The Lord Will Provide--Please Remit
raymond tod smith
Whether it was actually the spirit of Christ which moved the man into spasmodic seizures of supposed rapture or just cheap railroad whiskey, we may never actually know for the Lord sometimes works in mysterious, and messed up, ways, but as he fell upon the altar with the slow frenzy of a fat bumblebee left over into late fall, a look of resplendent calmness, though perhaps just bone drunkenness, crossed his face and there remained. He rose to his slippery feet and began to dance like a stout-filled Irishman at his mother-in-law’s wake proclaiming that Jesus had died, Jesus had died, Jesus had died for our sins. In this statement, our delicate pastor, Reverend Rosegarnish agreed, even as he tried to amiably pry back his microphone from the joyful and seemingly holyfied hands of the delirious stranger. Before relinquishing his grip, the odd man beseeched the congregation by shouting, “God has come all over me! He has come all over me and He can come all over all of you, too! There is enough God to go around and cover us all in His Golden Splendor!” Then the man, tossing back the mike to Rosegarnish, collapsed into the floor, curling himself up into a caricature of a ball, and, before very many seconds, cold be heard snoring through the church’s sound system by every person inside, except, of course, old Leroy Maxwell who couldn’t hear the Second Coming if it took place inside his ear.
After the police, and an ambulance, in case our worst suspicions were somehow wrong, were called in to carry the apparently inebriated new follower away to the hospital and then a holding cell, our meek Reverend Rosegarnish dismissed us, though we all remained, in oblivious awe, or as close to that as good Christian churchgoers can allow themselves. The pastor walked into the back toward his office and I eased my benumbed ass from the front pew to follow him like a deacon for the day.
Once inside the sparse walls of his private place, he pulled from his micro-fridge a chilly pint of Mad Dog 20/20, the tramps’ tramped-out vintage, and offered me a Styrofoam cupful, which I thirstily accepted. He had opened his huge desk Bible to the Book of Job, then rethinking, turned to Revelation. From my placid mask of devoutness, I asked him, without audibly laughing, what he planned to do the following Sunday to top this service. He looked over at me with tired-out eyes like diamonds dulled by dust and said, “The Lord will provide,” then poured more of the grape into his own ceramic cup with the inscription: God’s Gentile Servant (Jews Be Damned). He looked as if he were about to laugh, or at least smile, neither of which he did.
