Sinner’s Prayer

“You are made of dirt,” she said. “A mere speck beneath God’s footprint. And to dust you shall return.”

It was a sunny summer afternoon at the kitchen table. Andria had been four at the time. But she still remembered how pretty the ribbons of light were, shifting over her mother’s homework assignments in the wood.

Nana covered them with a Bible. “You were born wicked, my sweet girl…even though you truly are the sweetest thing.” She took Andria’s fingers and folded them over the Bible. They were pretty and pink—long before she started picking at them. “But being sweet isn’t enough. It won’t rid you of your wickedness. There is someone who died for your sins and it goes like this: For God so loved the world…”

When it was over, Nana was the proudest Andria had ever seen or would ever see of her again. After she closed her eyes and prayed the specific set of words like an incantation, Nana hugged and kissed her— exclaiming with hallelujahs that Andria’s name was now written down in the Lamb’s Book of Life. She wouldn’t spend eternity in torment; she’d prayed the sinner’s prayer. But in her four-year-old brain, Andria still struggled to understand how Jesus, a giant God, could fit inside her heart.

“Do you feel any different?” Nana asked. 

The sunlight shifted over Andria’s pretty pink nails.

“Yes,” she lied. “I’m full of light.”