An angel's diary

Today is the first day of February 2010 in the creation calendar. Master Gabriel had tasked me to run some errands and the list is getting longer since the time of the Reformation. I am just half way done with it.  I know the next few tasks are not going to be easy. They involve ring-fencing the moral consequences arising from a man-made tragedy that is going to befall on a poor village family in South Africa.

I cringe when I have to do such errand. It's heartbreaking. But an errand
 is an errand and I have no cause to complain. Considering my position, I am infinitely more blessed to be doing what I am doing instead of finding myself trying to survive on earth where the great divine chess game is still being played out.

Alas, even the fact that humans will one day rule over us when they reign with the Prince of Peace is no incentive for angels to trade places with them. The risk is just too high.

No one here needs to be reminded that not all will be saved. Those who are not 
will be eternally lost. And there will unavoidably be a lot of them. It therefore stakes everything on the celestial roulette table with the dices of doubt and faith enmeshing and rolling together in a perennial frenzy before they finally settle on a pair of numbers that is beyond one's control. It is even rumored that the gamble is rigged with a Calvinistic sleight of hand.

So if there are places that even angels fear to tread, the lonely via dolorosa road is but one of them.

But I guess the hardest part about being an angel is
 to stand by and watch as the struggles of human affairs unravel in the most macabre way imaginable. Here, I am reminded that we angels have all sworn to an omerta-like oath and to break it is to fall by the wayside forever. No one thus dares defy it. It is an oath of non-intervention unless we are called upon to do otherwise for a specific purpose because everything has its place and time, so decreed the Creator.

Of course, miracles do happen and the Creator has his own mystery plan all decked out on 
humanity's chessboard. But it is still an impenetrable mystery that sometimes pulls me to my tethered limits.

On earth, the killing is getting worse. Men with power are acting like gods and men without are dying like dogs. The struggle has magnified from massacre per estate in the prehistoric past to massacre per planet in the recent nuclear age.

Even on a smallest scale perceivable, in the poorest families around this cursed globe, the weaker sex and her defenseless offspring are being condemned into an existence 
that is far worse than death. Their pain and their scream, like bloody nails on divine chalkboard, cannot be ignored. From their perspective, however narrow, the promised victory that awaits them when the new heaven and earth is established just doesn't do any justice to the unspeakable tragedy.

As a minutest pin in this eternal monolith, I am many times tempted to go beyond my call of duty, to run my own errand, to intervene under the cloak of darkness, and to break the oath and face the consequences.

With 
trembling resolve, the temptation to loosen that chain just a little so as to allow one or two bonded young girls to escape is unbearable. Or the urge to derail the savage enemies possessed by lust and rage by contriving an unnatural storm or conjuring an eclipse to darken their route to mayhem is almost overwhelming.

But alas, I have neither the guts nor the wits to bring my resolve to fruition. The spirit and the power that come with it are no doubt more than willing and able but the irreversible 
consequences that flow from this intervention greatly restrains me. I therefore withhold not because I am unable to act but because I am afraid that my action may forever alter the course of what is ultimately believed to be in the best interest of creation.

So, in the interim, between the long past genesis of creation to the coming revelation of the end, I will try my level best to distract myself from the deafening earthly screams by keeping myself busy running those seemingly endless errands and wishing for eternity
 to show himself sooner rather than later.

Only then, can I ever hope to connect all the dots that the Creator has so patiently sowed in this most perplexing mystery that is human suffering under his loving providence and sovereignty. 

Signed off
Angel of hope.