Altar Call
by James Fung (July 4, 2016)
“Come on! Hurry up!”
I opened my eyes and looked around. What is
this place? It’s so bright. Before I could figure it out, a hand grabbed my
robe and dragged me along. Robe? I
looked down, I was wearing a white robe with little specks of gold dust. Woah, that’s awesome!
“Leett uerr go!” I twisted around. “I can
walk by myself.”
I was greeted with a weird smirk. “Walk,
James? We’re flying.” And true to his word, we were indeed flying. I
instinctively looked around his robe to where a name tag would normally be, and
the letters P-e-t-e-r appeared in gold dust and quickly disappeared again. Oh, right. We’re in heaven again. Wait, does
my robe do that too?
“Yeah,” answered Peter. I laughed.
Seeing that I didn’t know how to fly, I let him lead me through the
pearly white lanes and into a building. Not
unlike Peter Pan at all. Pun not intended. Peter laughed too.
***
As soon as we entered the building, Peter
nudged me towards a line of angels who were lining up to enter the Throne Room.
I resisted the urge to glance at their robes, because I knew the gold dust
would respond to my thoughts. I got to experiment a bit on the “ride” here.
Made a little gold dust car go honk honk around my robe, and a gold dust shark
do a little ballet with a seal. Such good
fun.
So I lined up behind the last angel, and
waited in line. The hall was massive, even for angels. The ceiling was far
higher than most cathedrals that I have visited on earth, but I could still see
it in details because I was in my heavenly body. So, I watched as clusters of
busy bodied angels go on with their daily business, not unlike an office on
earth. That is, if they all had wings.
The queue was moving quickly, and when I
got to the head of the queue, an angel asked me, “Which flavour?”
“Uh…” I wasn’t sure what to say. “What
flavours are there?”
The angel sighed. “Blueberry, strawberry,
mango, grape, orange, and lime.”
“Oh, right. Blueberry please.” He pushed
what looked like a blue tube into my hand, and the next one gave me a box of
cards and directed me a seat.
Wow!
It was like… a Bingo hall! No, it wasn’t “like” a Bingo hall. IT WAS A BINGO
HALL. I laughed so hard. The angel next to me
nudged me, “You better get ready. It’s going to start soon.” He gave me a
serious look.
“Oh, right. Well, I don’t gamble. Aah….” I
glanced at his robe. J-o-s-e-p-h. “..Joseph. So what should I do?”
He smiled. “Oh, right. You must be the new
guy. Here, open up your box and let me show you what we are actually doing.”
I opened my box, and stared into a stack of
bingo cards. Unimpressed, I took them out and laid them out in front of me.
Then I took my “blueberry” dabber and planted it in the middle.
Grinning, Joseph took up his own “grape”
dabber, and opened it from the top end, and took a sip. What? He took a sip? I looked around the hall, and surely enough,
there were quite a few angels sipping from their dabbers. “Waiittt… what is
that?”
“This… is a fruit juice dispenser. It comes
in any form that you like.” He demonstrated by turning it into an icy and then
into a lollipop. “But don’t eat from the other end, that side is really a
dabber.”
Excited, I held the strange contraption in
my hand. The power to mark and the power to slurp! I pictured a frozen jelly
snack in the shape of a dolphin, and just as Joseph explained, it was there. Oh, and the taste is beyond heavenly!
Joseph cleared his throat. I didn’t know
that you can do that in heaven.. clearing throats, but I turned my attention
back to him. “The reason they designed these is so that we can have something
to re-energize us as we do these all nighters.”
All
nighters?! What? “Let me explain. They’re about to
have an altar call at Sacred Heart Emmanuel Church at their annual rally in
Indonesia, and when that happens, God is going to write down a bunch of
numbers, and the archangels will be in charge of disseminating them to us. Our
job is pretty easy.. as you probably can guess already.”
“We.. find those numbers and dab them with
our dabbers!” Still high from the energy frosty.
“Yes, good boy. But make sure to only dab
the number in your column, and to pass them in order down to the checkers.”
“What do they do with these numbers?”
“They pass them onto the spinner and tailor
angels, and they prepare the robes and heavenly bodies for each saved soul that
comes forward.”
Dumbfounded, I blinked.
***
When I opened my eyes again, I had returned
back to my body on earth.
