Me and My Dad

We almost always went to church on Sundays, my Dad, my Mother, my two sisters, my brother and I. But this particular Sunday was different and very strange. It was first off - just me and My Dad, guess the rest of the family was sick or something, I really don't recall; I was all of nine years old. But it was odd, just being there sittin on the pew of this big Southern church, sharing the hymnal with just Dad, no one to snicker with, no one to rattle the paper bulletin with to draw the wrath of this Dad, just me and My Dad. And you know, it was kinda nice. I had his full attention, but it got better, even better towards the end of the service. You know what? Everyone grew quiet as someone ran up the podium where Brother Jimmy was preachin' the sermon and whispered in his ear very excitedly. He calmly closed his Bible and said in a very serene voice, "If everyone would very orderly make your way slowly out of the church one row at a time, we will explain why later." Everyone, including me and My Dad, did! This was shocking, to leave church before the sermon was over! What was up? Back in the 1970s, terrorism was a word usually heard rarely and it was always across the ocean somewhere in a "fer-in" country, but today something akin to that had struck in our little town, in our Southern Baptist church, and it was called a "bomb threat." As we slowly filed out, I asked my Dad what that meant? He said and smiled so as not alarm me at all, "That means someone had called and threatened to blow up the church and us in it!" Well, my eyes grew wide and his next words startled and shooked me to the core, "It's okay, he said, "we would have gone to heaven together." I wasn't so sure, I certainly liked the heaven part, and I would've gone anywhere with my Dad, but I did not have plans for an early departure into heaven THAT day. Nevertheless, we left and went home and had the terror had its way that day, it would've been JUST me and My Dad out of the family that day, out of the house without the rest, just the two of us, just me and My Dad . . . .