Prepare to meet thy God.

 “Prepare to meet thy God.” 

Roz was showing me this on her screen. She’d brought her laptop into the kitchen, where I was sitting at the table, trying to decide what to do next. That’s what I seem to do most of these days, decide what to do next. This time I was trying to decide whether to take a walk or watch television. It was a nice night, and the bats were coming out soon. On the other hand, there was nothing on TV. I’d almost made up my mind.

She’d seen a sign “just like it” in southwest Virginia - “near Marion,” she said. She and her friend Maggie were driving back from Friday and Saturday and Sunday morning in Abingdon. They’d ridden bikes and gone to the Barter Theater. I’d stayed home and read a book by Max Boot about how he wasn’t a conservative any more or else he was the only true conservative left; and I’d gone to church with Uncle Albert. The sermon was about Jesus and love and forgiveness. All the sermons lately have been about Jesus and love and forgiveness. I helped Uncle Albert up to the communion rail, but I didn’t take communion myself because there’s Jesus, who loves and forgives, and then there’s Christ who offers his body and pours out his blood for us. They’re not the same. One was a man. The other is a Concept. I’ve stopped believing in Concepts.

     But Roz was showing me this on the internet, a different Concept. “I should have taken a picture,” she said. “The sign I saw was just like this one. 

“Before I go back down that way,” she said, “I’m going to make a sign that says, “Yes, I’m ready to meet my God. Are you ready to meet yours?” There’s a place across the street that it doesn’t look like anyone owns. I could put it there.”

     “It’s a quote,” I said.

     “I’m going to make my sign red and white,” she said. Then,

     “Yeah?” she said. She’d just heard me - about its being a quote. And she added - there was a sigh under her voice: “You would know.” She meant that this is the kind of thing I know, but not to my advantage. She’s right.

     “It’s from Amos,” I said. “God is yelling at the Israelites again because they’re screwing up again. He’s yelling for the hundredth time because they’ve screwed up for the one-hundred-and-first. It’s something about how he destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and yet he saved them - meaning through Lot and his daughters - but they just kept wandering away. So now he’s going to destroy them the same way he did Sodom: ‘Prepare to meet thy God’ - that’s what he says.

     “I can find the passage for you,” I said.

Times like this, she’ll often look at me, and she’ll shake her head. And I know she loves me, but she wishes I were different. I wish I were different, too. But I try to make a joke out of it. “Anyway, the guy down in Marion has to meet that God, not you.” I say it like a joke, but it’s not a very good joke. It’s really not a joke at all.

     She shakes her head again, then she wraps her arms around me. She says, “Poor baby.” That is a joke. It’s both true, and it’s a joke. She’s both thinking it’s true, I am a poor baby, and she’s teasing me, why should I be? - there’s no good reason.

“Why don’t we get soft ice cream after supper?” she says this time. Actually, she’s says that a lot. She likes soft ice cream as much as I do. “Prepare to meet thy Dip Cone,” she adds this time.

08.12.19