The Patience of Free Will

http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/040918.cfm
Isaiah7:10-14, 8:1
Luke 1:26-38

Frank and Ralph, the only two angels allowed to retire* shared a banana in a parked trailer. Though happily unemployed, and generously supplied with whatever they needed by God, they had been offered, and dutifully accepted, the job of security guards at an RV lot. The banana came from their gracious employer who eagerly agreed to pay the pondering pair in food and a rent-free year-round trailer. Their assignment to protect several dozen idled recreational vehicles fit their abilities. 

The suggestion to offer the jobs to the two angels came from Leroy who owned the place. He had no idea Frank and Ralph were angels, and still didn’t. He offered them a cup of coffee, noticing that they walked by his lot almost every day. They quickly became good friends. 

The duo’s angelic personae lay hidden from view by a crusty old man retinue of jeans, suspenders, and Pendleton shirts. Their bottomless pits of hunger for bran muffins, coffee, and fruit astounded Leroy but he was willing to oblige. Frank and Ralph transformed the place. As the proprietor of a parking lot for mostly abandoned things — a sundry mix of vacation homes on wheels — the two wandering fellows seemed to fit right in. 

Leroy supplied the angels with an office trailer and keys for each vehicle, and the warning to never use the toilet facilities in any of the RVs that housed one. Ralph looked over at Frank at the requirement, and they nodded their agreement. They’d have no need of a toilet, of course. Any food they ate, air they breathed, and matter they came in contact with was subsumed into their beings and returned to the earth in the form of whatever material was needed. Let’s just say that the RV park had never looked so clean and organized before. And, the landscaping had taken an immediate turn toward lush.

“This whole free will thing has certainly taken a new direction, hasn’t it Ralph?” asked Frank. The two were tapping nourishment ingested from their banana off their fingers into a very happy Bonsai tree. Frank found the neglected dwarf in the corner of their trailer. 

“Whatcha mean by that there prognostication?” replied Ralph. His Colorado high land lingo needed more fine tuning.

“Well, take this little plant, for example,” said Frank. “It plays its part in creation without complaint, expectation, or judgment. Yet, it eagerly accepts nourishment, stretches out in its own beauty, accepts its charter to be trimmed, all with a patient desire to live. In a way it has a free will, too, just like us. It freely agrees to be a tree.”

“And yer ‘new direction’ point there, old friend?”

“Ever since the inventions of machinery, devices, and mobile things like this trailer free will has morphed, Ralph. Free will isn’t so much about humanity lining up themselves with God’s plans for creation as it is humanity forcing creation to adjust to their own wills.”

The long pause by Ralph meant that Frank hit a nerve.

“Are you saying that we took this job with Leroy in order to justify our existence as dutiful angels, because even though he said it was OK, Jesus would rather that we get back to work?” Frank dropped his slang completely.

Frank didn’t pause quite as long as Ralph had.

“Heck no.” Frank said, trying to assist Ralph in his local lingo patter. “When the Father and Son make an offer, we take the gift.”

“Oh, yes. The Ahaz rule. I do seem to need reminding about that.” Ralph said. “Then what are you talking about?”

“I think I know why so many folks are unhappy. They’ve properly adopted their role as discoverers and innovators — just look at these marvelous contraptions parked around us. But, it’s apparent that they’ve lost their partnership and affiliation with God in their efforts.”

Ralph caught up with Frank’s thinking. “You’re right. That’s the thing about this RV lot, isn’t it, Frank? All the plans to get out there and see the world, and then the will just withers away. Like these fabulous abodes.”

“Yes.” 

Frank scanned over the many little things they had touched and repaired in the spaces of motorhomes, trailers, and caravans. They’d removed dents, hand rubbed new paint jobs, and changed filthy oil back into it’s pristine clear syrupy form. Angels don’t interfere in creation without a directive. Frank had calculated that their retirement and participation in earthly life, though, required a tit-for-tat. 

The conversation they had moved along just like human discourse would follow, but angels don’t then feel this urgency to get out and take charge of a problem. It’s not in their DNA, so to speak. In fact, beneath the surface of their existence, on the edges of their lives, angels always await what God wants them to do. As retired angels, Frank and Ralph had broken the mold, feeling somewhat compelled to join creation in its endeavors. They fully expect, however, to be called back into service at some point. 

“We’re two Bonsais clipped and pinched and hanging around. I have to tell you Frank. I love it.”

It’s their innate grasp of immortality that makes them fearless, and their cross dimension from the world of angels and the world of creation that makes them “ready.” Angels know that creation is coming to a nexus, an end point, albeit stark and frightful, but wholly necessary, that begins something radically new. Though angels are curious they function with a natural, abiding patience. Humanity struggles mightily with patience. 

“They just don’t know they’re going to live forever, do they?”

“That’s it exactly, Ralph.”

They looked out the window on the side of their trailer. Their trailer’s view took in the full RV lot with Pikes Peak rising up in the background.

“Free will, like that in this Banzai, presumes a trusting patience,” Frank said. 

“We waited a long time for retirement,” said Ralph. “I didn’t even know what it was.” 

“We needed a sign. Leroy was our sign.”

Ralph turned to Frank and said, “And all we have to do is steer clear of the toilets.”

Then they laughed. Two angels laughing. It might be a sign of what the angels have to look forward to after the nexus point passes. Retirement and laughter.

* due to their service to the Lord Jesus from birth to ascension.