There it was again…that incessant tapping on her shoulder. This was becoming an annoying habit. She was intensely interested in her new lab partner and would normally love chatting with him, but in the middle of chemistry class? “Gimme a break,” she thought. “You’re going to get us both in trouble!” This second sentence she hissed under her breath, while not completely turning her head away from the front of the class where Mr. F stood droning on to the bored and sleepy students in the afternoon class. The dreaded Mr. F thought he was god and meted out punishment accordingly with the slightest infraction. The girl wanted at all costs to avoid becoming a laughing stock at the mercy of Mr. F!
Tap, tap. “What?” hissed the girl. “You ever heard of the Baptism of the Holy Spirit?” returned her lab partner. “No!”, she shot back. A minute or two later… “You ever heard of speaking in tongues?” “Yes,” she answered, getting a bit nervous with the trend of this conversation. “My mother told me to stay away from people who do that”. She did not tell him that whenever her mother told her about the Pentecostals who would occasionally hold tent meetings in the field near her mother’s home where she grew up, it was always with a certain wariness, giving the impression that these were very strange people indeed. In fact, the girl got the definite impression that these people were likely quite mentally unstable.
It was the height of the Charismatic Movement, but the shy girl had not paid much attention to what it was all about. Indeed, in her mainline church, nothing much was ever said about it, at least that the girl was aware of. So, when HE started whispering about it in chemistry class, she was clueless.
Tap, tap… Not again! “What now?” she pleaded. “Did you know I speak in tongues?” came back the innocent reply. Horrified, the girl turned back to the front of the room, without giving a reply. What reply could there be? She was now in a real dilemma. Here she was seriously interested in this dreamy guy, with good prospects of this becoming a real relationship and now he had just confessed to being mentally unstable! She felt heart broken. What was she going to do?
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