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Harvest of Souls
The
corn is harvested,
Chopped and blown into silos;
Hay bales stacked in the barn;
Potatoes heaped in the root cellar.
It’s revival season, time for the
harvest of souls.
The evangelist comes from way up state,
Comes for a weeklong series,
Sermons each evening with enough hellfire
and damnation
To cause sleepless nights
For those, like me, not born again.
Everyone but me, it seems, knows
it’s my time.
At fourteen, my soul is ripe for harvest.
My parents, the entire congregation,
Hold their breath in prayerful
anticipation.
Each night I sit through sermons,
Through invitation hymns…
“Just as I Am,”
“Softly and Tenderly Jesus is
Calling,”
“I Surrender All.”
On the other side of the church
I see Henry, a boy about my age.
“Poor slow Henry,”
My mother always says.
Henry smiles as he strings Cheerios on
red yarn,
Paying no attention to the evangelist
As he roars his warning about the fate
Of those not born again,
His face flushed with the exertion.
I envy Henry.
Like the children who gathered up front
Before the sermon to hear the
minister’s wife tell the story
Of Jesus’ miracle with loaves and
fishes,
Henry is innocent,
Not doomed to eternal flames
By a merciful God.—Mary Alice Hostetter
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