Beloved
Once in those trillion times that the angels pass through the walls of that final destination, that great city called holy Jerusalem, an unusual honor was bestowed on one newly arrived angel. On his second day or second decade or second millennium — for who can say for sure in eternity where the space of one breath may expand across three thousand years or one second — this angel was given a godly commission.
The heavenly choir was to gather at the outermost wall of that city of gems and in the tradition of earthly Christmas caroling, all the angels in heaven were to sing hymns for the Master. On that occasion, the Lord asked for a volunteer to assist the great disciple Peter, Christ’s devoted brother, in a majestic march to the outskirts of the city where the concert was to be performed.
Peter required much assistance because above his head rested many crowns. Like scores of separate universes, each gold circle swirling in its own sphere, these crowns were continuously toppling off as Peter looked down from his elevated statute to greet the angels who flocked around him. The new angel displayed great enthusiasm when the Lord asked for a volunteer, jumping up and down in his place in the throng of angels and excitedly waving his hands. To all the angels’ dismay, the Lord chose him.
This decision upset many of the more seasoned angels who felt that they would bring greater honor to this great commission. Their murmuring continued during all of the festive preparations for the concert as they compared their thick majestic wings to the barren stubs of the new angel. Bleached white by the continuous light of the Lord as the breadth and width of angel winds depend on the length of time each one has served in heaven. Many of their wings were quite glorious.
Their comments began to erode the new angel’s confidence. He asked his closest companion, a very kindly angel known as Compassion, why would someone so unworthy as himself be chosen to assist the Great Peter. But, Compassion would only smile sweetly and reply, “My dear friend, do not question God. His ways are not our ways.” Still, the new angel continued to fret, “I do not even have my heavenly name yet! If the Master should need to address me, what name should I answer to?”
“You will have your name, friend,” Compassion assured him. “God will present it to you when He is ready.” But Compassion could not console the new angel and he started to doubt his great commission.
His worst fears were realized on the day when the heavenly choir began its march and the new angel took his position behind the great disciple Peter. As Peter turned his attention from one angel to another, the gold crowns began to topple from his head. When he knelt to gather the two up, a third and a fourth fell from Peter’s head. Even when he tried with his stubby little winds to return the crowns to their proper position above Peter’s head, he was unable to rise above 10 centimeters.
On each failed attempt, the other angels with their great expanse of ivory colored wings clucked their concern, but none offered to assist him. Finally, after three failed attempts, the angel sat down on the ground at Peter’s feet, his eyes lowered in shame. The angels near to him felt compassion for him, but no one stepped out of the procession to assist him. So the discouraged angel remained in abject humiliation and the entire heavenly procession came to a standstill.
Suddenly, as the angel sat with his head bowed, a hand reached out and picked up two of the crowns that lay on the ground beside him. He looked up and a female angel with broad white wings was smiling at him. She raised the crowns to place them on Peter’s head. The angel waited, thinking that with her great wings, she could easily fly to the top of Peter’s head. This angel’s wings were indeed glorious, filling the whole space of the sky above her. But she just waited. So the new angel leaned down and held out his cupped hands to her. She stepped lightly on his cupped palms, her weight was like the rice thrown at weddings, no burden at all, and placed the crowns above Peter’s head. There was something so familiar about that female angel. His thoughts searched for her memory, but try as he might, he could not recall memories of her. Then before he could ask her, she stepped backward into the procession and was gone. The great angel Gabriel sounded the trumpet and the procession began to move again.
The procession of angels moved on through all the great rooms in heaven and the new angel moved on with them. He remained in step, obediently following until they reached the last foundation of white sapphire which everyone knows is clear as crystal. There the angel stopped abruptly, accidentally stepping on the hem of the angel directly in front of him. “I must remain here a moment, my friend,” he whispered to this angel who was aptly named Caution. “Please take my commission behind the great Peter and assist him through the halls to the choir.”
“What?!” exclaimed the astonished Caution. “You are resigning your station of glory? Why would you risk offending the Lord?! What would prompt you to make such an error in judgement? Carry on, friend, before He notices your disobedience!” Caution warned.
“No,” replied the determined little angel, “Move on without me. Take my position.”
“You are risking ruin. I tell you, He sees everything. Already He knows what you are forsaking, even as we speak,” Caution pleaded again.
“There is something I must know,” the new angel said in reply. He could not be persuaded but displayed such confidence that Caution did not argue further and moved into the new angel’s glorious position. The line closed behind him and the procession moved on in orderly pace. The new angel hurried back and in the eleventh hall formed of Tanzanite crystal with its sparkling blue majesty spilling from heaven into clouds and seas and rivers below, he hid. The choir filed past while the angel remained alone in that place.
Finally the powerful angel Gabriel passed by him and even though he crouched close to the floor, Gabriel saw him and spoke, “Hurry up now, angel. The Lord has given you your name. You are to receive it at the concert,” Gabriel handed it inscribed on a sparkling crown and he mouthed the name aloud, “Faith.” Proudly he placed the crown above his brow. Then Gabriel said, “Come. There are praises to be sung in the heavenly choir. It is a time for rejoicing!” But the new angel didn’t reply and looked back towards the center of that room where a mist had formed above the expansive oceans below. Gabriel looked there. His expression seemed to change in understanding and he finally said, “Alright then. Take just one moment more here and then follow as He ordains.”
Then there was no sound in that place but the beating of another heart that drifted back to him. He remained with knees bent overlooking the universe. He knelt on a path that seemed to shift like waves, where if you looked directly down, one could see every continent of the universe and each great ocean swirling thousands of miles below him and every temporary kingdom. It was all so majestic — this work of the Master’s hand. At length he stood up, walked towards the center of the hall of opaque glass and paused when he neared that familiar presence. There he spoke.
“You’re here. I know you from that other place. That place we left behind. I can’t remember it clearly, but I know you were there! You were comfort, joy and devotion before this eternal peace. Tell me you remember me also!”
The mist stopped swirling and drifted away from him. For a moment, the angel was sure it would leave the hall so he continued to plead, “Yes, I don’t recall your earthly name, but I knew you then. It was lost from me when I left that place of tribulation and,” he hesitated, “and joy, so much joy. Beautiful it was also, but so much to bear.” He lowered his eyes in remembrance. Then he pleaded softly, “Tell me that you remember me too!” he demanded and his voice shook the whole kingdom.
Still no understanding came back to him. Then warmth from that other presence clouded that room like a morning midst. There was absolute peace in that room for a space of two lifetimes. In the blindness of that hall, another hand was placed in his and he remembered in eternity those tides of earthly existence, which he thought, he had forgotten.
First he was standing in a room with Crimson walls. He closed his eyes and when he opened them this time, the room was bathed in gold and someone laid a cool hand on his forehead. “You’re much, much better now,” she said in that light voice of hers. “The sun is just coming up. Look out the window,” she said. He obeyed and saw the light on the windowsill. “Have you been here all night,” he asked and she nodded. Then he reached up and touched her face and said, “You look so young, mother!” The cancer had not touched her yet.
Then he found himself in the center of a stadium ablaze with excited voices. He was paralyzed with doubt. The faces in the bleachers chanted as he tossed the ball from hand to hand. The referee stood at his side, arms flaring in the air and giving some orders but he never heard one. “Home run, home run, home run,” the cheering crowd chanted. He looked across and saw the face of Timmy Bly, his best friend placed outside the bleachers in the aisle, but still cheering wildly for him, his skinny arms flailing in his wheelchair. He pitched the ball then. It was a freight train headed down above that dusty red field. Their star player gave that ball the hit of his lifetime and he stood as amazed as anyone as those players one by one ran for home base and that determined team of local disadvantaged boys won pendant that started their careers.
The image faded and a tattered older man attended him. “Aren’t you afraid of the virus, sir? You’re old. Excuse me. You’re old. Maybe you should go home.” The man did not leave but attended to him and the other men in uniform throughout that long night in makeshift tents of weathered canvas and burlap coverings and poles made from narrow tree trunks in that mosquito infested swamp in Cambodia. The old man witnessed to him of his Savior. He listened and caught on fire and carried that flame with him the remainder of his life and rekindled it in thousands of heard and lives throughout the world in the next 30 years.
And, finally, she was there — hiding in the bride’s room with the entire congregation in the chapel waiting for them. His brother sneaked him into where she was and she whispered, “I am afraid,” while her bridesmaids in soft sea green gowns huddled around her like a flock of Victorian handmaids. He leaned down and said to her softly, “If God is on our side, then who can be against us? His best man who stood at the door said loudly, “Amen, brother!” at which the whole room broke into nervous laughter. She turned to him then, hugged him, pulled down her veil and married him that day in front of 200 friends and family in that little church in Maryland.
And there was the smell of fresh cut lawns, the stillness in the room where he grew up on Sunday morning, the odor of cherry tobacco in the folds of his father’s old jacket, his sister’s soprano voice singing and God himself in every place and every memory. He remembered. He remembered everything, but mostly he remembered her.
Then that old presence shifted, slowly rose and moved away and finally passed through him like a dream — soft and gentle — with all written in their one flesh. The room was empty again and the angel was alone.
The midst began to rise. It blew away and all the walls were transparent again. Clear as diamonds. Clear as glass. The angel looked up and in the place where the female angel had sat was a bed of bright white feathers. He picked up one feather and placed it on his barren little wings. Slowly he picked up another feather and continued until all the beautiful white feathers belonging to the female angel covered his own wings. Where his own body started and where hers ended, one could no longer tell. Ever so slowly, he raised these now tremendous wings and rose from the ground. The flapping of the magnificent wings was glorious. Without effort, he drifted above the floor. He barely raised one arm and he soared over the kingdom, circled the halls and cascaded into open sky.
It was then that he saw the great wall — the first foundation in that heavenly place — where some words were scribbled. He descended at that place, landed and used his hand to remove the dew drops from the wall to read the words. He read Christ’s own words she had written there: Corinthians 1:13 “And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” And seeing that, the new angel was comforted, know that he was also blessed in that other place.
Next he did something that was forbidden without an assignment from all high. He swooped down before that foundation of clear Jasper and scribbled her name below her words. He remembered her clearly then as the angel wrote her name below her inscription, “Love.”
For many days, the inscription remained, causing the thousands of angels that passed that wall on the way to the great celebration to stop, run their fingers in each and every word of the inscribed letters and to remember their dearest earthly relationships. All the seasoned angels whispered among themselves that it would surely disappear within a few millenniums because memories of that first life are long forgotten.
But to this day, it is there. Our Lord left it knowing that some things are worth remembering from that former place.
