Leaper by Geoffrey Wood

Author:Geoffrey Wood [Wood, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-49941-7
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2011-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Part 2

11

The next day I woke with one fear: God.

Strange as it is, this is a step in a positive direction for me. It’s work, but I can do it at home. Having the one thought that God is meddling in my life as opposed to the usual terrifying hoard of thoughts, I have to wonder if this isn’t what it feels like to be well adjusted.

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not particularly at ease. Pillows are piled on my head, and the bedcovers are drawn tightly up to my neck. This God-is-up-to-something fear is pretty huge, as far as debilitating fears go. I’m nursing a chilling sense of dread up and down my bunched-up, pin-starved spine. But it’s just the one dread, see? One huge fear instead of a million little ones. Like debt consolidation, and I know precisely who’s sending the bill.

On the other hand, this is precisely what’s scariest about God. Okay, hell is scariest, but God showing up today is a close second. God actually doing something today, not confined to the long-ago past or a sickbed, or with some saint in Calcutta. Do you see? If God is really God, then he doesn’t have to tell you when God’s going to do a thing. What if God starts doing things to you?

Unacceptable. Horrifying. Inconvenient.

Divinia Interruptus. And you can guarantee if God gives you a hundred bucks, he’s coming back around to see what you bought with it. That’s in the Bible. The parable of the coffee shop shows that the kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man who goes into a coffee shop and orders an espresso.

As the man talks across the counter, the coffee guy makes his coffee and sets the cup and saucer on the counter between them. But the man doesn’t drink it; he keeps talking, so the coffee gets cold, useless. The coffee guy pours it out and pulls another, sets it up. The man still can’t stop talking. The next one goes bad too. So the coffee guy throws that one out too, makes another. And this goes on, see?

You may think you’re the coffee guy in the parable, but you’re not—you’re the espresso. (It’s like that in parables.) You’re not for you. You’re someone else’s beverage. And God, the coffee guy, he’s going to keep remaking you again and again, as many times as it takes until you’re drinkable. God’s pulling the shots, and he’s got standards.

If God changes you, you’d better change.

I should be practicing all day. God himself has gotten involved. No leaving him at church this time. God’s on the loose, and who’s to stop God from doing it again?

Next time, maybe it’s not leaping powers. How about a second head? Three cheers for the man with fish fins! Who wants everything I touch to turn to copper?

No, it’s time to do good, I know that much. You think God’s not gonna care if I don’t get cracking on saving the world?

Would you risk it?

I put on a pot of coffee.

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