The phone rang at 9:00 that Sunday morning, and I was not really in the mood to be awakened by anyone, especially Daryll and his incessant "church talk". I knew the day was going to be hell from then on. It always was when Daryll called.

"Hello, it's 9:00 in the morning, I'm asleep, so it better be good." Sure, I was rude, but I could answer my phone that way if I wanted to. It was, after all, my telephone.

"Wake up, Jelani. Church starts in an hour and 15 minutes, and we want to get a good seat. The service is always packed at 11:15."

"I'm really not in the mood to go to church today, Daryll." I didn't feel like hearing two and a half hours of dry, boring church music, and then listen to some preacher tell me about how I was going to hell after asking me for my last dollar. I wanted to roll over and sleep until about 12, after which I would watch the basketball game with a beer in one hand and my girlfriend in the other. However, Daryll was not to be deterred today with my normal excuses.

"You're never in the mood to go to church, Jelani. Tough. Today I'm not taking no for an answer."

"I don't have anything to wear." I was desperate for a way out. He and I both knew I had more suits in my closet than anything else. It was one of the hazards of going to a private school.

"Come in what you have on. The Lord said 'Come as you are,' after all."

"Yeah, whatever. Let me stroll into the church in my underwear."

"You said you'd come to church with me one day, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I did. So?"

"Well, today is one day. No more excuses. I'll pick you up at 10:30, and you'd better be ready." Before I could protest, he had hung up. Great. I was in for a very boring morning.

At 10:32 exactly, Daryll shows up at my house in a dress. Well, at least it looked like a dress. He called it a "choir robe", whatever that was.

"I didn't know that men wore dresses in the choir."

"It's not a dress," he said to me for the 10th time that hour, sounding rather irritated. "It's my choir robe, and everyone in the choir wears one." I really didn't mean to bug him about it, I was just trying to tease him a little.

"Who knows?" he said to me. "Maybe one day you'll be wearing one."

Fat chance.

We arrived at church without incident, partially because there was no one on the road, and, according to Daryll, because he had done something he called "anointing the car." I had seen him do this before. It consisted of taking a bottle of oil and getting it all over the car, the tires, and the steering wheel while praying a mile a minute. I really had no idea how he could connect a bottle of Crisco with us not getting into an accident, but Daryll did things like that. He also did things like leaving me sitting third pew center in the middle of a church I�d never been to before while he walked off in his overglorified dress to sing with the choir.

Like I said, it was not going to be a good day.

Daryll was always saying prayer changes things. I didn't believe him, especially after I prayed so hard that no one would sit beside me. A woman sat down next to me with a baby. A very loud baby that seemed to like my tie. At any rate, for the next 20 minutes I had to contend with a brat that cried every time I moved my tie out of his mouth, and a woman who was asking me all sorts of questions.

"Hello, son. Are you having a blessed day?" What the world was a blessed day?

"I guess so."

"Well, my name is Carol Davis, and this little one here is Corey." Corey grabbed my tie, and proceeded to place his hard won prize in his mouth. "I just want to officially welcome you to Holy Temple. What's your name?"

"Jelani."

"Well, welcome Jelani. It's so nice to see more brethren coming to the church, especially nice young men like you. So many of our young men are in bondage to the world's system, it's nice to see one that's on fire for God."

This lady was missing a few screws. I couldn't understand what she was saying, anyway, so I just played along while the baby made a slobber rag out of my $25 dollar silk tie.

"Well, Jelani, anytime you need something, you just call me, ok?"

"Alright." Yeah, whatever.

I thought I was going to be safe when the service started. I should have known that you're never safe as a church hater in a church service. Not only was Carol Davis the mother of the spit machine, she was also the leader of the Hallelujah chorus and the Amen corner. Every song she had to get up, which meant the baby lost its death grip on my tie and began to wail. Every word that was said, she had to say Amen to at least 4 times. But the worst thing was the Hallalujah's. She didn't just say it, she shouted it at the top of her lungs in a falsetto voice that sounded like Mickey Mouse with a chest cold.

I was ready to go.

I must admit, though, when Carol shut up and the baby fell asleep, I actually enjoyed the singing. It was kinda nice. Especially that last song they sang about God loving the world so much that he sent his son to die. Daryll sang the lead to that one, and he looked like he was about cry. In fact, after he finished singing, there wasn't a dry eye in the place, mine included. He did rather well for a man wearing a dress. I felt the whole concept was a little farfetched, but it was kinda nice to think that someone would love the world enough to die for it. However, the fun part was about to end.

"Please open your Bibles to the book of Romans, chapter ten. I will be reading verses 9 and 10." The church was filled with the sound of rustling pages. I, of course, didn't even have a Bible at home, so I was looking kind of stupid. Of course, Carol was happy to share her "sword" with me.

"I see you left your house without your sword," she said to me in a conspiratorial whisper. "Don't feel bad, we all make mistakes. You can use mine." I had to fight the urge to look for a large knife when she "sword". I had always thought a Bible was a book. Would I ever understand these church people?

"Please stand for the reading of the Word," said the minister, and the whole congregation rose. "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. May the Lord add a blessing to the readers, hearers, and doers of His word. You may be seated." The congregation sat down. "Church, pray with me as I use as my sermon topic 'What Must I Do To Be Saved?'" There was a chorus of Amens and Hallelujahs, and even one "Where ya goin, preacha?" I took it all in stride. I didn't know what being saved was, anyway. All I knew was what Daryll had told me aeons ago, something about telling God all my sins and then giving up all the fun stuff in my life. I prepared myself for a nap.

"Now, when most people think of the word "saved", they think of being rescued from danger. They think of being taken out of situation in which their lives are in danger, and they cannot rescue themselves. Most people in the world do not feel that their lives are in peril, they do not feel that they are in a danger zone, they do not think that there is anything to be "saved" from. They do not feel there is any reason for them to accept salvation.

"In these perilous times, people have been conditioned to believe that religion is a joke. Church is a place where religious fanatics congregate and try to coerce so called "normal" people to give up all their fun activities. It's a boring place your mother makes you go to where you have to dress up and give up a dollar in the offering plate so the pastor can get a new car. "Normal" people don't go to church. As the younger generation says, "cool" people don't go to church. They don't believe it's necessary, and they certainly don't think its worthwhile. These people don't see the use in religion because they don't see how religion can work for them. And they are absolutely right. "Religion" isn't going to help them at all." I was starting to get a little uncomfortable. This man seemed to be reading my mind, and that wasn't good. He sounded like me, and I knew it wouldn't last long. I woke up a little. If this minister was going to step on my toes, I was going to be awake long enough to hear him do it.

"What exactly is "religion"? It's nothing more than ritual perfumed in the guise of worship. It's doing the same thing over and over again in order to be sanctified. Some people call it "going through the motions." What most people don't realize is that merely "going through the motions" is meaningless. There is no change in the person's life because not only is their heart not in what they are doing, but most of the time, they don't even know why there are doing it anyway. When these people discover that these rituals aren't doing anything for them and that there is no power in their machinations, they leave "religion" behind. It simply doesn't work." By this time I was on the edge of my seat. This minister was saying everything I had thought for years. I just didn't see the point of doing or not doing all these things that really shouldn't matter anyway. Nothing would change if I didn't drink my beer or have sex with my girlfriend. My life would still go on the way it always did. I would just be missing my beer and my girlfriend.

"The thing to realize is that a person cannot rely on a ritual. They can't put their trust in a set of rules. A person needs to rely on a source of power for anything to be done. "Religion" focuses so much on ritual that the true source of power is forgotten. The only way that "religion" can work is if ritual is done as a means to get to God, not as a substitute for getting to God.

"Everyone, regardless of what they may tell you, has a need in their hearts and souls to discover if any power greater than themselves is out there. We all have a need for direction, to find out why situations in our lives happen the way they do. This is why people turn to astrologers and zodiac signs, why people call Dione Warwick and her Psychic Friends. This is why people turn to meditation and yoga and the search for Nirvana. They are searching for some way to explain life. They turn to these things for answers and all they find is more questions." Boy, was this man on target! I was still wary, though. He still sounded too much like me.

"After we turn to all these things, we discover that the pleasure they bring is transitory. It just doesn't satisfy. In our confusion, we turn try to escape, to blot out of our minds the fact that we can't seem to find any sense of direction. Some of us turn to sex, drugs, alcohol, and any other activity that makes us forget the quest we are on while giving us a momentary pleasure. Some of us become workaholics, on an endless quest for money and power. Some of us just become so suicidal, we feel life has nothing to offer us. We're just walking wounded at this point." The minister grabbed his microphone and began to pace the floor. "We're looking for something, anything, to fill the void in our hearts, and nothing is working.

"Then, we come upon another problem. We can't stop what we're doing. We're having sex and drinking alcohol, and running the streets, but we can't stop. We begin to feel guilty. We begin to feel dirty. We start to desire something that we have no name for, something that will come into our lives and clean up the mess we've made of it. We need something to give us direction and purpose. We want something that works. Now we realize that we do need to be "saved", we have something to be saved from. Ourselves."

"We need to be saved from floundering to death in a world that can�t seem to give us answers. We realize we can't go through life alone. We can't direct ourselves, we can't fill the emptiness in ourselves with sex and drugs and money, we can't go through life feeling useless and powerless. We need something to save us and we already know that religion doesn't work, so what do we do? Where do we turn to? We need someone to help us, someone to save us!� The preacher was in the front of the church with eyes filled with tears. There was a look of sheer desperation on his face. Suddenly he stopped and turned his anguished face towards the heavens. �What do I have to do? WHAT MUST I DO TO BE SAVED?" By this time the preacher was yelling. I didn't know what to do with myself. I was in tears. What this man was saying sounded so much like my life, and I didn�t know how to handle it. I didn't want to think that my whole lifestyle; my beer, my girl, everything was a means of escape. What was I supposed to do?

The minister sermon suddenly became very personal. "I've tried Buddhism and it didn't work. I couldn't seem to reach Nirvana,� he said, by this time he was pacing the floor in front of us. You could see the questions in his eyes. It was almost as if he was telling us his life story, he looked so serious. Maybe he was.�I tried Hinduism and that didn't work. There was no power there to change anything in my life. I tried Islam and that didn't work. I just couldn't find the joy I needed. I tried Christianity and even that didn't work. Sitting in a pew on Sunday morning didn't work. I tried everything I could think of, isn't there anything out there that can save me?�

He stopped pacing and looked at the floor with an utterly broken expression. �I�m tired of crying myself to sleep at night. I�m tired of going to bed with man after man, woman after woman and not finding the love I need. I�m tired of drowning my troubles in a bottle of whisky. I�m tired of working from can�t see in the morning till can�t see at night and still not finding any purpose. I�m tired of putting people down to make myself look good. I�m tired of feeling guilty, tired of feeling lonely, tired of feeling dirty. I�m tired of living my life this way. What am I supposed to do? What�s left to try?�

People in the audience were crying now. Even Carol Davis was in tears, whimpering �Thank you, Jesus,� over and over again. She wasn�t the only person. All over the church people were crying and moaning their thanks and praise to Jesus.

The minister looked up and his eyes swept across the crowded church. Suddenly, they locked with mine. "If you think that way, I have a question for you. Have you tried Jesus?"

It was on the tip of my tongue to say yes. Sure, I had tried Jesus. I was here this morning, wasn't I? But then I began to think about it. I had certainly tried church. Was trying Jesus the same thing? Somehow I didn't think so.

"Have you tried Jesus, the son of God who died on the cross for our sins? Have you tried the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? Have you honestly tried coming to him and asking him to save you?" I didn't know what to think. I really didn't know.

"If nothing else has worked, I dare you to try Jesus. If you need power in your life, I dare you to try Jesus. If you need someone who can take you out of the meaningless diversions you're in and give you a reason for living, I dare you to try Jesus. If you want to be made clean, want to be made whole, want to stop feeling guilty; I dare you to try Jesus because Jesus succeeds where religion fails. Jesus can give you purpose, all you have to do is ask him. Jesus can give you joy, all you have to do is ask him. Jesus can do what you thought nothing else can do. Jesus can save you. All you have to do is ask him.

"So many of you today are asking "What must I do to be saved?" All you have to do is ask him. Just ask him. Just look up to the heavens and tell him you believe in his power, you believe in his glory, you believe he is the son of God and the only one who can save you, and then ask him. That's all you have to do." The minister was still looking at me, and his eyes seemed to look straight into my soul. I couldn�t seem to break that gaze for anything.

I couldn't take anymore. I had to go. It couldn't be that easy. Besides, all of a sudden I felt so uncomfortable. I just felt like fire was running up and down my spine, and all of a sudden, I couldn't take being there any longer. I excused myself from Carol Davis and Corey the Spit Machine and left the church almost at a run. Daryll met me in the lobby.

"Are you ready to go?" he asked me.

"Yeah, I'm ready," I told him.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah, I'm ready to go, so let's just go, alright?" I headed for the door. I don't know why I wanted to leave so bad all of a sudden, especially since I was on the edge of my seat a minute ago. I just had to get out of there.

Daryll asked no more questions. He just followed me out of the church.

We rode for the next five minutes in silence. I just didn't know what to say to him. Finally, he asked me the question I'd been waiting for.

"Did you enjoy the service, Jelani?"

"It was o.k. I liked the singing, especially the song you sang, Daryll. You sounded great, man." He smiled when I said that. "But the sermon didn't make much sense to me." Who was I kidding? It made perfect sense. I just didn't want to admit it.

"What didn't you understand?" Daryll asked me.

"I just don't see the point!" I said a little violently. I even surprised myself with how angry I sounded. "How the hell is Jesus going to make any difference?"

"How is Jesus going to make any difference?" Daryll echoed me slowly. He turned towards me for just a second with a look of incredulity on his face.

That one second was all it took. Daryll had taken his eyes off the road, and neither one of us was paying attention to the road. The next thing I know, I hear a tremendous crash and feel the worst pain I had ever felt in my life. Daryll instantly started screaming �Jesus!� Somehow, I knew what had happened. In his shock Daryll had crossed the yellow line and we had run head on into another car.

I just knew this day was going to be hell.

"In the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus, in the name of Jesus," was all I could hear Daryll saying. He repeated it until I thought he had gone crazy. I didn't know how badly he was hurt. I couldn�t move, I couldn't turn my head to see him, and I couldn't feel anything but a pounding in my head. My whole body seemed to be gone. Suddenly I heard Daryll open the door on his side.

I started to panic. Daryll, don't you dare leave me in this car!

"Jelani, can you hear me?"

I nodded my head yes. It was getting harder to hear anything, though. Things were getting blurry and out of focus. I started to get scared. How badly was I hurt, anyway? And why was Daryll crying?

"Jelani, can you talk to me? Say something!"

"I'm here, Daryll." It came out as a whisper. "What happened?"

"I don't know, Jelani. I'm getting help. They called the ambulance."

"Am I gonna be ok, Daryll?"

"I don't know, Jelani, I just don't know." He started crying again.

Something very strange came into my mind. Something about that preacher's sermon from that morning. "Daryll, can Jesus save me from this?"

"Jesus can save you from anything, Jelani, if you ask him."

"Will Jesus let me die?" My voice sounded so weak. I couldn't see anything now, and I could barely hear Daryll's voice when he answered me.

"No, Jelani, he won't let you die. You're not gonna die, Jelani."

"No, Daryll, it's not going to make any difference anyway. I can�t feel anything, I can�t, I can�t move. I�m going to die right here in this car. What good can Jesus do me now?"

"Don't you dare say that, Jelani! How come you think I'm still standing here, Daryll, and you're. . . " He broke down again. "Jelani, Jesus just saved my life. I was in the car with you and I'm fine. He protected me! Don't ask me what Jesus can do, you're looking at it right now!"

" I�m gonna die, Daryll."

He didn�t seem to want to hear that. "No, Jelani, you're not gonna die."

"You really think Jesus can help me, Daryll?"

"If you ask him, Jelani."

"Why wouh he wanna hep me?" My voice was sounding farther and farther away, and I couldn't seem to make my tongue work anymore. "E�en if he couh hep me, wha hav I eva dun fo him to hep me?"

"Jelani, Jesus loves you. He loves you. He doesn't want to see anything happen to you. Jelani, can you still hear me?"

I was drifting away into nothingness, and it felt kinda nice until I realized that I might not wake up. I just felt myself going farther and farther away. �I scaed, Daryll. I doe wanna die.�

�You�re not gonna die, Jelani.�

�I scaed, Daryll.� My voice rose in frustration. �Hep me, pease, Daryll, hep me!�

�I�m trying, Jelani. The ambulance is on its way.�

�Are yu sue Jesus can hep me, Daryll?�

�Just ask him, Jelani.�

I was really desperate. I had to try something. Daryll was right about one thing; he was walking around like nothing had happened, and I was stuck in this car. It couldn�t hurt to try, but there was just one problem. "Daryll, I doe no wha to say."

"Just say 'Jesus, save me.' He'll understand� I couldn't hardly talk, but somehow, I made my lips form the words. "Jesus, sa me. Jesus, sa me. Jesus, sa me." Behind me, I heard Daryll praying.

"The ambulance is here, Jelani. You're gonna be ok."

"Jesus, sa me." I said. Then I could remember nothing else.

Some part of me still remembers the hospital. They said I had broken my neck so close to my brain that if it had been any higher, I would have died. The broken bone was pinching my spinal cord, they said. I guess that's why I couldn't feel anything except my headache. They had to do surgery to repair the bone, and I was scared that after all I had done, I would still die. All I could say as they wheeled me to the operating room was 'Jesus, save me.' Somehow, I knew he would hear my prayer, and he did. I lived.

A month later, I was awakened at 9:00 in the morning by my telephone ringing. It was Daryll again with his incessant "church talk". But this time, he didn't have to coerce me. I got up, and when he picked me up at 10:32 exactly, I was waiting outside.

�Look at me, � I said as he pulled up in my driveway with a brand new car. �I look just like you, standing out here with a bottle of Crisco and an overglorified dress on.�

"It's not a dress, it's a 'choir robe', " said Daryll. "And I told you one day you'd be wearing one." He looked at me hard. "It's really good to see you, Jelani. It's truly a miracle. Knowing Jesus does you a lot of good, I can tell you."

I fingered the scar on my neck, the only reminder I had of that day when I found out exactly what good Jesus could do.

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