Angels of Humility: A Novel (40 page)

Several months passed. Though Sarah’s body was progressively weakening, her spirit had grown stronger. She had made an impact on the Manor. Everyone knew who to come to if they needed encouragement and prayer, and many of the workers and patients needed just that. So many people started visiting Sarah for prayer that the staff joked about needing to “take a number.”

If Sarah wasn’t cruising the halls in her wheelchair looking for others, she made herself available by parking at a table in the game room, starting a puzzle, and praying silently. Before long, several residents would join her. As they worked together, Sarah would share about how the Lord loved each one of them from before the foundation of the world and how He still had a plan for their lives no matter how brief their lives might be. “As long as you have breath, there is a will of God for you today—no exceptions!”

Her love for Jesus was growing each day. She loved Jesus more than she loved the few possessions she had left or her reputation. He had fully captured her heart, and she was totally abandoned to Him. Sometimes that love was so strong that she could only describe it as “an ache of love.”

“Jesus, I long to see You face-to-face. I long to look into Your eyes of love and see them looking back at me,” she whispered under her breath as a prayer many times each day. Her will had been signed long ago, leaving all her assets to missionaries in the 10/40 window. A “Do Not Resuscitate” sign hung on the end of her bed. She was ready to go home when the Lord was ready to take her.

Sarah woke in the middle of the night. Her body was paralyzed and her speech was slurred, but her thinking was still clear. She could not move to push the call button. She had imagined before that to be a prisoner in her body, unable to communicate, would be terrifying. But as she lay in the darkness, unable to move, she was not afraid. She prayed as she listened to the worship CD.

“You’re just one step closer to home, Sarah, one step closer to home,” whispered Malta tenderly. “You are perfectly loved and there is no fear in love.”
⁵

“Your body is failing, but your spirit is strong in the Lord. Fight to the end, oh mighty intercessor,” said Joel. “Your prayers are powerful. We will hold up your weak arms
⁶
as your prayers advance the Kingdom one last time.”

I don’t even have to be able to talk to do God’s will. All I have to be able to do is think
.

“That’s right,” said Joel. “As long as you have a pulse, you have a purpose.”

Sarah had prayed for the countries and cities in the 10/40 window so many times she had many of them memorized.
Lord, I pray for India. Let Your Spirit fall there. I pray that Christians there would have great spiritual impact. Lord release angels to Calcutta, to Delhi, to Bangalore, to Mumbai…
.

In the Spirit, Joel was watching Sarah’s prayers ascend like pleasing incense before the glorious throne on the crystal sea. Thunders and lightenings radiated from the throne
⁷
and the room was full of worship, brilliance, life, and color. Warring angels, reflecting His glory and fierce in their holiness, lined up before the throne. The first one approached and bowed low before the Lord. When Sarah’s prayer for Calcutta ascended, Jesus laid His hands on the angel and commissioned him, “Go.” The angel turned, set his fiery gaze on Calcutta, and vanished.

To Delhi
, prayed Sarah.

“Go!”

To Bangalore
.

“Go!”

To Mumbai
.

“Go!”

“So amazing,” said Joel smiling. “The prayers of an elderly woman, three quarters of the way dead, are shaking the enemy’s kingdom halfway around the world.”

“Even after all these eons, I’m still astounded that our glorious, omnipotent God has chosen to partner with frail, broken people and He binds Himself to their prayers.”

For the next hour, angels were commissioned to the battle in India. Principalities were defeated, strongholds came down, deception was lifted, and souls were saved.

Somewhere around 4:00
a.m.
, between Cairo, Egypt, and Amman, Jordan, Sarah’s arm dropped from the rotating globe as she slid gently into a coma.

Joel and Malta finally received the news from Father that they had been longing to hear. Before sunrise, they were to bring Sarah home. Celestial light flooded the room. The angels glowed with the anticipation of the swallowing up of temporal, earthly life into an eternity of love and peace.

The angels paused from their celebration. “Another stroke,” said Joel, smiling tenderly as he looked at Sarah’s face.

“Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints,”
⁸
shouted Joel. They resumed their marching, dancing, and praising around Sarah’s bed.

Malta blew his shofar, and the heavens opened. The atmosphere was energized with even more glory. The sounds of celestial music wafted into the room along with heavenly colors and fragrances. Angels carrying instruments surrounded Sarah’s bed. This heavenly choir followed Malta’s worship, and their joyful praise not only filled the room, but flowed back to the throne of grace like a tidal wave of pure joy.

Sarah was wholly protected in her utterly vulnerable state from the yellow-eyed demon spirits huddled together in the corner.

“We’ve tried unsuccessfully to kill her for 16 months. Let’s face it. We can’t even steal one second from the life span appointed to her,” groused Intimidation.

Joel gazed at the spirits with eyes like blazing fire. He unsheathed his flaming, two-edged sword, and on his next pass by that side of the room, slashed through the gnarled demonic mass. They vaporized into a harmless puff of yellow sulfurous smoke. Joel grinned as he resheathed his sword, “I love my job.”

With the sun slightly below the horizon, the angels gathered around the bed in a hushed excitement. Joel and Malta bent over Sarah.

“Soooo—close,” whispered Malta, stroking Sarah’s forehead and smiling at Joel.

“Get ready,” said Joel, gazing into the opened Heaven, awaiting the final word. Malta laid his hand on Sarah’s chest to feel her shallow breathing.

“NOW!” shouted Joel, having received orders from God’s fiery throne. As her last breath escaped her frail, fleshly shell, the sun’s first rays peeked
over the horizon. Surges of light permeated the room as the heavenly corridor of glory touched earth. Sarah’s spirit emerged into Malta’s waiting arms. Glancing back, she caught a glimpse of her aged face, ashen-colored and wrinkled. She was whisked through the portal toward an unseen realm of eternity by a jubilant Malta, with Joel flying ahead. Escorted by her two triumphant angels, she was moving faster than the speed of light.

Liquid warmth enveloped Sarah. For the first time ever, she felt the complete absence of pain and the presence of total peace. She was leaving behind all sin and the damning results with which she had lived since birth. Shielded by her two ecstatic angels, she moved rapidly toward a brilliant light in the remote distance.

Before she even had a chance to wonder or conceive of her experience, she was at her destination. “Thank you, Joel. Thank you, Malta,” she cried out in excitement, but wondered where that knowledge came from. The two guardians escorted her to the edge of the fountain which was shooting thousands of crimson streams skyward, obscuring everything else from view.

All she could see was brilliant, illuminated, blinding red. Without hesitation, she ran into the fountain’s streams, followed by Joel and Malta, all three laughing and shrieking like children. She felt her “body” changing. Living light radiating from the Lord Himself transformed her. She was aware that He was everywhere, but she could not see Him yet. She was fully alive in His presence.

The mantle of humility slipped from her shoulders to reveal the brilliant robe of Jesus’ righteousness, a free gift. As the blood washed over her, it left behind a golden celestial glow, not a red stain. She was enveloped in the golden glory; the horrific remnants of sin’s effects were washed away. “I’m alive for the first time!”

Gravity’s grasp was not in effect there. She jumped and leapt and floated. She threw her head back and laughed uproariously when she realized that her mobility had more than returned. She spun and twirled and grabbed Malta by the shoulders, looking him eye-to-eye, and shook him, “There are no wheelchairs in Heaven—no wheelchairs!” She heard her voice shout out the wonderful proclamation, but it wasn’t her regular voice, the elderly one with the embarrassing tremor, it was her youthful voice, only richer. It was the true melody from which the earthly voice had been a cheap, tinny copy.

She looked at her hands, still on Malta’s shoulders. The wrinkled, gnarled, swollen digits were perfectly soft, unblemished. She opened and closed her hands effortlessly; arthritis was a fading memory. She had become a younger, perfected version of herself, clothed in a glowing celestial robe!

If she had looked in a mirror, she would not have seen her sin-crippled elderly face staring back, but a youthful, divine individual in complete perfection, body and spirit. She had become the person she was created to be from the beginning, had not sin rushed in to corrupt the world and to corrupt her.

Joel and Malta were enjoying the celebration as much as Sarah, and she was reveling in it! She laughed and shrieked. Her emotions were lively and unrestrained in a way she had never experienced.

“It’s hard for me to believe you were an introvert,” said Joel.

This caused Sarah to laugh even more. Then the three friends joined hands together in delight: circling right, then circling left, moving faster and faster like children on a playground. When they finally stopped dancing, the angels surrounded Sarah and she was swallowed up in their enthusiastic embrace of love.

Splashing in the fountain felt like she’d been cold all her life, and for the first time she was warm, like being mentally tormented and finding
peace, like being depressed and having delirious happiness overtake her, and like being weak, sick, and terminally ill and being transformed to total, perfect health.

She was experiencing the full manifestation of her salvation, experiencing what it means to be a new creature in Christ, all the old had totally passed away and all things had become new for her.
²
When her physical body died, death died for her, and she had followed her risen Savior into life indeed, finally free from all influence of the bludgeoning presence of evil.

Her earthly past seemed very dim, at least the sinful, broken parts. She had not realized the burden of carrying around her sinful ways until they had been shed in death, until she felt their absence for the first time. It was like she’d been carrying around a 500-pound backpack, which she had never been without. They had constantly battled her new nature once she was saved. What she “lived” on earth now seems like a walking, warmed-over death that held absolutely no allure.

It was truly unrestrained freedom. She was now living in perfect peace and harmony. Indescribable feelings had pushed out bitterness, envy, lust, sadness, shame, anger, and jealously. She was so engulfed in love and good feelings that she wondered why she had ever been a prisoner to those wretched things.

As the warm liquid poured over her, she knew that this was what she had been created for, this was what she had longed for on earth and tried to fill with cheap substitutes that never satisfied. She was no longer an alien passing through a strange land; she had arrived at her home, and it was beckoning to her at every level of her being. Each cell and molecule of her new body was vibrating in happiness and unity. For the very first time, she felt comfortable in her skin.

The concept of time, keeping schedules, and being late was left on earth. She didn’t even think,
How long have I been here? Should I go someplace else? What is my responsibility?
She was living in the present, with no shame or regrets about the past or worries and stress about the future.

Between the laughter, she realized she was humming, humming along with the waters, which were vibrating and undulating with “music.” But no earthly music had ever sounded so sweet. When she listened, she heard
innumerable voices singing, “There is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Emanuel’s veins and sinners plunged beneath this blood lose all their guilty stains.”
³
It was as if the music passed right through her body and she became one with its message.

Her senses were fully alive for the first time, and she was no longer limited just to five. She felt and experienced things that never existed on earth. She could see and smell the fragrances of music and colors. Everything was alive, even objects that were inanimate on earth were all crying out praises to Him.