Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Lieutenant Deviled Yeggs.  I work homicide in the big city of Tracy.  Working for me are my old partners: Detective Sgt. Jim Wednesday and Detective Poached Yeggs, my nephew who is slowly becoming a good detective.

This story deserved an epilogue.

If you missed the first episode, here is a link. If you missed the second episode, here is a link.

The homicide team talked to the nosey neighbor.  We told him that there was no evidence that any harm had been done to the woman that he saw in his video.  When the man continued to be belligerent, we softly questioned him.  Harold and his wife had always been seen as being holier than thou.  They weren’t, but they were the only white-collared workers in a blue-collar neighborhood.  People treated them with distrust, wondering why they did not move to a high-priced neighborhood.  Harold and his wife had given to the church, given to the community with their time, and they helped others whenever possible.  As a result, they never had two nickels to rub together, but God had met their needs.  Yet, some of the neighbors blamed them for whatever bad things went wrong in the neighborhood.  The distrust led to the security camera pointing at the Dykstra home, but we let the neighbor know that the woman in question was alive and well in Arizona.

As Harold prayed and he started writing down the conversations that he and Babs had, he remembered what made her cry the most in those last months.  She seemed to hurt more when she saw the widows, orphans, and the hungry being ignored.  He called me and asked what to do.  I suggested a friend of mine that ran the Tracy Food Bank.  They worked with most of the churches in town to screen people and distribute the food, grocery coupons for some of the food, and other such supplied needs.  My friend told Harold about the closest distribution center to his home.

Harold arrived, telling the local book bank coordinator that he had no idea what to do or how he could help.  The coordinator told him to just come to the food bank on a distribution day and see what everyone was doing.  He would figure out what he could do from there.

Harold sat in a corner of the room where people organized into a line.  The coordinator later said that Harold simply sat there with pain on his face, deeply sorrowful for these people.  Then, he would spot someone whose pain seemed to match his.  Harold simply asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”  The coordinator said it had to be the work of the Holy Spirit.  The person in line would nod, and after they received their distribution of food, they would sit and talk to Harold.  They would both cry.  They would both pray, and the coordinator knew that many of the people Harold talked to were of other faiths, agnostics or atheists.  But as soon as one family went away smiling before they were not ignored, Harold asked another and then another.  He called the friend of mine that managed food distribution to all the churches, and Harold set up a weekly schedule so that he was able to go to every distribution center in town, at least four times a year.  He wanted Babs to not have to cry anymore.  The hungry were not being ignored.

And as God seems to do often, Harold’s salesman skill at finding what the customer needed and meeting that need was added to the Holy Spirit’s guidance. It was as if Harold had been in training for this task all his life.

And then, I had a strange dream.  I had never had a dream like this ever in my life.  I was transported to the spirit world.  The boss of the guardian angel that had been known as Bountiful Babs was talking to his weary angel after the assignment was over.  The boss asked, “Are you back to normal yet?  You had a strange assignment.  We usually inhabit a live body or we materialize into human form for a brief moment, but you were becoming more and more human as you stayed in that form longer than any of us have done before.  I knew it was a hard assignment, but I knew you were up to it.”

Babs, now neither male nor female, just a guardian angel like all the rest, said, “Yes, I am able to watch over my assigned man, Harold Dykstra, without getting emotional.  Having emotions was something I was not expecting.  Humans have so many that often get in their way of doing what they should.  But how did you know that Harold would not become romantically involved with Babs?”

The boss replied, “I did not know, but our boss had reassured me that Harold was an honorable man, and even if he was tempted, he would stay true to his marriage vows, long after his wife was gone.”

The former Babs said, “Having those emotions were painful, but in a way, I envy the humans.  I miss my time that I spent with Harold.  I cannot explain it.  I am still his guardian angel.  With hearing his calling to minister to the widows, orphans, and the hungry, he needs more protection than ever.  He goes into a lot of bad neighborhoods.  But you were right.  If I had stayed any longer, you could trust him, but you might not be able to trust me.  As an angel, I only serve the Lord, but for a moment, the line started to blur.  But I still miss Harold’s soft touch.”

The boss said, “In time, even that will fade.”

And with that I woke up.

You may not believe this story, but when I awoke, I cried for Harold and for Babs.  God will tell me some day how it eventually turns out for each of them.

Credits

Our church runs the area food bank.  It covers two townships in the county as well as the borough where the church is located.  More than 100 families are served each month.  These people are of a variety of faiths, and some with no faith at all.  The leader of the food bank started a separate ministry, having people available to talk and pray for anyone in line.  He was amazed at how many people would take out time to talk and pray, all because someone took the time to notice them and notice their pain.  It seemed logical that Harold would become that ministry, all by himself, in the big city of Tracy.

What might cause an angel to start to feel human is what I felt might cause some people to have some rancor, or at least argue a theological point about them not having the capacity to do so.  Angels are spirits, but they take some sort of human form for us to see them on occasion.  I just made it a fantasy story, a “what if”, what if they started to feel the longer they were in that form.