Pastor, in a gleaming suit, assuming a conqueror’s stride mounted the podium to begin the altar call. “God instructed me to do this” he had said on my first day in this church. It did not mean anything to me at the time; after all I was a first-timer, desperate to please Jenny, the charming girl who had invited me to her church. You know me, normally I won’t go to a church because of any girl, but Jenny wasn’t just any girl. If I wanted to drink the coconut juice I may as well have to crack the nut first. Jenny was not the kind of juice you could suck without doing some work and I was smart enough to know that. Ok, this is not about Jenny…

As I was saying, I just don’t get along with this ‘sowing seeds’ altar-call part of service. Otherwise everything else is cool with me. Pastor is really cool; you should hear this dude preach. Besides the fact that his wisdom reminds me of Solomon, he displays this sense of humor that reeks of the comedian, ‘Sam Loco’. I could do with those attributes; only if he did not do this altar call every Sunday. Most Sunday mornings when I awake with a stretch on my conjoined 6-spring mattresses, I fight this eternal battle of “should I go to church or not”. Don’t blame me; I spent almost 5 years of my life in the university barely going to church 5 times. But I never failed to do that while at home because in spite of dad not really being a fan of ‘going to church’, to him it was rebellion for the children not to go to church, so I normally went. This time around, no dad, no mum and no siblings to make me look like a devil if I did not go to church, but here I was, courtesy of Jenny’s charm, carrying this big bible, wearing my only suit, sweating from praising God and looking so pious.

And we all had to stand while Pastor did this ‘seed sowing’ parade. It seems a sin to sit ‘when your pastor is standing’. In fact, maybe it is because I recall on my second day in church, I sat while Pastor took the pulpit; I was born a rebel you know. The coarseness of his voice hit me. “Those of you sitting are you bigger than me?” He seemed to be staring directly at me while he asked his divine question. So I stood, unsure of the answer to his question. Today I knew better, of course right now I am standing, waiting to endure the ritual of ‘sowing seeds’.

“Who can give the Lord N1000?” pastor’s charismatic voice rang out. “N1000 for the Lord” he said with the seriousness John the Baptist proclaimed “repent for the kingdom of God is at hand”. He seemed to sense the reluctance of the congregation. Even the ‘happy givers’ seem to be getting bored with this everlasting ‘instruction from the Lord’. Well I knew my role. I had perfected it over three Sundays now – just wait out the whole process, it would not kill. Too bad we all – the givers and the watchers had to stand through the whole ritual.

“A tight hand is a tied destiny” he continued. Blackmail! I thought to myself. I had N1200 in my pockets, carefully separated. N1000 in the most difficult pocket to reach – the breast pocket of my suit and the N200 in my right hip pocket, in case I could not resist the temptation ‘to give to the Lord’ this Sunday, I did not want to use the N1000 mistakenly, so I did a ‘separation of powers’

Then the usual persons began to come out. Two assistant pastors, a deacon and a deaconess and Pastor’s wife – they always had N1000 to give! The rest of us watched, many waiting for their turn to give according to ‘their pockets’. You can’t really blame us, can you? I mean in a church of about 300 persons just over 6 are married. The rest of us are young people, mostly students, looking up to the hills for daily survival. Perhaps worse off is the fact I am a corps member still bearing the government a grudge over my paltry N9775 allowance.

Five persons had come out. “N5000 down” I thought to myself. If I couldn’t give I didn’t see anything wrong in doing a calculation of ‘what the Lord was getting’. At the least, this book-keeping exercise relieved my boredom.

Pastor obviously seemed unimpressed with the turnout of 5 persons for the N1000 bout, so he kept on talking about how “givers never lack”, how “your harvest depends on your seed” and all. I had heard all those before, and those were not going to make me relinquish the N1000 in my pocket, maybe the N200 but definitely not the N1000!

“N1000 cannot buy your life” he went on. “Yeah, but it can cook me a pot of soup” I mused to myself, surprising myself with a smile - I mean, how did I become so cynical? But in point of fact, ‘the soup’ was why I brought the money to the church in the first place anyways. I had to go to the market after service to get some materials for cooking that egusi soup condemned to last me for four days. So now you know what I mean? I couldn’t be waiting for Manna when God had given me N1000 already, could I?

“The Lord is telling me that there is one person here who has N1000 but is finding it difficult to give out” Pastor went on. I was not impressed with his determination. “I do not know why the Lord is insisting but I know there is a reason”, he said again. This really was tempting message from the Lord. I reached for my inner breast pocket, touched it and reassured myself that the N1000 was still there - good. I did not feel any guilt because I was certain the message from the Lord was not about me. It said someone had N1000 but merely had a difficulty in releasing it. I had N1000, true, but I had no difficulty in giving it out; shoot, I did not intend to give it out!

Then an assistant pastor ‘heeded the Lord’s message’. He walked to the platform with a crisp N1000 note. The way he held his head spelled ‘gloom’; he did not seem ‘a cheerful giver’ to me. Scam! I thought. The dude had given earlier. Ok, someone had to bail Pastor or …the Lord, which ever it was. Either ways, I had no qualms because the bail did not come from my pocket.

“N500 for the Lord”, Pastor now changed course. “O thank God, at least we are finally making progress” I thought.

You know the rest. It usually starts like there was no room for people like us, but eventually it comes down to “bring to the Lord whatever you have”, perhaps a classic case of ‘half bread is better than none’ or chin chin, or whatever folks say these days. However what you do not know is the drama that went on between here and there…you would have to wait for that anyways, like they say in those home videos: