Ten Days To Jesus: The Day I Admired The Faith I Didn’t Share

"You’ll see Jesus in ten days, I promise you,” said the boy-man, fixing his gaze on mine. I noticed him carefully. He looked like Jesus himself—long hair brushing his shoulders, a fine moustache crowning his lip. It seemed he had modelled himself on a portrait of Christ.

“He died for us!” he had proclaimed earlier, voice rising with conviction. Beside him stood another boy, silent and observant, watching my face for signs—of interest, of resistance, of anything. It was during one of my habitual walks around the lake that I first met them—my head bowed, eyes fixed on the path—so lost in thought I didn’t notice them until the older one stopped me. He asked how I was. I offered a string of polite, hollow phrases, those you learn when you’re new, foreign, and unsure. They had fishing rods slung across their backs and were headed to the lake.

“Do you believe in Jesus?” the older one asked suddenly.

I blinked. What made a good answer? “I’m a Hindu,” I said, surprised at how quickly the words assembled themselves.

“Oh,” he said, “isn’t Jesus considered one of the apostles in Hinduism?”

“Perhaps,” I said. I wasn’t sure.

He began speaking rapidly, slipping into a well-rehearsed rhythm: Jesus, sins, salvation, Christianity—words tumbling over each other like a sermon on fast-forward. The realisation came slowly, like mist lifting from the lake. What I’d only heard of was now unfolding before me. A missionary moment. I had been selected—brown skin, foreign face, walking alone, eyes downcast. A candidate for saving.

“Jesus loves us all,” he said with gentle finality. I found myself envying the surety of his belief. What had given him such conviction? Was it vision, revelation, voice? I wanted to ask. Not out of irony or argument but with the honest curiosity of a wanderer.

But instead, I smiled—less out of agreement than an instinct to be polite—and glanced at the younger boy beside him. He smiled too, shyly, a little embarrassed but reverent. He was watching his mentor as one might in training. Someday, he too would be called upon to deliver the same speech, to cast the same net over other non-believers.

The boys were fit and sporty, and they had come fishing. They had the physique of track runners. I felt a quiet need to release them from the burden of converting me, to let the older boy off the hook of his passion and the younger one from the uneasy task of witnessing it.

I said something vague, murmured thanks, and moved on. They turned away, searching for the right edge of the lake to cast their lines. The older boy was showing the younger one how to bait the hook. Were they brothers? Or fellow churchgoers?

From across the lake, I watched them. This was the America I had been told about—fervent, evangelical, certain. Still, it surprised me. Surprised me to encounter it not in some grand church, but here, on the soft dirt path by a lake. Stopped mid-step by two boys—not quite men—and offered a prophecy: that in ten days, I would see Jesus.

But the strangeness of it didn’t strip away its beauty. There was wonder in their pairing: the preacher and the pupil, spending a quiet afternoon searching—for fish, for faith, perhaps for something they couldn’t name.

As I walked home, the clouds thickened. Rain began to fall—fat drops, warm and slow, soaking into the earth.

Glancing back toward the lake, I saw the boys still there, rods extended into the deep water. The rain didn’t seem to trouble them. They were still. Focused. Driven by an intent I couldn’t quite name, yet admired.

And quietly, without telling anyone, I prayed—not for Jesus, but for the quiet certainty they carried inside them.