KINGDOM OF HEAVEN
He stood in the long hallway halfway to my apartment, in front of his front door. Ralph was taking out his keys, getting ready to enter his unit. I walked out of the elevator, saw my neighbor and said “Hi.”
That’s all it took for me and Ralph to begin a casual conversation that soon grew serious.
“How is Nancy doing?” I asked
Ralph’s wife had been sick. This I knew from brief hello’s exchanged with Nancy over the past few months.
“She’s dying.” Ralph said. “4th stage metastasized breast cancer, it’s a matter of time. Probably soon.”
“Is she ready for it?” I asked
“She’s ready – but stubborn. Won’t let hospice in, suffering every day like a martyr.”
Then casually Ralph said, “I died thirty years ago.” I didn’t have a chance to respond when he continued. “Electrocuted.”
He told me it was a day when he was in a basement doing a plumbing repair for a customer. Nancy was there too, though he didn’t know her yet. She was bringing a suitcase to her storage shed. Ralph had a soldering iron in one hand and he reached up and touched the water pipe. The cord from his tool wasn’t grounded.
“I felt no pain only bliss. I saw Jesus.”
He said God’s kingdom was as beautiful as anything you could never imagine. Even the flowers sang. The river held flowing crystals.
“Then I felt a hard tug at my right leg. It was Nancy pulling me down from heaven. I came to when I dropped the iron. From that day forward I knew the reward is in the next life not this one. It’s too hard here.”
Soon after his visit to God’s kingdom Ralph met an angel.
He was doing some plumbing work for a nice lady who owned an antique shop. She also owned an empty storefront next to it. Out of the blue...READ MORE
