in the sprawling woods along the Platte River bottoms and boasts many campsites. Some have cabins on stilts, while others are built like forts or shaped like covered wagons. In addition, there’s a working ranch operation with a stable full of horses, a three-story waterslide, and a team-building obstacle course called Armageddon Island, which features physical challenges based on scriptures from the book of Revelation.

  All of the other counselors here this summer are in college, but when Gary, the camp director, called Dad last month looking for a student who could lead Bible time each night for the first and second graders in the covered-wagon camp, I got the job. I’ve taught Good News Clubs and vacation Bible schools with Mom for years now. I’m a pro. I haven’t stopped listening to KUDL, but if teaching kids about Jesus were an Olympic event, I’d be a medal contender. If God is keeping score, that’s got to count for something.

  “Saw you talking to Allison again after lunch.”

  Jason has been trying to get me to ask Allison out all week. She’s eighteen, tall and pretty, with bright eyes that narrow when she’s about to make a joke. Nobody but me seems to remember I’m only fifteen. Everyone treats me like I’m another one of the college students. The only dates I’ve ever been on were with girls from church to the banquets at my Christian high school in Kansas City. Maybe Allison would say yes if I asked her out. I’m curious.

  What would it be like to kiss a college girl?

  Maybe the reason I don’t have a girlfriend is because I’ve never really gotten to be alone with one.

  “Did you know Allison’s the Nebraska state Suffolk queen?” I ask Jason, rubbing sunscreen onto my face. Being outside most of the week has made my freckles go crazy. “Her sheep won the blue ribbon at the state fair. She has a sash and everything.”

  Jason snorts and shoots me a sideways smirk in the mirror. It makes me feel good when I crack him up. We’ve been sharing one of the covered wagons this week, and every night we lie awake and talk for hours before we fall asleep. Jason grew up in a little town way out in the middle of Iowa. His dad is a pastor, and we have a lot in common. He’s been telling me stories about how he used to sneak out to drink beer and hook up with girls when he was in high school. I know Mom and Dad wouldn’t approve of this, but it feels so good to meet somebody who grew up with the same rules I have and is making his own decisions.

  “Where are we eating tonight?” I ask.

  “I heard something about a steak house,” he says.

  It’s Friday, our last night of counselor orientation. We have tomorrow off, and then our first batch of campers shows up on Sunday. We’re driving into town tonight to have dinner with the other counselors. Jason drives an old sports car from the 1960s that he’s restored and painted candy-apple red. It’s so glossy it looks wet.

  “Can I ride into town with you tonight?” I ask.

  Jason turns and looks at me, perplexed. “Of course you’re riding with me. You don’t have to ask.”

  I smile as he turns back to the mirror and finishes with his razor. He splashes water on his cheeks and blots his face dry with the towel that was slung over his shoulder. There is something effortless and attractive about this movement, and I notice how different our bodies are. Namely, I am tall but very thin. Jason’s muscles make him look like an advertisement for shaving, or for drying your face—or for manliness in general.

  On the way into town, he cranks up the stereo. The speakers in his antique car are brand-new and thump with every lick of bass. He’s got music I’ve never heard of by a singer named Roxette, and his favorite song is a pounding anthem called “The Look.”

  I love this music, and a smile spreads across my face as I realize I’ll be able to listen to whatever I want to for the next six weeks. My parents are three hundred miles away in Kansas City. I don’t have to ask their permission about anything, or worry about them finding out if I don’t.

  The song reaches a crescendo and suddenly cuts out. Jason pumps his fist in the air and counts “two… three… four…” and then bangs on the steering wheel as the music explodes through the speakers again at full force.

  The warm, humid air whips through my hair, and as we pull up to the restaurant and see the other counselors getting out of their cars, I can’t help feeling a surge of excitement that I’m finally grown up. This is what it feels like to be my own person, to have my own friends, to listen to my own music. I’m laughing and talking and feeling… free. I don’t have to hurry home. I don’t have to worry about curfew or explaining to Mom and Dad whom I’m going to meet where.

  This is the first time I’ve ever been completely on my own.

  After we eat, our whole group takes a stroll around the tiny, quaint town of Central City, Nebraska. Allison catches up to Jason and me with Melody, a tiny college gymnast whose blue eye shadow has metallic flecks in it. She’s telling me a funny story about campers from last summer when I look up and realize that our big group of counselors has stopped.

  We’re all standing in front of a movie theater. In fact, we’re in a line at the box office.

  The theater is a historic building with a neon sign above the marquee that spells out the word STATE, and a ticket booth on the sidewalk. One by one, each of our group takes a turn at the window. As I watch, my palms get sweaty. Melody is still talking, but I can’t hear anything she’s saying as Jason buys a ticket. He’s my ride. Am I going to sit on the curb for two hours while he watches the movie?

  This is that moment, the one Mom talks about—the moment when I have to decide for myself which choice I’ll make.

  Mom and Dad will never know you disobeyed them.

  The voice in my head is loud and clear, but then my conscience kicks in. It’s a tiny whisper that answers back:

  God will know you disobeyed.

  Mom and Dad are hundreds of miles away in Kansas City, but it feels like they are right here looking over my shoulder. Mom says the Holy Spirit is the still, small voice inside me who helps me resist temptation. He knows everything. Every word. Every action. Every thought.

  Sharing your brain with God can be handy when you need to pray in a hurry:

  God, help me to remember the formula for the circumference of circle.

  God, help me not to mess up on the piano solo I’m playing in church.

  God, please don’t let Dad take us to Panama next year to be missionaries.

  It can also be exhausting. At moments when decisions need to be made quickly, the idea that God can hear my every thought always gets in the way and gums up the works. It makes some decisions very difficult, especially this one.

  “You comin’ man?” Jason asks.

  I smile but say nothing.

  “I’m going to go in and save seats,” he says. As he holds open the door for Melody and Allison, he jerks his head toward them and grins, mouthing the words Hurry up! over his shoulder.

  I watch them disappear into the theater with the other counselors, and for a moment, I stand alone on the curb. My heart is racing. My mouth is dry. Finally, I square my shoulders and step up to the ticket window.

  “One for Hunt for Red October, please.”<
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  Unless Jesus comes back in the next two minutes, I am going to break one of Mom and Dad’s biggest rules. My cheeks are hot. I feel out of breath. A drop of sweat trickles down my back, but the girl behind the glass doesn’t even look up at me. She has no idea what is happening in my head, what a big deal this is for me. She couldn’t be less interested.

  I slide a five-dollar bill under the window. She hands back a small yellow ticket between neon nails so long they curve.

  “Enjoy the show.”

  I take a deep breath.

  I take a look over my shoulder.

  I take the ticket.

  Ever since E.T., I’ve always known that one day I’d break the movie rule, but I sure didn’t see it coming today. In all of my midnight imaginings of this moment, I never considered it might happen at a historic theater in Nebraska, but as I walk through the front door, I realize something:

  This place is perfect.

  There is a sense of history here—the dark wood and plush velvet curtains hold a grandeur that matches the momentousness of the event. I feel a surge of excitement. It feels dangerous but thrilling. For the first time in my life, I am actually living something I’ve dreamed about, learning that a midnight imagining can leap out of the darkness and splash across the hi-def, full-color, Dolby digital surround-sound screen of your life in a place where you least expect it. Like Nebraska.

  My fingers are sweaty around the little yellow ticket as I walk from the box office across the lobby toward the door that leads into the theater. I feel so nervous I am afraid I might throw up. My knees are shaking, so I pause briefly by the concession stand, but not because I want popcorn.

  You can still walk out. You can sit on the curb and wait for Jason.

  Is this the voice of God’s Holy Spirit encouraging me to do the right thing? I don’t want to wait on the curb. This is my chance. Mom and Dad will never know.

  Dad’s voice pops into my head: “Integrity is doing the right thing even when God is the only one watching.”

  Well, God and, in this case, the popcorn guy.

  “Our almighty God loves you so much he keeps track of the hairs you lose,” Mom likes to remind me. “He knows the secrets you’d never tell anyone else.”

  I’ve believed that God is omnipresent since I was a little boy, but for the first time, it strikes me as odd. Is it weird that I think there’s an invisible being listening to every thought I have at every moment? Do I really believe if I walk into this theater, God is going in with me? Do I think God cares whether I go see a movie?

  I know Mom and Dad care. They would say this is a choice between honoring them and disobeying them; that pleasing God in this case means obeying them—sitting on the curb for a couple of hours and missing the movie.

  “Want anything, man?” The popcorn guy sounds impatient.

  I want parents who don’t think going to see a movie is a big deal.

  I shake my head. “No. Thanks.”

  Popcorn Guy heads outside for a smoke. I feel so frustrated—with the situation, with my own indecision.

  I want to go to this movie.

  This thought isn’t the voice of God, or Mom, or Dad. It’s my own voice. I recognize it instantly, and the moment I do, all the other voices in my head flip off like a switch. Stillness drops like a curtain across the space between my ears. The silence is deafening.

  Now I can hear the other sounds in the room: Jason and Allison laughing around the corner in the theater, the hum of the ice machine behind the concession counter. In the lobby of the State Theater in Central City, Nebraska, for the first time ever, I feel completely…

  Alone.

  It only lasts for a split second. Popcorn Guy walks back in from his smoke. I tell him I’ve changed my mind. I order a big bucket of popcorn with lots of butter, and a large Coke. Then I slip the yellow ticket stub into the hip pocket of my jeans and step inside the theater.

  “Boys and girls, how many of you live on a farm?”

  Hands fly up around the campfire. Not surprising. Nebraska has a lot of agriculture.

  “Well, our story tonight is about a boy named Jimmy, and he lived on a farm, like a lot of you do. One of Jimmy’s chores was to gather the eggs laid by his favorite hen, Speckles. Speckles was a beautiful bird, and Jimmy loved her more than anything else in the whole world. He took her fresh water and food every day, and Speckles would cluck and come running when she saw him.”

  I always modify the story to fit the audience. If it’s mainly girls, I play up the petting and nuzzling. Girls like a pretty Speckles, so I describe her two-toned coppery feathers in detail. If the crowd is mostly boys, I go heavy on the “pals” part of the story. There is lots of playing in the fields, and tree climbing. There are adventures for this chicken that are undoubtedly beyond the realm of most commercial egg-laying operations.

  Jason is grinning and hides his face at this part of the story. It’s ridiculous, and he knows it. I don’t mind. I’m telling a good story. This is the hook.

  “One morning, Speckles wasn’t in the henhouse, and Jimmy couldn’t find her anywhere!”

  There are gasps from the girls in Melody’s covered wagon. I see her put an arm around one of them and reassure her. A little boy from Jason’s cabin shouts out, “Oh, no!”

  After telling about Jimmy’s exhaustive search for his hen, I show the picture of Speckles sitting on a nest hidden in the tall grass along the fence on the back forty. There is palpable relief around the campfire, and then excitement as Jimmy realizes Speckles has laid eggs she wants to hatch. Jimmy goes down to check on Speckles’s nest each day for weeks until one day the eggs hatch. Jimmy is thrilled, and he plans to move Speckles and her chicks back to the henhouse the next morning.

  That night, Jimmy wakes up to a great commotion, the smell of smoke, and the light of tall flames leaping up from the field behind the barn. Lightning had ignited a grass fire, and Jimmy has to work through the night with the farmhands and his dad, hauling water to put out the fire.

  The next morning when Jimmy goes to the place where Speckles’s nest had been, he finds only her charred remains. As he starts to cry, Jimmy nudges her body with his foot, and six fluffy chicks begin to peep, wobbling out from beneath Speckles’s lifeless wings.

  “You see, boys and girls,” I explain, “When Speckles smelled the smoke and saw the flames racing toward her, she realized that there was no escape. She gathered her chicks under her in the nest and spread her wings over them. As the flames passed over her body, Speckles made the greatest sacrifice of all for her chicks. She covered them with her feathers so that they would be saved. She died so that her children could live.”

  Tears fill my eyes as I say these words. There is something about this story of sacrifice that quickens my heart each time I tell it, and breaks me open inside. This is the heavenly message of the “object lesson.” This is a parable about one person loving another enough to die.

  No one around the circle of logs at the campfire is smiling anymore, not even Jason. Melody and the girls on the log next to her stare up in rapt attention. I can see their eyes glistening in the firelight as the Nebraska sky turns deep shades of indigo behind me, the sun’s last rays shooting over the tops of pine trees at the edge of the clearing ringed by our covered-wagon cabins.

  I quote my favorite Bible verse to the boys and girls, from Psalms, chapter 91: “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty…. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust.”

  “Boys and girls, just like Speckles spread out her wings to cover her chicks, Jesus spread out his arms and allowed Roman soldiers to nail his hands and feet to a cross.”

  The children are silent as I tell them how God the Father requires a blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sins—the things that we have each done wrong. God cannot allow sin into heaven, and I quote the book of Romans: “For the wages of sin is death, the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

  I explain atonement to the boys and girls—how God sent Jesus to die so that we could live forever. Jesus took our place on the cross and paid the price of our sins. His death spares us from the eternal death of a fiery hell, just as Speckles spared her chicks from the flames.

  “Boys and girls, who can tell me what the Good News is?”

  Hands fly up all around the circle. A little boy shouts out, “Jesus is coming back!”

  I smile and nod. “Yes! That’s part of it. He’s coming back because he is risen. Jesus died, just like Speckles, but the Good News is that, unlike Speckles, Jesus didn’t stay dead!”

  I use the same breathless excitement Mom uses as I explain that Jesus rose from the grave on the third day, conquering death and making it possible for everyone to go to heaven. “All you have to do to go to heaven when you die is pray and ask Jesus to forgive your sins.”

  I ask all the boys and girls to bow their heads and close their eyes.

  “If Jesus came back right this minute, would he leave you behind or take you to heaven?” I ask. “If you don’t know whether you’re going to heaven or hell when you die, you can be certain before you crawl into your sleeping bag,” I assure them. “If you’d like to talk to a counselor about accepting Jesus as your savior, raise your hand right now.”

  In the orange glow of the flames at the center of our circle, I see hands fly into the air all around; little hands reaching up toward me to ask for help, to find comfort, to be saved from the fire.

  When the boys in our covered wagons are settled into their bunks for the night, Jason finds me by the dying campfire and sits down on the log next to me.

  “Nice work tonight,” he says.

  “Thanks.” I smile and peer back into the flames.

  “You really got into that story. The kids loved it. You’re good at that.”

  He’s right. I am good at it. More than once Dad has told entire churches full of people how proud he is of me when I help Mom teach Good News Club, how I win boys and girls to Christ; how if you train your kids right, they’ll be able to train others.