ANGELS AT WAR

CHAPTER 21

ARCHANGEL QUERIDA

VANITY OF VANITIES, SAYS THE PREACHER; VANITY OF VANITIES, ALL IS VANITY (Ecclesiastes 1:2)

            “What did I tell you, Querida?” Vermillion said with satisfaction. “Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat.”

            I began to move away from my adversary, but my former friend followed me and used a human expression. “What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Hang on a minute, I want to show you something.”

            Although I knew he wanted to gloat, or point out something negative, I stopped. His team was brewing something very bad, and I thought he might give me a clue. But that wouldn’t necessarily be the case. Vermillion was very shrewd and had planned diabolically well.

            The two adulteress neighbors had been sneaking around for eight months, stealing time wherever and whenever they could, including Jenny’s basement, Justin’s minivan in a secluded park, and even a few times in a pay by the hour motel.

            They became addicted to the adrenaline as much as their lust for each other. The deceptive thrill of the forbidden fueled their blinded minds. Their carnal passion made them like dogs chasing their tails. They couldn’t get enough and they couldn’t stop. Lust doesn’t completely fulfill like real love does.

            “Notice how the two illicit lovers are so relaxed and lingering,” Vermillion said and then giggled maliciously. “They think they have arranged the perfect tryst, but a violent storm approaches.”

            For the first time since the adulterers consummated their illegitimate relationship, their significant others were supposed to be out of town at the same time. Jenny’s husband Jimmy was camping with a church youth group. And Jill supposedly went to her parents’ home in Des Moines for the weekend.

            “I’d say old Jenny has fulfilled the seductress from Proverbs chapter seven quite accurately in a modern sense,” Vermillion declared rather pleased. “Her husband is gone for a couple days, taking a sleeping bag with him. She put her best sheets on the bed. She kissed her lover aggressively when he stepped into her home. Then they took their fill of love until the morning. But that’s where it ends.”

            Tragedy was about to strike, and I needed to confer with my team.

            “Off to consult with Althea and Liam?” Vermillion inquired, referring to Jenny’s and Justin’s guardian angels.

            I ignored him. Even when people are not in a right relationship with their Maker, they are still afforded protection most of the time. This does not mean that if they do die, they are awarded eternal life. Salvation is a free gift, but it can be rejected.

            This rejection is rarely a person consciously proclaiming, ‘no I do not want salvation.’ It is almost always a person doing their own will rather than God’s will. Jesus said if you love Him, you will keep His commandments. (John 14:15) Maybe the biggest danger is procrastination. The Bible declares NOW is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2)

            Human existence is strange in so many ways. One of them is fear. So often a person will worry for nothing. They develop anxiety over a possible situation, and then it doesn’t comes to pass. Then there are those without a care in the world when a sudden, unexpected calamity overtakes them.

            Jenny and Justin relaxed in bed after committing adultery for the umpteenth time in the last several months. Familialarity with their sin had reduced their anxiety, guilt, and shame to an occasional itch. Whereas in the beginning it had been a flaming boil. Then a little time had allowed carnal passion to put a warm compress on the discomfort of a guilty, worried conscience.

            The more they indulged, the less they were convicted by their sins. The more they indulged, the more the excitement of the next encounter replaced the feelings of betrayal they once had. Vermillion’s team also gave them an extra sexual thrill at chasing the forbidden.

            Like a drug, it had become addictive and deceptive. But in the end, unlike love, it was unfulfilling. Oh, they told each other they were in love. They felt their shared secret gave them a special bond. But even if their relationship developed into leaving their spouses for each other, how could a cheat ever truly trust a cheater?

            They had become hardened under the deceitfulness of sin. (Hebrews 3:13) With their spouses gone for a couple days, they were both enraptured by an exciting first involving their illicit relationship. After months of sneaking around, and their typical tryst being a fast thrill, they now had two full days to drink wine and consume lust. For the first time they were going to sleep together in the truest sense of the word.

            But what they hadn’t accounted for was one of their spouses becoming suspicious. Distrustful to the point they had hired a private detective. One encounter being exceptionally incriminating. With a telephoto lense he captured the two lovers arriving separately at a cheap motel, but they both entered the same room.

            I need to be careful with my next wording, but there is a famous human saying about a woman scorned. The two lovers were about to experience this in the full sense of the phrase. After hours of intoxicating wine and passion, they fell into a deep sleep.

            In the early hours of the morning, they didn’t hear Jill Phillips sneak into the Stetson house. As she slowly made her way to the lover’s nest, a demon whispered a poem into her head. It was a rhyme composed more than a hundred years earlier regarding Lizzie Borden and the axe murders of her father and stepmother. Only Jill and the demon changed the words to fit this current crime.

            “Jill Phillips took an axe,” her lips muttered. “And gave her husband forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave his lover forty one.”

            I watched with bated breath. We are not always allowed to interfere with fallen world activity. Vermillion sidled up next to me again. “Funny how human lives play out, isn’t it?”

            I looked at him and then back at the drama unfolding.

            “How come you’re not running interference?”

            I remained silent.

            “I get it,” he said, and then laughed diabolically. “They made their bed and now they need to sleep in it… Permanently!”

            “We’ll see,” I said hopefully.

            “Who would have thought it would be Jenny and not Jimmy that betrayed their vows two and a half decades after promising them,” Vermillion said with a mockingly, sentimental tone as he began a little biography. “I mean, Jimmy was the one that was a player, while Jenny was a plain Jane, nerdy bookworm. Their marriage sure puzzled his old drinking buddies. After all the ravaging beauties he bedded, he up and marries someone who looked like she stepped off the set of ‘Little House On the Prairie.’

            “They said behind his back, ‘he sure married down.’ But things shifted over the years. He quit smoking and became a nibbler. Gluttony can be subtle, can’t it? And it often goes overlooked. After all, everybody eats. So in only a few years, his six pack abs transformed into a little keg. His hair began to thin.

            “Jenny, on the other hand, really got into aerobics after having two kids. She started running. She ate well. By the time the Stetson’s reached their twentieth anniversary, Jimmy was bald and overweight. Jenny was toned, fit, and habitually got blonde highlights streaked through her light brown hair. She wore outfits that showed off her shapely legs. People began to think, ‘ole Jimmy sure married up.’

            “Then you have the Phillips. High school sweethearts. Prom king and queen. Home coming king and queen. Head cheerleader to his quarterback. While a teenager and in her early twenties, Jill’s tendency for weight gain was held in check. A voluptuous body with an exceptionally pretty face made her the envy of many girls and the desire of most guys.

            “After birthing two children, it took Jill great discipline with what she put in her mouth, and much effort at exercise to return to a semblance of what she had been. But after a third child, an unexpected pregnancy at thirty something, she threw up her hands in defeat. She put minimal effort into exercise, and no longer held much discipline with food.

            “She hated the failed attempts of girlfriends to disguise disapproval when she indulged comfort food in front of them. She resented non-disguised disapproval from her mother. And she despised her husband’s not so subtle hints. She hated the older woman next door and how she seemed to purposely flaunt her hard body in those spandex shorts. Yet she hid her roiling jealousy over her husband running with Jenny, because he had petitioned her many times to join him herself.

            “So he didn’t notice that she noticed his friendship with the woman next door grow cozier and cozier. What happened to them? To her? She had quite literally been a queen to his king. Now over the last year especially, he avoided intimacy with her. This lack made her feel all the more like a dumpy old hag. And it was all because of a woman that was technically old enough to be his mother.”

            “Are you about finished?” I asked.

            “Quite!” he said and then bellowed with maniacal laughter. “And so are the love birds.”

            I couldn’t help what happened next. Earth is a sin filled, fallen planet. I get filled with righteous indignation when God is blamed for Satan’s doings. Heaven and unfallen worlds are perfect. This place with wars, famines, and so much cruelty is ultimately the result of the war in heaven, caused by Lucifer’s rebellion. Yet people at large call natural disasters, ‘acts of God.’ To use a human term, Hogwash!

            So when a person becomes a Christian, they become a rebel, in a sense. They rebel against their selfish tendencies and the ways of this world. Humans are warned that they are pilgrims here, and that all that live Godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. (2 Timothy 3:12)

            But Jesus encourages, “be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) There is also the comfort with these words of the Savior. “Do not fear those who kill the body, but cannot kill the soul.”

            But the two lovers were not living Godly in Christ Jesus. Not only their human lives were at stake, but their souls were in jeopardy as well. So I cringed when the vengeful woman, with a sharp axe raised above her head, brought it down swift and hard on the shadowy, sleeping target.