THESE [sharecroppers] know the Bible, know some kind of church, know what it means to pray long and hard. They also know in their bones what others talk about and speculate upon: They know and live out “resignation” and “estrangement.” They feel a certain soreness of mind and body. They know what it is to feel cursed by the rest of humanity. They know what self-doubt is, and abandonment. They sometimes wonder whether they are not now, right now, in Hell. Heaven is to them a constant vision—even as water is to a thirsty person crossing a desert.
The wife of a sharecropper in Alabama made that last comparison. She reminded me that her life and Christ’s are not unalike, which is not a presumptuous or blasphemous thought for her to have, but rather something for all of us to wonder about and maybe get nervous over, as perhaps Jesus Christ originally intended:
“You have to have Someone who will save you. A man like me works all the time and crosses all over the country trying to get by ... he’s going to need the Lord.” ...
In any event, they fight on, the people I have been writing about, and they continue to pray—most often very earnestly indeed. They forthrightly and with not a little desperation ally themselves with him who offers them hope, redemption, and another, sorely coveted chance.
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