Angels of Humility: A Novel

by Jackie Macgirvin

  Sarah had the same dream the next night, too. Tuesday night before dozing off she prayed, God am I going to have this dream every night? Please show me what it means.

  That night Sarah had the same dream, except this time she was pulling a child’s red wagon filled with brightly burning, antique kerosene lanterns. She walked to each neighbor’s house and left a burning lantern on each porch. She woke up with the following sentence in her mind. “Prayer walk—do this while you are able.”

  I just read about prayer walking in my women’s missionary magazine. Now I understand. Thank You, Lord, for showing this to me. My neighbors are lost and I must help them. She wasted no time putting on her walking shoes, the broken-in brown loafers, grabbed her shawl, and headed outside.

  The fall winds scattered dried leaves across the sidewalk, and her shuffling footsteps crunched them as she walked. She headed counter-clockwise around her block speaking out loud, “Lord, bless the Smith’s, let them come to know You. Lord, bless the Stephens; let them come to know You. Lord, bless the new family who just moved in here. I don’t know their names. I think they’ve got two toddlers; bless them Lord. Lord, bless the Bakers, especially their teenage daughter who’s going through such a hard spell. Lord bless these people, I don’t know who they are, but You do. Lord bless this family; they always keep their yard immaculate. I love their red gladiolas, Lord. Bless them today.” Sarah walked completely around her block, then the next block.

  She stopped in front of a small Victorian house with a new real-estate sign in the yard. For reasons she couldn’t identify, she felt drawn to this house. “Lord, bless whoever just moved out and bless whoever will move in, too.” She loitered a few minutes, finished that block and then moved on to the next block and ended up in front of the Reynolds’ parsonage.

  “And bless the Reynolds, Lord. You were so good to bring this family here. Thanks for the joke he told on Sunday that helped me to see things so differently. Help me to intercede faithfully for my pastor, his family, and my church.”

  Inside, Kathy watched Sarah outside. She recognized her from church. Sarah stood on the sidewalk facing the house, talking a mile a minute—to nobody. How strange. I wonder what she wants? Kathy headed for the front door, but by the time she unlocked it and stuck her head out, Sarah had turned the corner praying fervently for Kathy’s neighbors. I hope she’s not a troublemaker, thought Kathy. I’ll have to remember to ask Paul if he’s heard anything about her.

  Sarah continued her prayer walks, usually in the morning, sometimes adding a second round at 4 P.M., too. She didn’t see Joel and Malta walking to her left and right, blessing, praying, and agreeing with everything she said. Anyone looking with spiritual eyes would have surely been amused to see two, huge, strong angels in dazzling garments towering over a little 5’2” woman, wearing a brown robe of humility, who shuffled down the street—all three fervently praying for salvation to come to this neighborhood.

  The Father sends Joel and Malta at the time of salvation to protect their charges from the enemy’s attack, and to help them to become more humble and Christlike.

  “Father is beautifully transforming Sarah’s heart. It’s a pleasure to serve one so willing to follow,” said Malta.

  “Yes, she will finish spiritually strong, even though her body will be very weak.”

  “Father is full of mercy to snatch her at the end of her life from the enemy’s camp. You can bet Satan is spitting sulfur right now—”

  “He’s planning a counterattack,” interrupted Joel, putting his hand on his sword. “We need to be especially vigilant.”

  Depression, Agoraphobia, Suicide, Discouragement, and Lying were arguing among themselves at that very moment. Demonic strategy sessions frequently deteriorated into vicious quarrels—there is no loyalty between demons, no cooperation, only hatred and vying for status.

  Agoraphobia turned to Suicide, “You’re worthless now. She’s never going to take her own life.”

  “You had months and you couldn’t take her out. I was only here for a few days,” screeched Suicide. “If I’d had as much time as you—”

  “Depression is right,” hollered Discouragement, “we don’t need you; you’re of no value to us now.”

  “I’ve got better assignments available than with you losers.” Suicide cursed and disappeared.

  “If the truth is known, we’re all pretty ineffective now that she’s saved,” grumbled Depression.

  “I can’t believe she slipped through our claws. We almost had her,” whined Discouragement. “Can you believe those angels that are around her now? The whole miserable situation just got a million times harder.”

  “There’s no hope. We have no weapons to overcome her.”

  “Yes we do,” said Lying.

  “Right,” they both responded, “like we’re going to believe you.”

  “Listen to me—for once,” sneered Lying. “Since ‘You Know Who’ was raised from the dead carrying the keys to death and Hell, we are totally defeated.”

  “We know that,” whined Depression, “I hate being reminded. Get on with it. What’s your big secret weapon?”

  “We have one weapon and only one weapon, but it is powerful—the ability and authority to exploit her ignorance. We can attack her in every area where she doesn’t realize she has the victory. She’s a new Christian; she doesn’t understand that she’s more than a conqueror.”3 They all shuddered at that phrase. “Since she’s His daughter, a joint heir, she has all the power He does at her control, but she doesn’t realize she has the power—”

  “So she can’t wield the power against us,” interrupted Discouragement, his yellow pointed teeth showing behind his evil grin. “She’s like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She had the shoes that could take her home any time, but she didn’t realize what they could do for her.”

  “That’s right,” said Lying. “The only weapons we’ve ever used in the last 2,000 years are deceit and bluff. But we’ve taken out many Christians because of their ignorance,4 and we can still take her out, too.”

  Most of the families on her street were gone during the day, so Sarah, with help from her unseen warring and worshiping angelic companions, grew bolder and progressed from merely asking blessings on her neighbors to declaring their salvations.

  One day she stopped in front of the Reynolds’ and paced back and forth praying. Kathy, who was hanging a picture in the living room, glanced out the window and saw Sarah pacing in front of the house, fists clenched, looking very intense and talking, talking, talking—to nobody.

  Oh dear, this is getting worse all the time. She dialed the church. Paul wisely agreed to take her call, even though he was meeting with Mike Brooks, the head of the elders. He wanted Mike’s opinion of phase one of his mega five-year church plan and was giddy with anticipation.

  “Hi Hon, what’s new? Again? No, I don’t know anything about her, but I’ll find out.” He hung up the phone; his brow furrowed, and he leaned across the old mahogany desk toward Mike. “Tell me everything you know about Sarah Edwards; don’t hold anything back.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, it appears she’s stalking my family. She comes to our house every day, sometimes twice a day, and paces up and down the sidewalk with her fists clenched, ranting and raving about who knows what.”

  “Are you talking about our Sarah Edwards?”

  “Exactly. What do you know about her?”

  “Not much, but I’d never peg her as a stalker, that’s for sure. Does she knock at your door or look in your windows?”

  “Well no. Stalking is probably too strong a word, but it’s like she’s got some weird obsession with our house.”

  “She was widowed about seven months ago. She’d never been to the church, and Reverend Hall led her to the Lord. She made her profession of faith, was baptized the following Sunday, and has been coming here ever since. That’s about all I know. She seems sweet, sincere, and totally harmless to me.”

  “Has she caused
any problems since she’s been here?”

  “Well,” said Mike haltingly, “I don’t know her personally, and I wasn’t in on this so I hate to say anything, but there was one incidence shortly after she got saved; she was telling all her Sunday School class members that she heard from the Lord about them. It didn’t go over too well. I can’t say that they ostracized her, but they’re not overly friendly. But I still don’t think she’s a stalker.”

  “She hears voices and thinks they’re from God, and she stakes out the pastor’s house?” said Paul, stroking his chin. “She’s probably still experiencing heavy grief. I studied the stages of grief at seminary, you know. It sounds like she’s not coping well. Is she still trying to tell people she hears from God for them?”

  “I think that got nipped in the bud pretty quickly.”

  Paul leaned back in his well-worn office chair and let out a deep breath. “I think I’ll let it go for a while then, if she’s not causing problems in the church now. Maybe Jessica could sit by her this Sunday and get an idea about what’s going on. If Sarah’s got some kind of fixation or need to be recognized by us, I think Kathy and I should keep our distance for the time being. She probably needs grief counseling, but I sure shouldn’t be the one to do it.”

  “I’ll remember to ask Jessica when I get home,” Mike said, but he forgot.

  After Mike left, Paul had a counseling session scheduled with one of the college-aged church members, Luke. Paul had spent some time praying earlier in the week for Luke who was struggling with a call to missions. The Lord had showed Paul that it was His will for Luke to minister in India, but he knew better than to give a directional word.

  Paul listened with compassion as Luke poured out his heart. He felt a strong call to India, but wondered where the finances would come from and if he should drop out of the community college and enroll in a mission’s training program. Paul sympathized; he remembered struggling with his decision to enroll in seminary.

  “Luke, I’m not going to give you an opinion one way or the other. I need to let the Lord bring you to the right conclusion; that way, if you go, when things get hard you won’t doubt your call or blame me. I know that doesn’t seem to help much,” he said with a sympathetic grin.

  “Here’s what I’m going to recommend,” he said as he stood from his desk and scanned his book shelf. “I’m suggesting you read these two books. One is about the life of William Carey and the other is about Amy Carmichael. She ministered 55 years in India without going on furlough! Also keep praying, and I’ll pray for you, too. After you read the books, call me and we’ll meet again.” He gave Luke a big hug, looked at his watch, and then headed home.

  Finding a balance between church and family is going to be harder than I thought.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Depth under depth of self-love and self-admiration. Pride! It was through Pride that the Devil became the Devil; it is the complete anti-God state of mind. Pride is essentially competitive in a way the other vices are not. Pride is a spiritual cancer. It is my besetting sin.”

  C.S. Lewis1

  Kathy poured the boiling water into the kitchen sink, catching the spaghetti in a colander. She glanced at her watch for the third time and prayed another quick prayer asking for patience with her husband, who was late again. Valoe smiled and gave her a download of grace.

  She strapped Jordan in his high chair just as Paul came into the kitchen with that “tail between his legs guilty dog look.” He had decided he wasn’t admitting to anything unless she brought it up, in spite of Saldu’s encouragement that he should immediately apologize. Kathy bit her tongue and started portioning out the spaghetti.

  “Alright, Kathy!” shouted Valoe, “way to not give it to him. Love is patient, kind, and doesn’t keep track of wrongs.”2 Although Kathy’s ears didn’t hear Valoe’s words, her spirit received their message.

  As Paul ate, he shared what he had learned about Sarah. “It sounds like she’s just real needy, real lonely, and still grieving. She’s also been hearing voices and attributing them to God; then she went to her Sunday school class and tried to tell everyone what the Lord said about them.”

  “Maybe she has a prophetic gifting,” said Kathy as she picked Jordan’s garlic bread up off the floor and inspected it for dirt. Paul looked up from his plate at that moment and grabbed the bread from her hand. “Thanks hon, don’t mind if I do.” And before she could say anything, he’d taken a big bite.

  “Maybe she’s loony. Her gifting wasn’t well received by the class so she must have been doing something wrong. The ladies in that class have been church members for hundreds of years!”

  “Maybe she’s not so much loony as she is lonely. I’ll invite her in for a cup of tea the next time she comes by.”

  “I’d prefer you don’t do that. She might be like a stray cat; if you feed her, she’ll never go away.”

  “Then I’ll speak to her at church and see if I can get a sense of what’s going on.”

  “You’ve got a great heart, hon, but it’s just not wise. If she’s fixated on our family and has some desire for recognition, we shouldn’t feed into that. Besides I don’t want her around Jordan. Jessica is going to have a chat with Sarah. You can trust the situation to her.”

  The conversation quickly shifted to Paul’s five-year plan for the church.

  “Honey would you get me some coffee? I’d like to show you my completed plan. I finished it yesterday and ran it by Mike today, and he seemed impressed. He’s not only the head of the elders, he’s also head of the pulpit search committee, you know. I thought that was encouraging.”

  Kathy returned with two mugs of coffee and a washcloth. She handed Paul the mug that said, “Old preachers never die—they just go out to pastor.” It was a graduation gift from his best friend in seminary. After cleaning applesauce from Jordan’s hair, face, hands, T-shirt, jeans, and shoes, she released him from the confines of his high chair. He scampered into the living room to play with his collection of stuffed animals.

  “Come around to this side of the table, honey, so you can see.”

  Saldu, who was standing behind Paul, glanced sadly toward Valoe, who was shaking his head. “Paul,” said Saldu, “this isn’t just about your plan. You’re supposed to be pastoring Father’s beloved children. You’re supposed to be a servant-leader just like Jesus. If you want to tower over everyone in a grass root’s movement, it probably means you’re a weed.”3

  What Paul couldn’t perceive was a spirit of Pride perched on his shoulder, influencing him. He opened a black leather folder to reveal 100 pages printed in multiple colors, complete with graphs and pie charts. “I’ve been working on this all week. I think this is God’s plan for our church.”

  “Our church?” exclaimed Kathy, rolling her eyes and sloshing coffee over the side of her cup.

  “Yes, our church. I think this is where we’ll end up. I really do. Let me show you what I’ve done,” he said, ignoring her obvious frustration. Valoe laid his hand on Kathy’s shoulder, and she took a deep breath and vowed to compose herself.

  “See, I’ve got a master goal of where the church should be in five years. Then I have subgoals for each of the individual five years and then smaller goals for every six months. If we break it down into six-month increments, it’s very doable. See, that’s 30 smaller goals, one on each page and the predicted timetable to start and accomplish it. If we’re on track, three years from now we’ll be starting a large building campaign. The church will be way too small. We’ll need to buy land; I saw some last week. It’s a little beyond the reservoir. It’s about three miles out of town on the corner of JJ and Old Highway 3. Right there, at the northwest corner is, I’m guessing, about 40 acres. It would be perfect. Don’t you think that sounds like God? I think He’ll provide this land for the church, and I’m going to pray about it every day.”

  Saldu’s face was sober. He looked at Malta and shook his head, “I’m doing everything I can to discourage it. He just wouldn’t
entertain the idea that his plan isn’t also God’s plan. It’s all about what he thinks and feels. Humility results from laying down the right to be right, but pride is like a consuming fire. It’s insatiable and, unless he repents, it will be his downfall.”

  Kathy was reeling from Paul’s discourse. “Don’t you think you’re getting a little ahead of yourself? You’re the interim. You have no guarantee you’ll be called as pastor. God might want us to take a church in downtown Harlem or Timbuktu—”

  “But honey, you’re not listening. I do think this is the Lord. The plan just flowed—” This caused Manipulation and Pride to burst into wicked laughter. “He can’t tell the difference between our voices and God’s?” Deception broke into a fangy grin, “I’ve outdone myself!”

  “—all the information I learned in my church planting class was so applicable. See, my first goal,” he said, flipping past the multicolored, multifonted title page, “is to start a prayer meeting, once a week. We have to ask the Lord to bless all this or it will fall flat on its face. I’m going to announce a prayer meeting. It’s time to open the building on Wednesday nights. We can’t just do Sunday morning and Sunday evening; we’ve got to stir the pot. This town needs to be saturated with the Gospel. Then after the prayer ministry is established, six months from now, we’ll start a visitation program every Thursday night. We’ll go out into the community in pairs and knock on every door.” He flipped to the next page. “See, I’ve got the whole town marked in sections. We’ll hit them one by one each Thursday night and keep going until every home in the community has had a visit from Victory Church of Bradbury.”

  “But honey—”

  “In seminary I learned that on average, for every 11 houses you go to, one family will visit the church. Out of every five that visit, I think we should be able to maintain one. It’s so simple. For every 55 homes we visit, we will gain a new family for the church. If you divide the number of households in our community by 55 I can predict—”