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  Finney opened his eyes and scanned the horizon for one particular face. It was time to interact again, to gain further reference points that could help him make more sense of this fabulous world bombarding him on every level. It was time to sit and talk again with Zyor. He who had stood at his side on earth by day, and stood by him sleeplessly, thousands and thousands of nights. Zyor, who had left the hospital room with Finney and escorted him through the passageway to heaven’s birthing room. Because his mission on earth centered on Finney, when Finney’s time on earth ended, so did the warrior’s mission, and he was free to return home. He couldn’t get over his initial delight of discovering that the mysterious stranger he’d first seen in the passageway had in fact been with him day and night for many years.

  He’d already asked Zyor innumerable questions. Finney’s mind was a sponge, with a capacity to absorb new information beyond anything he’d ever imagined. He resisted the notion he had to get every answer now. It was as if he feared this was a wonderful dream that could end any moment, and any question not asked here and now would forever go unanswered. He assured himself otherwise, but couldn’t escape the feeling this really was too good to be true. But there was no conflict between goodness and truth here, he was realizing. The supply of both was unlimited.

  Finney’s eyes caught Zyor, sitting with his massive legs crossed, quietly singing some ancient saga of adventure and conquest. The angel watched him cautiously approach, but the look on Zyor’s face sent Finney a clear message of welcome.

  Finney took a breath, then plunged into the bubbling sea of impressions that filled his inner being. “I feel like an orphan who’s grown up in the crime infested garbage heaps of a poverty stricken slum. Someone has come and rescued me, and taken me to a breathtaking palace with a view of the endless ocean and majestic mountains. Neither my mind nor body can diminish the experience, because for the first time in my life, both are as they should be. Do you understand these feelings, Zyor?”

  Zyor gave a thoughtful look, and replied, “Not entirely. But the link forged between us in the dark world still exists. I sense these things in you, these feelings you describe, in a way I cannot sense in others of Adam’s race. To a degree, I can experience them through you. Only in faint echoes, perhaps, but they are real nonetheless. I am grateful for what I can learn from you.”

  Finney smiled at Zyor’s words. It seemed so ludicrous to think of this magnificent being, so superior in mind and body to the greatest super heroes of Greek myths or comic lore, learning from him. He probed Zyor with more and more questions, his mind ravenously devouring every answer. Yet every answer produced a dozen more questions.

  He asked, “Why do I have a body now when the resurrection is yet to come?” Zyor explained this was a temporary body designed for this intermediate period before the plan of God on earth was culminated. He compared it to an Artist’s preliminary sketch of a later masterpiece, assuring him it would pale in comparison to the body that would one day be his. That was impossible to comprehend given its incalculable superiority to his old body. Finney asked, “Did I die early?” Zyor replied, “You did not die early, any more than if you had died at twenty-five or ninety-five. Whoever walks with God is immortal until his work on earth is done. For such a one, there are no accidents.”

  Zyor qualified as the most fascinating and insightful being Finney had ever encountered, except of course for Elyon’s Son. Neither Finney nor Zyor tired from their weighty discussions. The dialogue energized them both, as if intellectual exercise were rest rather than labor. Though he wasn’t fatigued, he began to feel like a python swallowing a meal much larger than itself—as though his mind was so full he needed to crawl off to a corner of heaven and lie still to digest it all.

  “May I ask you one more question, Zyor?” Finney smiled ear to ear, that same patented grin, realizing Zyor knew as well as he did “one more question” invariably meant many more.

  “I was made to serve Elyon and to serve you. It pleases me to answer any question I can.”

  “I’ve learned a great deal since coming here to Elyon’s realm,” Finney said. “I understand things so much more clearly than when I was in the other world. But there’s still so much I don’t yet know, so much I fail to understand.”

  Zyor looked puzzled. “That surprises you?”

  “Well, yes. It does. I always thought when we got to heaven we’d understand everything.”

  The angel made no attempt to hide his surprise at this statement. Finney wasn’t sure Zyor was capable of hiding anything. He was what he was, and thought what he thought, with no duplicity or hidden agenda. What you saw was what you got. This was one of the things about him and his kind Finney found so refreshing. It reminded him of Little Finn and his Down’s Syndrome friends. The sheer innocence, transparency, and lack of pretension was delightful. He and Sue had spoken often of Little Finn’s angelic qualities, never realizing until now how literally accurate the assessment was.

  “Do you mean,” Zyor measured his next words, “that you thought you would be God?”

  “Well, no. Of course not.”

  “Who but Elyon understands everything? To expect to understand everything is to expect to be God.”

  On earth, Zyor’s piercing logic would have seemed incriminating, laying guilt on the questioner. Here it served to enlighten Finney without accusing him.

  “But,” Finney explained, “Elyon’s Word tells us that while on earth we saw in a mirror dimly, in heaven we would see face to face. That we used to know in part, but in heaven we would know fully. Isn’t this heaven? Then why is my understanding still so…partial?”

  “You see much more clearly, my master, because the obstacles that blurred your vision are now removed. Your mind is sharper and able to focus. But you do not see all there is to see. Did you not also read in Elyon’s Book his promise that in the coming ages he will continuously reveal to us the incomparable riches of his grace? How then could you expect to know everything there is to know? Or to know immediately everything you will one day know? This would defy the way of process and discovery designed by Elyon for his creatures.”

  The angel’s voice trembled with excitement, suggesting to Finney he was but skimming a vast reservoir of truth. Even as Zyor spoke, Finney sensed him reveling in doing that for which he was created—making known to men the ways of God.

  “Elyon is the Creator, we are the creatures, and always shall be. Heaven does not make you inhuman. It allows you to become all it means to be human. The Creator knows all, and knows all at once. The creature’s knowledge is and always will be both partial and gradual. It will grow continuously throughout eternity. Every day we will understand better the greatness of our King, and the multifaceted wonders of his character. In this way we will worship him with a keener awareness and vitality. With a freshness that comes not only from considering what we already know about him, but anticipating what we do not yet know. And while our knowledge will one day be many times what it is now, even then we will be no closer to exhausting the riches of his person. He is as worthy now as he will be then, but we will worship him anew because we will have learned more of his worthiness than we ever knew before.”

  Pulled in the wake of the angel’s excitement, Finney responded, “Of course. It makes sense when I hear you say it. For some reason I thought process and growth were part of the other world, and it would be different here—that everything we’d ever experience in heaven would be ours immediately.”

  “And then what?” Zyor asked.

  “Well, then we’d just keep enjoying it forever, I suppose.”

  “Without the joy of discovery? With no meditation and study? No interaction with Elyon or one’s fellow creatures? No process of revelation and learning? No exploration of Elyon’s realm that rewards us with enlightenment and renews our thirst for further adventure? With no effort?” The thought was obviously as impoverishing to the angel as it was incomprehensible.

  Though Finney knew Zyor meant nothin
g personal, for a moment he felt as close as he had, in the new world, to having asked a stupid question.

  “Well, yes, Zyor, I have to admit I did think that.”

  The great wise warrior seemed genuinely perplexed. “I do not understand why. And I certainly cannot imagine anyone would want such a thing. Learning requires curiosity, exploration, evaluation, and dialogue. To be granted the product of knowledge without this process would violate what it means to be a creature. It would circumvent the process of growth in the grace and knowledge of our Lord…may his name be ever praised.

  “If we knew all,” Zyor continued, “for us there could be no growth. Mystery is the food of the creature’s mind. Your people love to read their mysteries, but most of them do not devote their attention to the grand mysteries of the universe, the mysteries rooted in the Creator himself. If we understood all the mysteries of Elyon, our wonder would be focused on a knowledge that had a past but no future. Each moment of discovery, each event of disclosure and understanding is a point of worship, a point of wondrous arrival for the moment. But that point of arrival is not the ultimate destination. It is but one more step on the stairway, one more rock on which we tread in crossing the water…” Finney thought he noticed a gleam in Zyor’s eye as he added, “just as when you were a child, and stepped on one rock after another to cross Benton Stream.”

  Benton Stream! What a flood of memories it brought back. Finney’s spine tingled as he was reminded again this magnificent being had been there by his side even as a child, when he was growing up in the other world.

  “Elyon said in his Book you must enter heaven as a little child. Despite your continuous growth here, in relation to the Father you shall always be a child. And while on earth a child may long to grow old, and an adult may long to be a child again, here you are able to mature without ever losing the wonder of being a child. Indeed, in maturing you become more child-like. For the child’s joy here is in the discovery of each step, and knowing that while we have for the moment completed our quest, the larger quest will go on and on. Each cave we enter to explore opens into new passageways, which enter into others, and others. Our delight is not only in being at the place we are, but in knowing the Adventure will never end, and therefore the Joy will never end. Indeed, both the Adventure and the Joy are just now beginning. And,” Zyor paused for a moment and looked toward Elyon’s throne, “when the great nebula of Orion grows dim with age, when the star systems of Andromeda collapse upon themselves and breathe no more, the Adventure will still be young.”

  Set free by each new revelation of truth, Finney’s mind probed the subtle implications of all this in a way his old mind couldn’t have begun to. The angel continued to instruct, and Finney sat at his feet as an eager pupil, wildly inscribing notes on the clean slate of his new mind.

  “Even among the creatures of heaven,” Zyor said, “knowledge is not equal. Michael and Gabriel know things I cannot now imagine. But someday I will grow to their present understanding. Meanwhile they will grow to an understanding of which they now can only dream. Yet the Seraphim know things they do not, or so I have been told. Just as I can know things you cannot. And, indeed, as you know things I cannot.”

  This last statement astonished Finney. Zyor had been created ages before him and had been with Finney from conception to death, in all of his conversations and experiences and classrooms. What could he possibly know that this great and wise being did not? But Zyor was going on, so Finney had to file this with all the other questions that were adding up faster than the answers, which were coming at a torrid pace. Finney could only praise Elyon for his improved mind, which seemed as far advanced beyond the old as a computer beyond an abacus.

  “I am old in my knowledge, so old that in comparison you are but a newborn child,” Zyor said, with no hint of arrogance or condescension. “Yet when my knowledge is compared to Elyon’s, it is no different than yours, no different than if I had been born this very moment. The difference between us is a difference in degree. The difference between us and him is a difference in kind. Only he is Creator. All others are creatures. We are the worshippers. He alone, the Ancient of Days, is the one to be worshipped.”

  Zyor’s voice took on a hushed awe, as if what he was about to say was more important than anything, and must be said and heard with only the greatest care.

  “He bridged the gulf of a broken relationship between himself and you—may the Lamb of God be forever praised—but the gulf between his capacities and ours shall always be infinite. We can never know but the tiniest fraction of what he knows. The fraction would seem to increase with the knowledge, but a fraction of an infinite amount will always be infinitely small in relation to the whole. We will increase in knowledge throughout eternity, always learning as he reveals himself and his wonders to us. But we will never begin to catch up with his knowledge. The most educated, insightful creature is still only a creature. The most he can know is but a drop of water in Elyon’s infinite ocean of truth.”

  “So, we’ll always be learning and exploring,” Finney said. “Doesn’t sound like we’ll be bored.”

  Zyor gazed at Finney, as puzzled as his placid face could look.

  “Boredom? Here? It is…unthinkable. Heaven is the very opposite of boredom. It puts one in the presence of the Beloved himself, and of multitudes of beloved ones. Lovers are never bored, for their delight is in each other. Even if no other diversions are available, the study of each other is enough. He who loves Elyon could never be bored in his presence. You shall not merely stare at Elyon here, as one might stare at a picture of his beloved in the dark world. You shall investigate Elyon’s very being, and the delights of doing so are beyond comprehension. If that was all heaven is, it would be infinitely more than enough.

  “Yet because our Beloved takes delight in always designing and creating new things to display his wonders, this realm is an endless repository of wealth, a continuous succession of adventures to benefit and delight his children. Boredom? There is only boredom where man would be sovereign instead of God, gutting the world of wonder and leaving no riches to treasure and no realms to explore. On earth there is boredom. In eternity there shall be no boredom, except in hell.”

  Zyor reached down and put his arm around Finney’s shoulder. Finney sensed somehow it was not a natural gesture for the angel, but an expression of affection he’d learned from humans in his many years on earth.

  “It is time to travel and explore the wonders of this place. On earth you needed exercise and diversion and fresh air to allow your insights to assimilate. Something similar is true here. Your capacity to understand has grown hundreds of times, but it is only the beginning.”

  Zyor smiled in the almost-human way of one privileged to initiate someone to an experience of joy and delight.

  “I have much to show you about what is happening on earth, where Elyon’s plan is at work. About how your own death, and the circumstances surrounding it, is affecting the life of someone you have prayed for many years. But first, come with me. I will introduce you to an undiscovered country that awaits your exploration. You will be the child, and I will show you wonders beyond your wildest dreams.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It wasn’t an accident.” Jake pondered the message in bewildered disbelief. Was this someone’s idea of a joke? Bad taste, sure, but bad taste was nothing new, not in his mail anyway. What else could “it” be besides the accident that killed his friends? He checked the postmark. Two days after the accident. If that’s what it really was. Who sent this, and why? Someone he’d offended with a column? Maybe a right-wing fanatic? They were capable of this sort of thing. Or maybe politics had nothing to do with it. Just a disturbed person wanting to intimidate a public figure but without the guts to accost him on the street. Or maybe it was someone sincere but mistaken. Or maybe it was true.

  If it was true, how did this person know? Who was it? The postmark was the same downtown zip as the Trib, which meant nothing. Anyone could have mailed i
t here. Why didn’t the writer identify himself? Was he at risk? Someone who accidentally witnessed something? Or overheard something? Or was it someone on the inside? If so, the inside of what?

  Jake reprimanded himself for being suckered into this. It was a prank, and the perpetrator had succeeded. But he had to check it out.

  Where do I begin? Two words came to mind. Ollie Chandler.

  Jake befriended Chandler, a cop, five years ago when he was up on a police brutality charge. Several reporters at the Trib had hung Ollie out to dry, convicted him before the jury ever heard any evidence. It bugged Jake. He did some investigating on his own and got a very different picture of Chandler. He was a Vietnam vet, and Jake felt an immediate loyalty to him. The other reporters made an issue of his being ex-military—they’d said he came from a “background of violence” and was “accustomed” to it. Perhaps “life was cheaper” to him. Jake stood by Ollie as he would a buddy in the trenches. He even suggested in a column that perhaps life was cheaper to those who had never had to lay theirs down for others. This hadn’t won him points at the Trib.

  The jury finally acquitted Chandler and he was reinstated to the force. Some credited Jake’s investigation and sympathetic portrayal for preventing him from being made a scapegoat. Taken off a street beat, Ollie made the switch from uniformed officer to detective, homicide detective, something he’d always wanted to do anyway. He and Jake shared information. Every journalist needed one detective he could trust. Every detective needed one journalist he could trust. Jake and Ollie had found each other.

  Jake tossed a dollar by his plate and stuffed the letters in his briefcase, slipping the yellow note card back in its envelope and putting it in the upper fold of his briefcase.

  The police station was only six blocks away. Jake meandered in the front door, unconsciously squaring his shoulders as if reporting for duty. Safest place in the city, he thought. He didn’t share the cynicism about police officers that permeated some circles at the Trib. Maybe because he’d been a soldier doing the dirty work of protecting his country, and he could only respect people who put their lives on the line daily. Of course, he knew there were dirty cops, just like there were dirty soldiers. But he always began by assuming they were clean, and that made all the difference. He was one of the few reporters whose face was a welcome sight at the bureau.