Chapter 40

'Berto

It was beginning to make sense. It wasn't just that Toni's words were reasonable, and her analogy rational, and everything in agreement – as far as he could tell – with the Bible. It seemed as though his mind were operating on a higher plane than usual, that he was seeing things he normally couldn't, understanding things that usually were above his ability to comprehend.

"All right," he said, relishing the feeling of her hand in his hair and the sound of her soft Hispanic voice in his ears. "Say, for the sake of discussion, that God saying that you have to come through Jesus is all right, that it's not being mean and hard-hearted."

"It isn't. In fact, let me quote something to you. It's one of the verses I learned as a child, the ones that are now coming back to me. 'The one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out.' Everyone who comes to God through Christ, He will receive. Yes, Christianity is exclusive in saying that you have to come through Jesus, but if every single person comes to Him, God will receive every single person. The only reason God hasn't saved everyone, is that not everyone has come to Him through Christ."

It actually made sense to him. "So the only thing that keeps me from being like you is that I don't come to Jesus?"

"Exactly."

A sudden burst of excitement hit him, and he sat up. Sitting on the edge of the sofa, he felt Toni's hand on his shoulder. "Do you think I could come to God right now, if I came through Jesus?"

He felt her hand tighten, but her voice was as gentle and soft as ever. "I know you could."

"I don't know how."

"I'm not a preacher, 'Berto. I'm barely keeping up with you here. But I remember reading something when I was young. There was an English preacher named Charles Spurgeon – Tyrone mentioned him in the meeting – who was in the same sort of situation when he was in his teens. And he wound up one snowy day at a different church from the one he'd planned to go to, and the storm was so strong that the pastor couldn't make it. So an old, uneducated man got up to preach, and he used Isaiah 45:22 as his text: 'Turn to Me and be saved, all the ends of the earth.' In the King James Version, which was all there was at the time, it says 'Look unto me.' And that uneducated preacher said something very profound – looking is just looking. You don't have to be learned, and you don't have to put forth great effort, and you don't have understand every detail. You just look." She paused, and then said, "Look at me, Roberto George Vargas."

He did, and the light burst around him. "You mean that's it?"

"I mean that's it. Look to Jesus. Look away from yourself, look away from what you can do, look away from what others can do for you, look away from the church. Just look to Jesus. I told you to look at me, and you just looked, that's all. Look to Jesus."

He turned his head back forward, but he didn't see the coffee table, or the television, or the darkening street outside. He saw ... he wasn't sure what he saw.

Toni's voice came again, very soft, and he knew she was guiding him as best as she knew how. "Look to me – I am in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane for you. Look to me – I am bearing beating and scorn for you. Look to me – I am dying on the cross for you. Look to me – I have risen from the dead for you." She stopped, and when she spoke again her voice was thick with emotion. "Look, 'Berto - look!"

And he did. He didn't know how, but he looked back 2,000 years to a cross on a hill, and on that cross was a Man. He knew from his discussions and from the sermons he'd heard these past three weeks that the Man on the cross had never sinned, and was the only truly innocent victim in all of history. That Man was dying in Roberto's place – not merely in the place of some vague notional person, but in the place that Roberto Vargas ought to have been in. "I ought to have hung on that cross," he said, and his voice seemed to come from a distance. Toni's hand on his shoulder tightened, and it was real, more real than his voice. "Toni, I should have died! But He died!"

"Yes."

"For me..."

"Yes."

"And if I look..."

"Remember the hymn we sang Sunday morning?" Her singing voice was as soft and gentle as the one with which she spoke. "'Trust and obey, for there's no other way... '"

"Trust..." And then came the final revelation, the last illuminating insight that led him over the hurdle of understanding. "Trust Him to free me. Trust Him to save me." Between church and his discussions with Toni, he'd picked up some of the terminology. "Trust Him to make me clean and whole and ... and good." And there, without further words, with Toni's hand a cherished weight on his shoulder, he trusted the One who was now, and forever would be, his Lord.

Toni

She put her arms around him and held him tightly, her face nestling into the curve where his neck and shoulder met. "There's nothing this special."

"No. Even loving you, and knowing you love me, doesn't touch it."

"I know what you mean, 'Berto. I experienced this when I was a child." She thought back to that day when she had first understood, and put her faith in the Lord Jesus. And she remembered the years after, when she'd told people about her faith. I witnessed to I don't know how many, but this is the first time I've seen the harvest. She felt tears in her eyes – not tears of sorrow, as they'd been so often over the past few years, but the tears of joy that were now common for her. And for the first person I lead to the Lord to be my earthly lord and husband is a treasure too precious for words.

'Berto turned in her arms, so that he could put his around her. "Did you know it would be like this? You know – this ... this glorious?"

"Yes. At least I knew how it was for me, and I couldn't believe it would be unimportant to you, if it happened."

"No wonder you wanted me to be like you, except for the burden you carried."

"And you helped me get rid of that burden." A memory came to her. "I don't know if you've ever heard of The Pilgrim's Progress, but it's an allegory of the Christian life, by a 17^th century preacher. He wrote it while he was in jail for refusing to get a government license to preach. There's a scene in the book where Christian – the 'pilgrim' of the story – comes to a hill with a cross on it, and as he looks at the cross the burden on his back falls off and rolls into an empty tomb. You've just experienced that very thing, and a couple of weeks ago I had a lesser version of it. I went through my conversion, as I've told you before, when I was a child, but that day in the conference room at church I had a sort of mini-conversion. I'd taken a new burden upon myself, and that day it too rolled off my back and into the empty tomb."

"What empty tomb is that, Toni?"

She chuckled. "It's part of your education – which will continue, 'Berto Jorge! It's the tomb where they buried Jesus after His death. You've heard of the resurrection, I imagine. In fact I know you have – it's come into at least one sermon you've heard, I know that for a fact. It's historical fact, 'Berto – they buried Him, and three days later He just wasn't there. And then people began to see Him. There were two walking from Jerusalem to a nearby town. There were the two women – I don't remember who one of them was, but the other was Mary Magdalene – who went to anoint His body. Eventually there was a group of 500 people who saw Him all at one time. When we Christians – that includes you now, my lord! – when we say that Jesus lives, that He rose from the dead, we mean it literally."