After what would have seemed like a very long time on Earth, Ananias was slightly startled as Gideon came back through the door he had left
open. The case worker made a playful trumpet sound with his mouth as he crossed the threshold. By his general demeanor, one would guess that
either a major breakthrough had been made on his case, or the Boss had just thrown a surprise pizza party for all Middle Realm employees.
“OK Ananias,” he chirped as he dropped himself into his chair, rolling back a few inches in the process. “I have some bad news and some good
news. Which do you want first?”
Ananias, not surprisingly, was unprepared for such as question. “Uh…well, bad, I guess.”
“Yes, of course. The bad news is: you’re still dead.” Gideon delivered this news in the mock-serious tone a good doctor might have used, but the
dead man did not seem to get the joke. “Sorry, just a little department humor. Are you ready for the good news?”
“Yes, what is it?”
Now, for the first time, a broad, joyful, this-is-why-the-Big-Guy-put-me-here smile came to Gideon’s face.
“It’s in the room next door.”
Ananias dropped his gaze toward the case worker, his brow knit with confusion. Suddenly it exploded like a party favor, and his eyes lit up like
Roman candles. He did not get up from his chair right away, so Gideon, his hands stuffed in his pockets and leaning all the way back in his chair in
a pose of perfect professional satisfaction, tossed his head in the direction of the near wall, as if to say, “Go get ‘er.”
Only then did Ananias have the presence of mind to leap from his chair and bolt through the doorway, his heart pounding as if he had suddenly
come back to life.
After a few earthly minutes in which Gideon only heard the periodic bursts of laughter ringing through the hallway, Ananias and Sapphira came
bounding into the office arm-in-arm, giggling like newlyweds.
“Hey, there’s the happy couple!” he said as he got up to hug them both. Ananias gave him a couple robust slaps on the back, right between the
wings.
“Wow, man, I…I don’t know what to say! Did you know it was going to turn out like this?”
“I had a strong hunch. Everything you told me and everything in your files suggested that your love for each other was absolute and based in the
Spirit, not in the self. God looks for that kind of love in a couple, because he knows what will happen when it gets to heaven and all human barriers
fall away. There will be no limit to your love, no end to your ecstasies! You were just getting your minds hung up on one little human ambition
like so many people do, but I could tell your heart was in the right place.”
“Well I never knew that Sapphira thought I wanted the home by the sea. She only wanted to do it for me!”
“And all you ever really wanted was each other.” Gideon’s voice suddenly had that “proud parent” pitch that, for him, could only have been
vicarious, but genuinely so.
“Did you hear that we’re going to a Mediterranean villa anyway? I mean, we’re thrilled about it! But I hope we didn’t get any special treatment.”
“No, it is pretty standard for the folks in the Upper Realm to try to fulfill all earthly dreams once they’ve been surrendered. And actually, I put in
for it too. I think you two deserve it.”
“Aw man, thanks!” Ananias gave Gideon another pat on the back.
“Thank you, Gideon,” said Sapphira. Her voice was soft and sweet, the kind that melts in your ears, almost angelic in its own right. Gideon turned
to her and caught the full radiant beam of her deep blue eyes. They sparkled like gemstones.
“You’re welcome,” he said, then addressed them both again. “Now you kids know that you will be going to this villa to serve others, right?”
“Yes, definitely, we wouldn’t have it any other way!”
“I thought so. But I wanted to be sure. Some people think heaven is going to be all sitting by the pool and drinking martinis all day. In a lot of
ways, heaven is very much like the life you knew on earth, but you will have a state of mind and a state of the heart that is totally new. Everything
you do will be a spontaneous act of love, for God and for everyone, and you will feel all the love pouring back into you from all around. Every
moment you will feel newly born again, not just once. You will change forms many times, but you will never lose sight of your Beloved, and you
will never again fear that who you truly are can die. This is the eternal life that Jesus promised you. And now that you’ve crucified the false lives
you were leading before” –the case worker clapped his hands and rubbed them together—“it’s all yours.”
“Wow, we can’t wait!” said Ananias, who looked like a little kid about to leave school for the ultimate field trip.
“Well you don’t have to anymore, do ya? So let’s get you two going! Sapphira, I see you have your files already, so Ananias, I need you to take
these, and take a left out of here, and your next three lefts after that, and both of you drop your files off at the Incinerator window. Someone will
meet you there to run you over to the Liberation department where you will be fitted for wings, and you kids will be good to go. You’ll be getting
that airlift you dreamed about after all –only you’ll be doing the flying yourselves! So, anything else I can do for you guys?”
Ananias leaned forward to hug his case worker again. “Just keep up the good work, Gideon. This would never have been possible without you.
Thank you.”
“Hey, Godspeed you two,”said Gideon as they turned to head out the door. “And send me a postcard.”
The new angels left the room just as they had come in: arms around each other and laughing for joy. Gideon returned to his desk, stretching both
arms and wings as if an athlete preparing for the next contest. Soon another bewildered, newly dead human being would appear in the chair across
from him, wondering what went wrong and panicking that they would never see So-and-So again, and he would have to gently steer another soul
back to the presence of God. The “higher-ups” in the Middle Realm would be clamoring in his one ear to speed up the purging process and increase
productivity, while agents of the Lower Realm would be whispering in his other, hoping to trick him into putting up roadblocks for his clients so
they could meet their quotas. A tough job, he thought, but there was nothing in all of eternity he would rather do.
A haloed head appeared in the doorway.
“The Adam and Eve Misdirect, works everytime!”
Gideon looked up and saw the brightly lit face of his friend and colleague from the office next door. “Aloysius! I knew that was you, you ol’ dog.
C’mon in here.”
Aloysius, wearing the same all-white office attire –but with several blue pens inside a black pocket protector in his shirt-- his wings quite a bit
smaller and not as fully-plumed, walked up to the desk. They high-fived, then leaned forward for a hearty embrace. Aloysius plunked down in the
chair and put his feet up.
“Does that ever happen to you,” asked Gideon, “where you feel The Voice coming in and you can’t quite pinpoint who was behind it, but you just
know?”
“All the time. I don’t think I would break half my cases as quickly as I do without intervention from The Voice, and I almost never find out for
sure where it came from ‘til later. Of course, I’m no master egobreaker like yourself.”
Gideon smiled to show that he knew the compliment was genuine. Then, because he was not feeling very masterful that day, he arched his
eyebrows and exhaled deeply.
“Man, I really thought I was going to lose this guy. And over something so trivial! Until you told me what was going on in the other room, I
thought we were headed for a stalemate for sure. The A&E Misdirect was the perfect tactic."
“Oh, we’ll never get a better case than that. They were tailor-made for the Misdirect. It seems pretty rare to find a couple where both spouses are
so determined to protect each other at their own expense. But when I started telling Sapphira it was all his fault, hoo boy, she just about hit the
ceiling. She wanted to strangle me; I actually said to her, ‘Sapphira, you could stab me in the eye with this pen and it would not hurt me one bit, so
let’s focus that anger on your case, OK?’ It seemed to help.”
Gideon laughed. “Nothing so dramatic over here, but it had the same effect. I told him Sapphira was probably going to need some time in the
Lower Realm, and he actually said he wanted to go there with her.”
“Really?….Whoa. That’s intense.”
“Tell me about it. I didn’t even need to ask him about the place by the sea after that, but I did anyway, just to see his reaction. He must have
thought he was dealing with the biggest idiot!”
The veteran and the novice case workers shared a good, hearty laugh. “All part of the job, eh Gideon? Just like they said in training: ‘Bring ‘em in,
chop ‘em down, send ‘em up.’”
“Yeah, right, right.” Then Gideon turned to a more reflective posture, gazing down toward the desk. “So they both had the same dream, but each
of them only wanted to fulfill the other’s dream…and were willing to sacrifice themselves to see it happen.”
“Pretty amazing, huh?”
“I just…I think of all the self-centered bastards that come through this office, and how hard it can be to break them of the simplest, silliest little
attachments –all the stuff that gives humanity such a bad name—and then I see people like Ananias and Sapphira, and I see all the love they have
for each other…and I can almost understand why God made them that way.”
“I know what you mean. There is so much dysfunction in the way they think and the way they see each other, but in a strange way it makes them
need each other for fulfillment…and sometimes that actually seems to bring them closer to God. Like they’re created broken so they have to reach
beyond themselves to fix each other.”
“Exactly. It seems crazy, but that is just what happens. It’s like, God gives them this enormous capacity for suffering, and we see so many of
them who don’t know God from a grapefruit when they get here because they only suffer within themselves. But there are always a few who
somehow manage to learn in that madhouse that the God-given purpose of suffering is to draw them out of themselves, and they learn to suffer for
others and not for themselves at all. That Jesus fellow sounds like the perfect example, and maybe someday everyone will catch on and live like he
did. Cuz man, you take a human being who has learned that on earth –even if they learn to reach out to just one other person in their earthbound
lives—and I swear, you have a person who sees God as clearly as any angel I know. Ananias said something toward the end that really struck
me.” Gideon looked upward and rubbed his chin as he sought the exact words in his mind. “He said, ‘If we could all see in everyone what I saw
within my wife, there would be no need for heaven.’”
“Amen to that. May Godspeed the arrival of that day on earth. No more Middle and Lower Realms, that’s for sure.”
“Absolutely. I mean, there’s your ‘Messiah’ right there! That is the Golden Age they are all waiting for in a nutshell. But I think what struck me
about it –what I’ll always remember about it—is how he said it. It came from a place I don’t have. No angel could have spoken those words. You
know what I mean? Those words came from a place of love…but also from a place of suffering. Human love and suffering are inseparable, because
everything they love is impermanent, and they believe that everything impermanent dies. They don’t understand change. They don’t see God in
the world, and they don’t see God in each other. Humans always have to use that word ‘if’ when they talk about God, unspoken or not –that must
be like a jagged shard of glass in their souls!
“But let me tell you something else I’ve noticed about these humans,” Gideon continued. “When they do ‘find their way back’ after feeling that
loss, they love God with a passion that you and I will never know, my friend. I don’t know, but sometimes I actually feel a little jealous of them.”
“Jealous? You??”
“Yeah, I think that’s the word they use. I mean, haven’t you ever thought about what it would be like to be the Prodigal Son in that story, instead
of the uppity brother who knows and loves the Father all along? Haven’t you ever wondered what it would be like to have the human experience?”
Aloysius gave his friend a twisted, smirking smile. “You mean to spend my entire life feeling lost and confused while the truth is right under my
nose? Living in constant fear of the fake death of an artificial self?”
“Well, no, not your whole life. But that is the message of the Prodigal Son: at some point there is that moment of discovery, and the scales fall
from the eyes, and they come back home –only in this case they realize that they never really left. And just consider the celebration that there is in
heaven when the human comes to know God. For us, intimate knowledge of God is almost like punching one of their timeclocks. But for them, oh
man, if you’ve never been in the Upper Realm to witness a living Ascension, like Elijah or Guatama Buddha, I tell you my friend, I cannot even
begin to describe how joyous it is. I almost feel a little sad that I’ll never experience that first-hand.”
“Hmmm. That would definitely be something to ponder, if I had that capability. When did you start getting so philosophical? You’re starting to
sound like one of them!”
Gideon chuckled. “Uh, I don’t know. Maybe they’re starting to rub off on me…I just wonder if there isn’t something truly beautiful in all those
crazy things they do, all the things we are supposed to make them stop doing when they come here. You know, what would it be like to battle
with a disease? Or defend a piece of territory that you call home? Or lament all day and night because someone you love appears to be dying, or
went halfway across the globe to preach their version of the gospel? Or just to love someone so much that you would willingly send yourself to
the Lower Realm to comfort her…I don’t know, I know it sounds a little insane coming from an angel, but sometimes I wish I could sit on the other
side of the desk.”
Gideon and Aloysius stared at each other for a few moments with searching and straight faces. Then a seed of laughter sprung open in both
simultaneously, and it sprouted and blossomed all at once. Aloysius slapped his thighs with both hands as he lifted them and dropped his feet to
the blood-red, fire-resistant carpet.
“Ah Gideon, you’re a real hoot, you know that? Hey man, I’m starving. What say we take an early lunch and make a cafeteria run?”
“Mmmm, yes, sounds good. I could go for a nice cappucino. We should have a pretty light workload today, no plagues or major battles on the
docket….and hey, lunch is on me, OK? I owe you one.”
Aloysius flashed his playful crooked smile again. “Gee Gideon, that is awful generous of you, considering that everything’s free!”
“Yeah….well, it’s the thought that counts, right?”
Gideon got up and stretched his wings, and followed his friend into the hallway –turning first as he closed the door to scan his office with renewed
affection, thinking he really ought to add another splash of color somewhere.
The Continuing Story....page 1
The Continuing Story....page 2
Next -- Chapter 19
