“Good morning, Lord. I’m Jack Bennet. Of course, you know that, don’t you? Because you know everything. Since, for some reason, I seem to be the only politician up here, the others have asked me to be sort of a representative, just one person to reach out to You so we don’t get all bogged down like we did yesterday. The Catholics, particularly, are more comfortable with this arrangement.”
“Let me say, first of all, that we want to thank You and let You know we are very, very grateful to be here, to be chosen. By You. And we feel very badly about the commotion yesterday at the orientation.”
“But, a few of us have questions about the infrastructure. This is nice and everything, but we’re accustomed to a certain way of life on earth—Paradise may take a little getting used to. Now, again, we feel just awful about the mixup with the angel. I hope he didn’t get his feathers too ruffled. That was just a joke. A bit of celestial humor. Okay. Back to these questions that weren’t covered in the briefing yesterday.”
“Infrastructure?”
“Yes, like roads and houses and…”
“I know what infrastructure is. But this is Paradise, you have everything you need. The water is pure, the land is fertile, and the climate is always pleasant. What more could you want?”
“Well, Lord, there’ve been quite a few questions about Wi-Fi. Some of us have been here almost thirty-six hours without Twitter, Instagram, or even Facebook. We can’t see how all of this is playing out in the national media, and Netflix is virtually unobtainable. And without any hackers around (we all know where they are), we’re really eager to get online.”
“Online. Let’s come back to that later. I thought you would farm, raise your own food. Isn’t that what you’ve always done?”
“Lord, we’ve done a quick census, and there aren’t too many of us up here who’ve ever actually grown anything edible. And the ones that have, while certainly worthy in many respects, and this is not intended in any way as a criticism of Your divine plan, well, frankly, Lord, they don’t seem too eager to feed themselves, much less the rest of us.”
“Go on. I find this fascinating.”
“We’ve made sacrifices to get here. Not your burnt offerings, exactly…burnt offerings? Okay, okay. I get it. No more humor. See, I’m sure we can work all these details out eventually without any sort of mediation or intervention, but this isn’t quite what some of us expected.“
“Intervention?”
“I may not have phrased that in exactly the best way.”
“If you don’t want to be here…”
“Oh, no. No, Ma’am, nothing like that. Some of the, we, uh…gosh, can I say gosh? Look at …wow. Starting to rain. Did not expect that. And just look at those clouds, that lightning. Hmm. Lord, do You think we could just wrap this up right here and now, kinda tie a bow on the whole subject? I-I’m beginning to understand.”
Charles, what a divinely witty piece (see what I did there). Having this one follow my story from yesterday was a perfect pairing I think. I love the sheepish demeanor that the main character takes, while at the same time being the audacious representative of humankind. And the nice little touch of “No, Ma’am” I almost missed at the end, it was laid in there so subtly. I really enjoyed this read, thanks!
Thanks for the read, David. We may sound like the “Mad Magazine” version of “Modern Christianity”, but both stories make me laugh.
And as of today, I am a published author.
Charles, congratulations. If this is your first published piece, color me impressed. I’d like to read more as they come but your website link seems to be under construction. Head on over to my website (shameless plug since it’s brand new – davidbatteiger.com) and drop me a message if you’d like to keep in touch.
I loved this story but I’d rather have had the Lord made responsible. Where is she when we need Her?