Sonja grabbed Colton by the shoulders and tried to shush him. But he
was not shushable. Now nearly in tears, Colton twisted in her arms and
yelled at me, “He had to know Jesus, Dad!”
Sonja steered him away from the sanctuary, hustling him toward the front
doors of the church, with Cassie following. Through the glass doors, I could
see Sonja bent down talking to Cassie and Colton outside. Then Cassie
took her still-struggling brother by the hand and started walking the half
block toward home.
I didn’t know what to think. Where was this sudden concern over whether
a stranger was saved, whether he “had Jesus in his heart,” as Colton put it,
coming from?
I did know this much: Colton was at that age where if something popped
into his head, he’d just blurt it out. Like the time I took him to a restaurant in
Madrid, Nebraska, and a guy with really long, straight hair walked in, and
Colton asked loudly whether that was a boy or a girl. So we kept Colton
away from funerals for a while if we didn’t know for sure the deceased was
a Christian. We just didn’t know what he would say or do.