Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me.
John 14:1 (NIV)
Believe Also in Me
The waiting area at a denture clinic has a row of chairs, a rack of pamphlets about adhesives, and a glass case with a row of plaster casts in it, every one of them somebody’s mouth. She’s in for the refit. He drove her, because he lives two houses down and is retired, and she gave up the car in the spring.
He can’t sit with it. He tells her she’ll get used to them, and that his aunt had a set and ate corn on the cob with them right up to the end. He says it’ll be fine four times before her name gets called.
She asks after his knee. She tells him the lot out back is free after ten so he won’t have to feed a meter. Nothing in the morning is going to happen to him, and she talks him through it anyway.
Do not let your hearts be troubled, he says, and then, you believe in God, believe also in me. Judas has already gone out into the night. Peter has just been told he’ll disown him three times before the rooster crows. The man saying it is hours from being arrested, and he says it to the people at that table with the least to lose.
So the comfort comes from the side of the table where the arrest is coming, and it arrives with an instruction pointing back at the one who gives it. Believe also in me. I’d like to know what his own heart was doing while he said it. He said it anyway, to the men still at the table.
The glass case has a card in it, hand-lettered, saying the casts are for teaching. A woman comes out from the back and sits two chairs down to wait for her ride. She’s got the new ones in and she hasn’t said a word since she stood up. He quits talking.
A Prayer to Remember
Jesus, you said it at that table, hours before they came for you. I’ve taken comfort from people with nothing behind it, and I’ve handed the same thing out cheap. I keep my heart troubled where I can watch it, because watching it feels like managing it. Take it off me and hold it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
