A one-act play

Room 304 of the Toll building, the critical care wing at Abington Hospital, only seemed like an ordinary patient room. It was in fact for four days the staging ground for a convergence of the powers of heaven and hell in a high-stakes contest.

Meet the players. There was my mother, as the uncommunicative bedridden stroke victim, benighted human occasion for the joining of forces.

There was the attending physician flocked by adoring medical students, moving as one body side to side on 12 legs, not accidentally resembling Jesus at the center of a circle of disciples. These were the gods. They told us (at first with gentle condescension when they doubted not our acquiescence) that there was very little hope.

Then there was yours truly, vexed in my spirit like Lot at the hubris of the phrase “very little hope,” but equally ineffectual. Like Lot, I liked the Lord, but I liked the world too. I spent Monday through Thursday fighting just to keep my faith above water and to keep at bay lust for the good opinion of the gods. Gods, as in: “before the gods I sing your praise” (Psalm 138:1, ESV).

But my faith did not “sing.” For that clarion quality, let me introduce my father, a simple man unaware of the long knives drawn around us in Room 304. He lacks theological sophistication, shall we say—which for the apostle Paul was all to the good. When he talked to the neurologists, I wished he sounded smarter; I thought it did not help our cause that he did not.

Most people say, if dropped into the middle of a battlefield, “I’m a Christian.” Or worse, “I’m a Presbyterian,” or, “I’m a Baptist”—always one or two steps back from the front lines of true testimony of Jesus. My father speaks of God to lettered men in the same ordinary speech in which a person might say, “The grass is green” and not expect an argument.

Satan loves the mealymouthed. They do no harm to his kingdom. I find the gods will let you say, “I am Episcopalian,” and smile upon your quaint religion. They even tell you they are glad that your faith helps you. This is the time to say, “No, you don’t understand. I’m not playing. What I am telling you is that Jesus is the only way and truth and life.”

Meanwhile, the angel of the dead hovers overhead, and all of heaven holds their breath to see who’ll win the battle for the souls in Room 304 of Toll.

Andrée Seu Peterson’s Won’t Let You Go Unless You Bless Me, regularly $12.95, is now available from WORLD for only $5.95.