CVIII

I, THE LORD, SEARCH THE HEART, TEST THE MIND

JEREMIAH 17:10

SEVENIA (GIRL PROPHETESS)

“That’s all the letter said?” I asked FBI agent Nora Medora. “By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes?”

Nora had been seeking any insight I might have on Oscar Olney’s situation with a former girlfriend. Just days before his best friend had died in a horrific traffic accident, she had told Oscar that his best friend, Felix, was an adulterer, a hypocrite, and he should be warned.

Oscar thought she was unstable and ended things with her. She then completely disappeared, not only from his life, but from the photo gallery of his phone as well. Then there was the traffic collision, the mystery truck driver, and the strange coincidence with her last name, Dalial. It was the same name as the questionable supernatural being that had visited Devin Easton. Now, just yesterday Oscar received a cryptic letter from Donna Dalial that was post marked Des Moines, only two hours away.

“That’s all it said,” Nora confirmed. “We looked at surveillance video from the post office that it was mailed from and found nothing conclusive.”

“Have you spoken with Devin Easton?” I asked.

Nora studied me for s few seconds with a little smile playing on her lips. I wondered what she was thinking and why? “We did, but other than the name Dalial, we weren’t able to connect any dots.”

“No similarities?”

“Other than the name and a supernatural quality, no,” Nora replied and then sighed.

“So what’s next?” I asked.

“A sabbatical,” Nora said quietly and then chuckled without humor.

“Huh?” I replied, puzzled.

“Oh, nothing,” Nora said. “I was just about to take a month off in Miami when Brock called and told me about Seven’s old friend Oscar and his bizarre situation. I asked my superiors if I could postpone my time off, and they said no. So, instead of sunny Miami, I’m gonna start my sabbatical in chilly November Iowa.”

“Couldn’t they have sent somebody else?” I asked.

Nora gave me a weary look and shrugged. “I’ll give it a few days. If no leads transpire, I’ll head out and still have more than three weeks to kick back, relax, and think about nothing.”

She snorted bitterly and shook her head.

“It’s not so easy to shut the mind off, is it?” I said gently. “Especially if you’re an unbeliever. Even if you want to believe, but embrace doubt, you can’t implement ‘be still and know that I’m God.’” (Psalm 46:10).

She gave me a hard look, her dark eyes seeming to bore into mine. But then a smile played at her lips. “I like you, kid. You don’t pull punches, yet you’re as gentle as a lamb.”

“I take offence at being called a kid,” I told her. “I recently became an adult.”

She actually laughed, and then said. “Honey, you’re young enough to be my daughter. So, no offence, but you’re a kid to me.”

“Fair enough,” I giggled, then something occurred to me and my mouth spoke before I gave it consent. “You love Brock, don’t you?”

The unflappable super cop Nora Medora glanced at me with startled eyes, her mouth gaping open. “I… We… What makes you say that?”

“I just noticed that whenever Brock contacts you, you come running.”

“We help each other out,” she said testily. “I’m an investigator, and he’s a bodyguard or was. Sometimes he’s needed my brains, and sometimes I’ve needed his muscle, that’s all.”

“I had heard that you and Brock were an item for several years,” I tried, cautiously.

“We were simply friends with benefits,” she replied bitterly, then added sarcastically. “Do you know what that is? Or are you to pure to understand simple carnal needs?”

“I know what it is,” I replied casually. “But my understanding of carnal, so called needs, is not so simple.”

“Really?” she snorted with a sarcastic laugh. “Well, let me give you a little lesson on carnal needs, sweetheart. Two people are attracted to each other, they become physically intimate, they hopefully achieve release, and they go their separate ways.”

Feeling ornery, after all, I am my father’s daughter, I asked innocently. “What’s release?”

Nora looked at me with astonishment, her mouth gaping open. I giggled. Then she snorted, folded her arms in disgust, and began bobbing her leg.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just, well, the conversation was getting a little awkward.”

“You’re the one that went down that road,” she replied and then pursed her lips, not liking the road we were on and not wanting to go any further.

But I felt compelled to keep traveling just a bit more. “I understand that you and Brock almost married.”

Nora gazed at me with hooded eyes, and said in a low, slightly menacing tone, “Yeah, but we didn’t.”

“I guess my point is, you don’t marry somebody for carnal needs.”

“Yes you can, I almost did,” she barked. “I liked our arrangement, but he turned all moral and religious, and said he could no longer be intimate without a ceremony and signed document. That’s all it would have been for me, a legal arrangement so I could continue my simple, carnal needs.”

She said simple, carnal needs really slow, as if I were dense and not getting something. And maybe I was. I didn’t even understand why I was pressing her on this. I opened my mouth to ask another question, but she turned the tables on me.

“Have you ever had sex?” she asked with a little smirk and an arched eyebrow.

“No,” I replied, wondering why worldly minded people view losing virginity as some type of necessary right of passage. Lust has replaced love in this sin sick culture, and I don’t think most know the difference.

“I didn’t think so,” Nora said, with what actually might have been a look of admiration. “Do you want to?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not married.”

“Would you like to be married someday?”

“Not necessarily.”

“Why not?”

“Right now, I feel a call to serve God,” I explained. “I also tend to be asexual, which really helps with my lack of desire for a man.”

Nora looked at me with something like sympathy. “It’s a lonely road being a devout career woman.”

“I don’t think of what I do and intend to do as a career,” I said. “More like a vocation.”

“What’s the difference?”

“I guess I’m not sure technically,” I replied. “But in my mind, a career is something you do for money, and a vocation is something you do for, um, fulfillment.”

She nodded and then chuckled without humor. “I guess mine would be half and half.”

Nora stared at me so intently, my toes began to squirm under the scrutiny. Then they curled with what she blurted.

“I do love Brock, and I’ve missed him something fierce,” she said. Then she put her face in her hands and groaned. “Why did I tell you that?”

“Only you know that, Nora.”

“Yeah, what about God? Wouldn’t He know too?”

“Better than you, actually.”

“Right,” she drawled sarcastically. “How can somebody be so wise and yet so naïve?”

Her comment hurt a little, and I looked away from her gaze.

“I’m sorry, kid,” she said, touching my arm. “That was rude.”

Nora wasn’t the apologizing type, so I smiled sweetly and said, “No big deal, you’re probably right. I am only eighteen.”

“That makes you a woman,” Nora grinned.

“A brand new one, though,” I said, and then tried not to giggle like a girl.

Nora and I had an uncomfortably long silence, then she asked. “Can I ask you a moral question?”

“Sure,” I said with a shrug.

“Is it okay to kill bad people?”

“That’s a loaded question,” I said with a nervous chuckle. “But if you’ve had to, um, kill bad people in the line of duty, personally, I believe it’s justified.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“Oh?”

“Can you promise to keep a secret?”

“Yeah,” I replied, possibly using poor judgement.

“We located two of the sex traffickers that had held Oralee and Marcy,” she told me, referring to Brock and Destiny’s stepdaughters. “I told Brock about it and where they were. The next day, they were found shot dead and floating in the Mississippi River.”

I felt a below zero chill go up my spine.

(DESTINY’S BIBLE STUDY NOTES AND QUOTES)

THE LIFE AND MINISTRY OF JESUS

“His name shall be called Immanuel… God with us.” (Matthew 1:23 and Isaiah 7:14)

To this sin darkened world Jesus came to reveal the light of God’s love, to be “God with us.”

He was the Word of God—God’s thought mad audible.

Our little world is the lesson book of the universe. God’s wonderful purpose of grace, the mystery of redeeming love, is the theme into which “angels desire to look.”

Both the redeemed and the unfallen beings find in the cross of Christ their science and their song.

Sin originated in self-seeking. Lucifer, the covering cherub, desired to be first in heaven. He sought to gain control of heavenly beings, to draw them away from the Creator, and to win their homage to himself. Therefore, he misrepresented God!

The exercise of force is contrary to the principles of God’s government. God desires only the service of love; and true love cannot be commanded.

Upon the world’s dark night the Sun of Righteousness must rise, “with healing in His wings.” Malachi 4:2

He possessed no beauty that they should desire Him; yet He was the incarnate God, the light of heaven and earth. His glory was veiled, His greatness and majesty was hidden, that He might draw near to sorrowful, tempted people.

Since Jesus came to dwell with us, we know that God is acquainted with our trials, and sympathizes with our griefs. Every son and daughter of Adam may understand that our Creator is the friend of sinners.

As one of us Jesus was to give an example of obedience. For this, He took upon Himself our nature, and passed through our experiences. “In all things it behooved Him to be made like unto His brethren.” (Hebrews 4:15)

Jesus was “in all points like as we are.” (Hebrew 4:15)

“God with us” is the surety of our deliverance from sin , the assurance of our power to obey the law of heaven.

In stooping to take upon Himself humanity, Christ revealed a character the opposite of the character of Satan. But He stepped still lower in the path of humiliation. “Being found in fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.” (Philippians 2:8)

In Christ we become more closely united to God than if we had never fallen.

In the place where sin abounded, God’s grace much more abounds.

Our little world, under the curse of sin the one dark blot in His glorious creation, will be honored above all other worlds in the universe of God.

Jesus had “no form nor comeliness, and they saw in Him no beauty that they should desire Him. “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” (Isaiah 53:2 and John 1:11)