Wham! Wham! Wham!
Whoever was knocking on my front door was serious about it.
I rolled over in the bed and tried to ignore the offending noise. It was a Monday holiday. A rare day for me. One when I had no obligation be anywhere or to do anything. A day when I could snooze just as long as my lazy old bod cared to.
Wham! Wham! Wham!
Somebody out front was determined to disrupt my slumber and to get my attention.
Maybe it’s my daughter and the grandkids, I thought. I had locked the storm door the night before, so their door knob key would have been useless.
Groaning inside at the very idea of leaving my snug bed, I heaved my hulk upright and snatched sleepily at a nearby pair of Bermudas. Thus barely modest, I trudged down the hallway and cracked open the door just as my unwelcome visitor began pounding on the glass again.
There on my porch stood a demure brunette I had often seen going door to door on our block. A pleasant-enough lady whose passion is to convert all the rest of us to her less-than-orthodox brand of Christianity.
“Lady,” I begged in what I hope was not too angry a tone, “this is the only morning in months when I could have slept in. Please go bother somebody else!”
She shrugged and walked away. To go try to save some other poor infidel’s lost soul.
I watched her retreat down my sidewalk as I closed and re-locked my door. Too wide awake now to go back to bed, I sat and mused about the ambivalence of my reaction to my erstwhile caller.
She had bugged me. No doubt about it. Like most modern suburbanites, I find my hackles rising when strangers invade my time and space with door-to-door or telephone solicitation. I can’t imagine a much less effective way to sell anything, including one’s faith.
But I had to admit that this good lady was out there trying to save souls. She cared enough about her faith and about her neighbors’ eternal fate to absorb the rebuffs of unshaven, tousle-haired, annoyed clods like me. On that laid-back holiday morning her zeal shamed me.
I hope she knows that I would have been just as irritated
that morning if she had been the