The one thing that brought Rosalyn a bit of comfort was her RE course.  One Monday, Mrs Nightingale taught the class about Pascal’s Wager.  It was an argument thought up by a famous mathematician, which probably accounted for how bloody soulless it was.

“Blaise Pascal argued that it was only logical to believe in God,” Mrs Nightingale told them, “His point was that, if you believe and it turns out to be true, you’ll get an eternity in Heaven.  Whereas, if you believe and it turns out not to be true, then you’ve lost nothing.”

Rosalyn put her hand up.  “But what if you decide to believe in the Christian God, but then you die and it turns out that the one true religion is Hinduism?”

Mrs Nightingale grinned.  “Good!  Remember that, and put it in your essay.”

Rosalyn did remember that.  And she also remembered that, if you forced yourself to believe that Al-Qaeda or those American preachers were right about God, and then you died and it turned out they weren’t, then you’d actually lost quite a lot.

*

Rosalyn and Oliver spent most weeks at Mum’s, which took some of the pressure off.  Still, even there, they got emails from Sally every couple of days.  They were forwards, mostly, stuff she’d got from her friends and sent to everyone in her address book.  Even Mum, who she probably knew would delete them on sight.

“I can’t believe I let that woman talk me into giving her my email address,” she’d say though gritted teeth, staring at the computer screen as if it had wronged her, “‘Sorting out the children’s schedule,’ my foot.”

Every so often, though, Rosalyn would get to the emails before Mum did, and, because she was apparently a total masochist, she’d feel compelled to open them.  And there would usually be at least one sentence that would feel like a punch to the stomach.

There are countless others who walk into our lives with that same look of desperation and exasperation on their faces.  They may never utter the words with their lips, but surely if we listen, we can hear their very lives crying out to us, “Can you help me find Jesus?”  That lonely recluse who lives down the road is crying out. So is that pregnant teenager. And the prostitute. And the drunkard.

Sally would probably add her grubby little heathen stepchildren and their mother to that list.   It wasn’t exactly flattering.

Funny how you can send a thousand ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord people think twice about sharing!

Rosalyn had a nasty feeling about those quotation marks.  Sally had never said so specifically, but jokes didn’t seem to be something she believed in.

If the Lord lays upon your heart to send this to more than four “4” people , you are truly blessed!

As far as she remembered, the Lord had never laid upon Rosalyn’s heart to do anything.  She didn’t even know what that would feel like.  It made her feel kind of inadequate, as if part of her wasn’t working properly.

 This is the simplest test. . If you love God and are not ashamed of all the marvelous things he has done for you…..  Send this to ten people and the person who sent it to you!

Oh, God…

“It’s unbelievable,” Mum would say, reading over her shoulder, “How can anyone believe in stuff like that, in this day and age?  It’s the Twenty-First Century, and all she wants is to pull us back into the dark ages.”

Rosalyn swallowed.  It was alright for Mum.  She could just be annoyed, then shrug it off and go about her day.  Rosalyn could talk to her about just about anything else, but not this.  How could she tell her that she was having a nervous breakdown over something Mum had dismissed as a fairy tale?  How could you possibly help somebody who told you that?

*

One of those emails had said, Jesus is waiting to help you out. Come and experience Him into your life, and you will wonder why you waited so long to accept Him as your Forever Friend!

Sometimes, Rosalyn wondered if she should do just that, if only to stop Sally’s voice from squawking away in her head day and night.  Just offer up a quick prayer to Jesus, and all her worries would be gone.  Never mind that she didn’t necessarily think Christianity was the one true religion.  Never mind that she wasn’t completely sure what “experiencing Him into your life” actually entailed.  Never mind that she couldn’t hear the phrase “Forever Friend” without thinking of that stationery with the teddy bears on it she’d had when she was seven.  If it put her mind at rest, if it meant that she could go a whole hour without feeling like there were cockroaches crawling around in her brain, then maybe that other stuff didn’t matter.

Then one weekend, Sally told Rosalyn that there were plenty of people who’d offered up that prayer to Jesus and thought they’d been Saved, but would get a nasty surprise on Judgement Day.  “They just go through the motions,” Sally told her, “There’s no sincerity.”

That was another sleepless night for Rosalyn.  If you didn’t already have enough sincerity, where were you supposed to get it?

(To be continued.)