Where was the balancing point?

I just got back from the fourteenth century. I listened, consecutively, to Ken Follet's "The Pillars of the Earth" and "World Without End." They seem to be fairly logical presentations of life in those times. There were no safety nets for anyone, it seems. If you were a serf tied to the land, your fortunes depended on your lord. If you were a lord, your fortunes depended on your king. And how kings came to their positions seems to have been a mixture of politics as nasty as today's, who your family was connected with, and what promises you made to whom. The focus of both books of course was on the priory of Kingsbridge, with its monastery, building the cathedral, adding the nunnery and the hospital. The time spread is over two hundred years. In today's terms, I can see all those events taking place in ten or twenty years. The community religious life fascinates me - perhaps because it winnows out the distractions of family life and social activities and concentrates solely on God. Convent and monastery life was not perfect of course, people are people, and in those days you didn't always wind up as a nun or monk because you had a calling for it - you may have been an extra son or an unmarried daughter or widow with nowhere else to go.
I'll never know who my ancestors of the fourteenth century were - over seven hundred years, everyone with an British background, or European background for that matter, will have many ancestors in common. What impresses me is that all of us alive today are descendants of people who survived backbreaking work, poor nutrition and abysmal medical help, long enough at least to reproduce. Of course they lived shorter lives, but think of a world that was not crowded with people, where so much was still undiscovered, where the land could be so beautiful and unspoiled.
I know it is romanticism to wish for a time in which life was not beset with the noise and static of bad news 24/7, people everywhere, and a lot of them nasty, and a bewildering array of things that must be done. I know the life of long ago was much more tenuous and security fragile or nonexistent. Still......
Where did we pass that point of balance where life is safer and longer for many, versus the time when all the world could be God's garden, even though you might be a serf with a short and painful life.
When did we pass that balance point, and did anyone even notice?

I'm being haunted by an altar call.......

As preface, I should say that I was brought up in the Baptist church, and my mother believed strongly that we should be there whenever the doors were open. I have some good memories of friends and teachers there, and some not so good memories of the attempts to make everyone an evangelist. As in walking the neighborhood and knocking on doors of people you don't know and asking anyone who answers if they have been saved. That was the ideal. I never did that. I always felt guilty about getting out of doing that. It felt like a sin to get out of that, and I figured I was going to hell.
It took a looooong time to realize several things: Doing that kind of thing is not my nature. It never has been. It never will be. My therapist says that's okay, so there! This particular haunting, or perhaps I should say flashback, takes me back to Sunday evening services. We always went to Training Union on Sunday evenings at 6. Thinking back on this now after forty years, I really can't remember what we did at training union. Sit and talk? At Sunday School we had a new study booklet every quarter and we definitely did lessons, but Sunday night must have been more laid back. Then at 7 we had the worship service - some hymns, a sermon, and the invitation hymn. (translate as altar call). The most frequently used hymn for this was "Just As I Am." We would go through all the verses of this at least three times while we were exhorted from the pulpit to remember that the Lord will come when we least expect it, you don't want to die with your sins on your soul, and everyone kept their eyes on the hymnal cause if you looked up the preacher might catch your eye and start exhorting in your direction - sometimes this led to a segue into singing "Oh Why Not Tonight."
Okay. It's been a long time since I lived and thought that way. I joined the Episcopal church when I married, and over the years I have found much comfort and strength there. This morning, we joined the other communicants at the rail and were waiting our turn for communion. The organist (a lovely and talented woman) is the first in line so she can go back and play softly till the choir gets back and they sing during the rest of communion. All was normal until she started to improvise on the song they were going to sing. The hair on the back of my neck stood up - I caught my breath - it was JUST AS I AM! No, no, I told myself, you are not sixteen years old, you are not back in Inglenook, you're not going to have to pin a red ribbon to your blouse when you go to school tomorrow so you can witness to anyone who asks you why you have a red ribbon on your blouse, Jesus loves you anyway and he knows you do the best you can, etc., etc., etc. Whew! Relief! It's only a song, right?
I've been hearing snatches of that song all afternoon. Phrases drift through my head and I realize "waiting not to rid my soul of one dark blot" is from THAT song.
I'm being haunted by an altar call.
Just thought I'd let you know.
That's all.