He looked off to his left where he stood and read out loud his written words in the sand, “Jenny Sheltie is a real lady.” He looked off to the right where he stood and read out loud his written words in the sand, “Lady Sheltie—The Ultimate Woman.” These two pithy testimonials were a sweet savor to his heart duly smitten by this woman. “Lord, somebody passing by here might see me here with these messages in the sand,” he prayed his thoughts to God. And he and the Holy Spirit agreed, “Good!” He was a born-again believer in Christ. But “his” Jenny was not a born-again believer in Christ. Were he to die, he would go straight to Heaven. But were she to die, she would go straight to Hell. Even ladies went to Hell were they not born-again Christians. And his burden for her lost soul still filled him with many prayers for her salvation. She had never been his girlfriend, but he desperately adored her as if she were. He had a major crush on her when he first discovered her as the new cashier at the grocery store where he bagged groceries for a living. Her name badge read, “Jenny S.” And she was tall and slender and beautiful. Her golden curls made her head irresistible to him. Even the gray apron strings
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of her cashier’s uniform that descended from her back down past her bottom were classy to this man.
But God had told him in the Holy Bible not to date any unsaved girl. And he believed God, and he obeyed God, and he feared God—all for his good. That was why he had never asked Miss Sheltie out.
He had often put in prayer requests for this Jenny’s soul at his Baptist Church’s Wednesday Bible Study and Prayer Meeting. The women prayed for her in their prayer circles, and the men and he prayed for her in their prayer circles. Pastor said of her, “She’s a nice girl.” And Pastor’s wife said of her, “I’ll keep praying for her in my own quiet time with God as I do here at church.” Alone in this little sandy shore of wide deep river, this man quoted Scripture to God that was to him all about Jenny Sheltie: “It is written, ‘And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.’ Mark 10:26-27.” His Jenny did not have to stay lost just because she was still lost. She could get saved, too. He did. And who else was as important to him as Jenny for getting saved? Even when all of Heaven was filled with Christ’s Regal Glory, this man felt that Heaven would still be a little more beautiful still with Jenny There than with Jenny not There. And the Good Lord was just the One Who could do this soul-saving miracle upon her. Was He not rightly called, “The Saviour of the world?”
His name was Flanders Nickels. And he felt lonesome now going to work these days. It had been a few years since Miss Sheltie had worked at Olsen Foods. And he lost touch with her. She was an eighteen-year old woman a senior in high school in her days as a cashier. And of course she ran off to college somewhere far away as eighteen-year-old women do. And he had not seen her since. He still prayed for this girl he adored. But he was losing hopes for her soul. He tried to pray again right now for her. But how many ways can a guy pray, “Please save her soul, Lord,” about even a pretty gal?
And he came to doubt about her soul’s destiny.
Just then he heard a rustling in the thick bushes just beyond the sand inland from where he
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stood. He looked up and, lo, a form coming out of the shrubbery out into this open air of shore, its eyes looking at him and his eyes looking at it. It was an animal. It was a she-animal. Behold, a silver hind!
Here before him was a lady centaur archer with a silver coat of armor over her torso. Her tresses were long and blond; her eyes were dark and black; her head had two horns on top; her top half was appropriately covered with a coat of mail; her arms were slender and white, a silver bow in one hand; and her back was covered by a quiver of silver arrows; and her bottom half was that of a silver deer with four silver deer legs with silver hooves and with a little silver deer tail. He always did like the looks of such creatures wrought by the Maker, but this one was particularly comely to him. And she looked to be a messenger of good news for him. And he awaited her message with a holding of his breath. And the Silver Hind gave her announcement to him: “Lady Jennifer Joy Sheltie, meek, demure, chaste, pure, lady of ladies, woman among women, girl above girls, gentle, good, faithful to man and to pet, comely, alluring, fair, lover of animals and lover of God, seeks thee, O Flanders Arckery Nickels.” Having said this, the Silver Hind then drew an arrow from her quiver, nocked it, drew it back on the bowstring, and fired it far out into the wide river. Flanders saw where it landed, and it sank beneath the surface. Then, her errand done, the Silver Hind turned back and ran off back into the bushes and back to where she had come from. Flanders wondered upon these wonderful words that were spoken about his Jenny. Every one of these adjectives he had come to see in her back in her days with him at the grocery store. But that one description he had never come to see in her in their old days, and that was “lover of God.” Only Christians could truly love God. What if…? Was that Silver Hind telling him that so-pretty Miss Sheltie had become a Christian now? Further, the Silver Hind had told him that she was looking for him now. Did that mean “right now?” Clearly he was not in need of following this messenger animal. Otherwise she would not have run off like that. Maybe he was supposed to stay here and wait. How long should he wait here? He waited seemingly “all his life”
for her to come around and become a believer. Surely he could wait equally long for her to come to
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now to this little world of sand and say, “Hi, Flanders. How are you doing?” And this wait was quickly resolved. Just then an old flame of an angel came out from those bushes, her feet barefoot and her penny loafers in each hand. Her hair shone yet as with the brightness of the gold of Ophir mentioned in the Scriptures in its delightful curls and curves all about her head. Her still-youthful and enchanting eyes cast spells upon his heart with their feminine wiles. And her female form, though a few years older, was still most duly slender. And today she had on something he had never seen on her before: it was an an acrylic dark blue shaker sweater vest, sleeveless and with a V-neck, and also a polyester double knit solid dark blue skirt with six box pleats around her loins, reaching most of the way to her knees. This was Lady Jenny Sheltie, back again after a long lonely time for him. Jenny,
in great fondness as of a rendezvous, called out to him, “Hi, Flanders. How are you doing?”
And he, in most fervid ardor, replied the words of Song of Solomon 6:5, which had already been long ago, his Bible verse just about her: “Turn away thine eyes from me, for they have overcome me: thy hair is as a flock of goats that appear from Gilead.”
“You still remember me,” said Lady Sheltie.
“I do. I do,” he said. “Do you remember me the same way, Jenny?”
“You were the gentleman who loved God more than he liked me,” she said. “You were to me this prince of a man of God. I was not sure why you flirted so with me all that year, but never asked me out for a date, Flanders. A girl would be so happy to come and visit you and hear you talk about the Lord. But now I know why we never went out. A saved guy must not go out with an unsaved gal. And I know now myself that a saved gal must not go out with an unsaved guy. But now we are both saved.
I got born again just a little while ago, not even one year ago now.”
“We can date then, Jenny!” he said. “That is, if you do carry a torch for me, Jenny.”
“I’m carrying a torch for you, if you’re carrying a torch for me, Flanders,” she said.
“God is good, and God is great,” he said. “This can be our first date together, Jenny.”
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Lady Sheltie looked down upon the sand and read his two messages thereupon, and she did smile in most sincere approval. “I was wondering what it was that you had written down there,” she said.
“Did you see me as I wrote them?” he asked.
‘Uh uh,” she said, shaking her head.
“How did you find me here all of a sudden like this?” he asked.
“My precious Shire knew that I was looking for you—I wanted to tell you that I was now a believer like yourself—and she told me that she saw a peculiar man writing writings about me with a stick in the sand by the Fox River,” said Jenny Sheltie.
“Here just along the northern shore of Voyageur Park?” asked Flanders.
“Uh huh, Flanders,” she said, nodding her head. “And I said to Shire, ‘Such a guy can only be handsome Flanders.’ And I came right away.”
“I did have a visit from a silver hind. She told me that you were coming,” said Flanders. “Was that silver hind ‘Shire,’ then, Jenny?” he asked.
“My beloved pet and confidante, Flanders,” said Jenny. “I tell her things that I tell God.”
‘Did you tell her good things about myself?” asked Flanders.
“I told her that I missed you,” confided Lady Sheltie. The young woman set her shoes upon the sand between those two odes written thereupon. And the girl fell upon contemplation and reverie. Jenny put her right hand to her right shoulder and ran her fingers across the sleeveless shaker sweater across her shoulder and beyond its edge. The way that shaker sweaters’ “sleeves” extended just a short span beyond the edges of both shoulders and came to an end pleased Flanders Nickels’s eyes. Jenny looked good in this top. In silent thoughts of good things, Jenny then reached down her right hand to an edge of her blue skirt pleat along her right leg and in like ran her fingers down it toward her knees. She looked good in that skirt so very much like the old St. Joseph’s Academy girls’ uniforms in color and
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in style. In his own ruminations, Flanders asked, “What are you thinking about, Jenny?”
“I was thinking of showing you my pets—all of them at home where I live, Flanders,” she said.
“You have other animals besides Shire the silver hind?” he asked.
“Are you excited?” she asked.
“I am excited about you, and I am excited about your pets, Jenny,” he said. “Tell me about them, and then we can go see them together.”
“I can introduce them to you!” she said.
“And you can introduce me to them,” he said.
“Yes! Yes!” said Lady Sheltie.
“I’ve got to go and see them,” he said.
“My second favorite is Borough my wyvern!” she said.
“A wyvern,” he said. “That’s like a little dragon with two legs, isn’t it?”
Woe! Suddenly grief filled the previously so-joyful features of this lady, and it hurt Flanders with a remorse.
“I’m sorry, Jenny, Did I say something that hurt you?” he asked.
“It’s not you, Flanders,” she said. “It is me. It is me and Borough.” She cast her visage downward to the ground in mourning.
“Is Borough not all right?” he asked.
“Borough is not all right, Flanders,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Flanders, if I tell you everything about myself now, would you still want me as your girlfriend-in-the-Lord?” she asked.
“Nothing you can say to me about yourself can keep me from caring for you and having you as my girlfriend, Jenny,” he vowed.
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Then she said it, “My Borough is dying because of me.”
With direct words spoken by an understanding man of God, Flanders asked her most wisely, “Is there sin in your Christian life, Jenny, that you have been holding on to?”
“There is, Flanders,” she said.
“Is it real bad?” he asked in compassion.
“There is none worse,” she said.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“It is what I do right at God all the time every day without repentance, Flanders,” she said. “I am not the nice girl that you think I am.”
With great spiritual discernment, Flanders sought to comfort her guilt by saying, “This sin that you do, I bet it is not at often or as bad now that you are a Christian than it was before you were a Christian, O Jenny,”
“How’d you know, Flanders?” she asked.
“Pastor told us in the flock, ‘Christians are not sinless, but they do sin less,’” he told her.
“Why, that’s right!” she said, brightening up for a moment.
“Maybe, with a little help from God, we two can lick this sin of yours, and Borough can yet live, Jenny,” he said.
“You would help a bad Christian woman like myself, Flanders?” she asked.
“I care for you, Jenny. I don’t want to see you hurt. I want to see you happy in the Lord. Yes, I wish to help you, if you would like me to,” said Flanders Nickels.
In all due sum of her desperately wicked sins, she said, “I was a Satan of a woman before I found Christ, and I am a demon of a woman after I found Christ.”
“What is it that you do that is so very bad that God has to strike down your beloved wyvern?” he asked.
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“I lose my temper, get mad at God, yell at him, and use swear words in my yelling,” Miss Sheltie told him all.
“You go and do things like all that?” he asked, incredulous at Lady Jenny’s confession.
“Am I bad, or what?” she said.
“Yes,” he said.
“Do you still want to go out with me?” she asked.
“Yes!” he said most emphatically. And he said, “And I want to help you to find humbleness toward the Lord.”
“I’d like to learn how to do that,” she said in truth.
“If you would go and tell me more, I think that I can find some Bible verses in my Bible that could maybe help you to overcome your temptations against God,” he said.
And she expounded upon her sin that so easily beset her daily: “I fall into a madness when things do not go my way. When life’s trials come upon me, I go and blame God for them as if He were bullying me, Himself being bigger and stronger than myself. And I complain at God real loud and real indignantly. He should not do these things to me. And I get to thinking that God brings bad things into my life so that I suffer. And from there I start to think that God does not have my best interests in heart. I feel that I cannot trust a God Who lets both good things and bad things into my life. A woman cannot tell what the Almighty will do to her next. God seems so arbitrary. And from thence comes my dirty rotten murmurings. And I make sure that God can hear everything I say up to Heaven at Him. Then I remember how I should be before God. And I know that I did it again. And I am convicted of most terrible sinning. But I am too embarrassed and ashamed to confess my real bad sin in prayer.
And if I drop something…or if the wind slams my apartment door shut with a jarring bang…or if something comes along that takes away some of my time for myself…look out! Out comes the swear word, words that no lady—especially a daughter or God—should speak out loud. And some of those
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swear words, Flanders, are spoken even at the Good Lord Himself! Can you forgive your Jenny Sheltie
for that?”
“You cursed God?” he asked, taken aback.
“Not once, not twice, not thrice,” she said.
“Lots, Jenny?” he asked.
“Enough to commit the sin unto death were God not so full of mercy toward his most errant child, Flanders,” she said.
“God has smitten your wyvern instead of smiting you,” said Flanders in thoughts out loud. “I forgive you for your curses, O Jenny.”
She went on to say, “I know what it was that I did that made God take away His hand of blessing upon my Borough. She and I were frolicking the other day in my big backyard. We were in a race—she and I. It was a hundred yard dash. I got to the finish line first, and I leaped a victory leap up into the air to show off to my wyvern. But when I came back down, my knee fell upon a big rock I did not see. Ouch! That hurt bad! God had not prevented that from happening, I first thought. God had let that happen, I second thought. God made that happen, I third thought. And God did it to me again for no good reason other than that He was mean, I thought in rabid mania. And I cursed God to the Devil in a most virulent string of expletives the likes of which no man or woman had done before. Even my tirades before salvation had never had such fire and brimstone as this tirade I swore because of the rock I carelessly fell down upon with my knee. And I heard a voice of authority come down from Heaven saying to me, ‘Even so as thou hast said, My prodigal daughter.’ And suddenly my innocent wyvern I had been happy with till that rock came along fell upon a terrible and frightening
seizure where she was standing. Seeing Almighty God in His chastening hand, I did not this time blame Him as a wrongdoer as I saw my dear Borough fall down on her side in convulsions. This time I was humbled for my rebellion with this rebuking from God. But neither, though, did I pray and confess
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my so great and terrible sin of my tongue as I stood there beholding the righteous wrath of God.” She paused in her confessions to this old flame.
He said, “Wow, Jenny. You are a bad woman.”
“You should not want anything to do with me, Flanders,” she said.
“I still want everything to do with you, Jenny,” he said despite her guilt. Then, all of sudden, he began to pray out loud for the life of precious Borough. And after that, he went on to pray for the Holy Spirit forgiveness of herself, referring to her in his prayer, nonetheless, as “my girlfriend.”
This took five minutes, and it made her like this Christian man all the more. And when he was done praying for her and her wyvern, she said, “Flanders, you are a good man.”
And he said, “I do not deserve a classy beautiful girl like you.” He then held up his Bible, and he asked, “Could I share some scripture with you that might help you with your temper against our Jesus, Jenny?
She nodded quickly and said, “Yes. I’d like that. I need that right now, Flanders.”
And he opened up his Bible, searched the Scriptures for a short moment, then read out loud to her: “’Thou wilt say then to me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hath thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another to dishonour?’ Romans 9:19-21.”
Lady Sheltie ruminated upon these Words of God. Then she said, “God is saying in those verses to me that I should not blame Him for creating me as an imperfect creation. I do at times most definitely resent my existence as a mortal. Unlike immortals like God, I wound myself, become sick, have accidents, and get nasty fiery darts from the Devil, and am most mortally vulnerable to circumstances and happenings, and someday I must die. Because I am imperfect, I think that I can never become truly happy. Maybe I think that I can be happy only if I am perfect. But only God is
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Perfect. And that is Truth and Good and Right. I must learn to deal with that.” She sighed in with a sense of first humility before God, and she felt a little better now. Then she said, “Would you read to me more from the Holy Bible, Flanders?”
He again began searching the Scriptures with his keen savvy of God’s Word. Then he read to her out loud, “’The Lord is righteous in all his ways, and holy in all his works.’ Psalm 145:17, Jenny.”
She reflected upon this powerful verse for a little while. Then she spoke and said, “God says to me in that verse, Flanders, that He is a righteous God and a holy God. Your girlfriend is far from living like a righteous woman and farther from talking like a holy woman. Everything God is in His deity is perfectly right. Everything that God does—because He is God—is also perfectly holy.”
“I’ve got another verse in my mind that says much the same thing, Jenny,” he said.
“Ooo! Read it to me, Flanders!” said Lady Sheltie.
And he went immediately right to his verse, and he held up his Bible in the air, and he recited instead of read, sharing with her this Scripture verse, “’Therefore hearken unto me, ye men of understanding: far be it from God, that he should do wickedness; and from the Almighty, that he should commit iniquity.’ Job 34:10.”
She thought upon these self-explanatory words for a brief moment, then quickly said to Flanders, “In that verse, I can hear God telling me that He cannot do anything that is wrong. God cannot do that which wicked people do. God cannot do that which we sinners do.”
“Very well put, Jenny!” he said.
“I’m beginning to feel better now in the Lord,” she said.
“I’m thinking now about the shortest Bible verse I ever learned, Jenny. That might help you, too,” he said.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Lamentations 3:38,” he said.
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“How does it go?” she asked.
And he told it to her, “Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?”
She pondered these thirteen words, and she was puzzled. She asked, “What is God saying in that Scripture verse, Flanders?”
And he told her, “It says that God sends life’s bad things upon us, and that God sends life’s good things upon us.”
“Ah, so He does do good things and bad things to us people,” she said.
“Remember, He is God. And He has every right to do that. But whether He gives us trials or blessings, He is still Good, Jenny. God is Good in good times, and He is just as Good in bad times. I ask you now, Jenny, ‘Do you believe that?’” asked Flanders Nickels with his more mature Christian wisdom.
With a sigh and with a breath of submission, Jenny Sheltie went on to say, “A woman cannot question God in evil or in good. I never saw things that way before until now, Flanders. I would usually get bitter at God were I to hear what you just said with that verse and your explanation. But this time I feel okay now about it. How come?”
“Maybe you are finally beginning to find humility as a Christian toward Christ now, Jenny,” he said.
“Yeah. Maybe that’s it,” she said. “If I can enjoy good things given to me by Christ, can I not also endure bad things given to me by Christ? After all, He died for me on the cross two thousand years before I was even born.”
“The God in whom you did put your trust for your own so great salvation is the same God in whom you can put your trust to overcome your sin that so easily besets you, Jenny,” he told her.
“Jesus is a Good God to do something that great just for me,” she said.
“Have you read the book of Job yet in your Bible-reading as a believer, Jenny?” asked Flanders.
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“Oh yes. I have,” she said. “God and Satan were fighting over him. God said that Job would stay faithful to Him in life’s trials, and Satan said that Job would turn against Him in life’s trials.”
“Do you remember what Satan did to Job?” asked Flanders.
“First the Devil made him lose all of his livestock, and Job was broke. Then the Devil took away all of Job’s ten children in a great storm of wind. Then the Devil made Job sick by putting boils all over his body.”
“Do you remember what Job said?” asked Flanders.
“I can’t remember the exact words. But he did not murmur. No, instead He praised. What a guy!” she said.
Flanders opened up his Bible and read out loud to her Job’s words in their two verses, “’And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.’ Job 1:21-22.” Then he went on to read Job’s further words when his wife tempted him to complain: “’Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? Curse God, and die. But he said unto her, Thou speakest as one of the foolish women speaketh. What? Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? In all this did not Job sin with his lips.’ Job 2:9-10.”
“That’s saying a lot,” said Miss Sheltie. “Job is good things that I am not.”
“What do you think?” asked Flanders.
“I know a woman who wants to become like Job,” said Jenny. Of course she was referring to herself.
“You would be a happier woman in this life if you let go of your bitterness at God when you are tested,” he said.
“And I would become a better Christian, too, Flanders,” she said. “I don’t know how to do that
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on my own. But God can do that for me. He can give me the power and the wisdom and the love to overcome my sin that so easily besets me. And he is using you to make it happen, O Flanders Nickels.
God’s Word has great power.”
“I do have one more verse that I know of that can help you out even more, Jenny,” he said. She nodded her head in eager assent to hear it. And he searched the scriptures and struggled a long while to find the verse for whose reference he could not at first remember. At long last, Flanders did find it, and he read it out loud to her, “’Howbeit thou art just in all that is brought upon us; for thou hast done right, but we have done wickedly:’ Nehemiah 9:33.”
Like a teacher’s best student, Jenny Sheltie quickly understood this verse with acumen, and she expounded a most wise sermon on it, surprising Flanders with Holy Ghost wisdom: “Why, Flanders, who is a woman like myself to tell God that He is wrong about something in her life that does not please her? My Heavenly Father is Spirit and Truth and Purity. And I, myself, am flesh and iniquity and uncleanness. There is none that doeth good among humankind, no, not one. There is none righteous among people, no, not one. We all deserve to go to Hell. But God gave His only begotten Son to die a cruel death on the cruel cross so that we can go to Heaven instead. How great is this love of God—not only for us Christians who live like the lost, but also for the lost who continue to reject the saving Gospel. Did not Jesus die for all of us who live or who once lived while we were all still lost in our sins? Is this life not supposed to be cross-bearing time for the faithful born-again believers? And is not the life to come to be crown-wearing time for the faithful born-again believers? And are not all of my trials in my mortal life but for a moment; and all of my rewards in my immortal life to come for everlasting? Have not I repented of my rebellion this moment, O Flanders? I am completely done with my murmuring. I shall never say a bad word again. And God no longer has to worry about my lips complaining about what He brought into my life again. Amen and amen and amen!”
Just then a rock struck her on her other knee, the one that had not fallen upon that rock of the
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accident. She looked up and saw a hirsute evil he-centaur looking at her from the bushes, his eyes and his mouth and his throat laughing at her in diabolical menace. This rock was no accident. And just like that he galloped off. The devil had sent this minion to do his work. The Lord was testing Jenny Joy Sheltie. And the young woman could tell this. She then fell down upon her bottom, grabbed her knee in both hands, and began to weep. “Lord, Lord, Lord,” she said in pique of despair. Whether she were praying, using the Lord’s name to His glory, or whether she were murmuring and using the Lord’s name in vain, Flanders could not tell. God could tell. Jenny herself was in utter consternation. Her knee looked like it was crushed. And she was in the greatest physical pain she had endured in her years as a young lady. Saying no more, she sat there in Flanders’s arms, and she did cry.
Just then Shire, her most beloved Silver Hind, came out of the bushes. Then the evil centaur also came out of the bushes. But the centaur looked to be struggling as he approached. His prideful countenance appeared unsure now. Behold, he fell to the ground! Lo, a silver arrow in the middle of his back and through his heart! Shire raised her bow in victory in Christ. “Oh Shire, I love you!” said Jenny. Then Miss Sheltie said, “O Good Lord Jesus, I love You!” Lo, suddenly her broken knee no longer hurt. It looked no longer wrecked. She massaged it in both of her hands, and it felt okay. She dared to stand up and walk around. Why, it was as good as it ever was. “I’m all right, Flanders,” she said. “I think that I am all right now.” The Good Lord healed her knee in His mercy and in His grace.
“Thank You, God! Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!” said Lady Sheltie.
Then the Silver Hind declared, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering,
and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.” Having declared God, Shire then fired an arrow far out into the river. And just like that she ran off between the shrubs and disappeared again.
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“Is God coming here, Flanders?” asked Miss Sheltie.
“I think that you are going There, Jenny,” he said.
“I get to see the Lord for a little while?” she said.
“I do believe that that was what Shire was saying,” said Flanders.
“I cannot keep my Jesus waiting,” said the Christian woman in all due reverence and all due humility. And she herself walked through the foliage into the woods to go see Christ.
Alone here on the river’s sandy banks, Flanders waded out into the waters in all of his clothes—including his penny loafers. He did such things as this lots of times in his diversions in rivers and creeks and lakes. And he prayed that his girlfriend be comforted and exhorted and encouraged by the Good Lord in His Theophany before her where she now was. After a while, he came back out of the river, stepped out onto the sand dripping from his shirt and blue jeans, and saw his writing stick. He then picked it up and drew a third message in this sand: “Jenny + Flanders.”
Then his Jenny came back to him, coming out of the woods. Her face shone with the light of the joy of the Lord.
And she said, “Flanders, I have seen God.”
“What does He look like?” asked Flanders the greatest curiosity of any born-again Christian not yet in Heaven.
“Christ is deified regal glory consummate!” she did say.
“What did he say?” asked Flanders.
Instead Lady Sheltie said, “I have been to the Elysian Fields and have come back.”
“What are the Elysian Fields like?” asked Flanders Nickels.
To this she said, “I was caught up to the third heaven, Flanders. I can say what the Apostle Paul said.” And she went ahead and recited what the Apostle Paul had said in II Corinthians 12:4, when he himself had been caught up to the third heaven for a while: “I was caught up into paradise, and heard
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unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.”
“Were they beautiful words?” asked Flanders.
“They were wonderful words of life,” she said.
“Did you dare speak to Almighty God There?” asked Flanders.
“I dared to speak one sentence before God Almighty,” she said.
“What did you say to Him in that one sentence?” he asked.
“I said, ‘Depart from me; for I am a sinful woman, O Lord.’” Miss Sheltie told Flanders. Of course. That made sense. What else would any woman or man or child say to God were he or she to be before the God of the Heaven and Earth? She then said, “I said that on my knees in worship before His throne of the Elysian Fields.”
Then Flanders Nickels asked again, “What did God say to you on your visit There?”
And she said, “He told me the words of Isaiah 6:5. That is the one Bible verse that can without fail give me my victory over my sin of rebellion for the rest of my life each and every time a trial comes my way, Flanders.”
“Isaiah 6:5,” he said. “I do not know that verse yet,”
“I know it now, Flanders,” she said. “The great prophet Isaiah said that when he himself saw the same Lord Jesus I did see.”
He looked up this Scripture, and as he read it out loud, Lady Sheltie recited it out loud: “Then said I, Woe is me! For I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.”
“What a great and powerful and wise verse this verse is!” exclaimed Flanders. “I, too, need to hide this verse in my heart in my walk with Christ.”
“I saw God in the Elysian Fields,” she said again. “For now on for the rest of my life, when life’s trials and testings and temptations come my way, all I need to do is to say, ‘Thank You, Lord,’ and
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to remember Whom I saw and Where I was when I saw Him.”
A silent moment of prayer passed between them, then Jenny saw his third message drawn in the sand. And she took his writing stick and drew underneath that, “For forever.”
Then Flanders had to ask, “But what is going to become of your dear wyvern now, Jenny?”
“I think now that she will be all right,” she said.
“She’s not going to die, you think?” he asked.
“I think now that God will let her live,” said Lady Sheltie.
“Oh, that’s good. That’s so good,” he said.
Just then Shire the Silver Hind came back out unto them in this sandy shore. She and her mistress hugged. “Borough is okay?” asked Jenny to make sure.
“Borough is well now, my mistress,” said Shire.
“God is faithful,” said Jenny Sheltie, confident in God’s ways and God’s will.
“She is coming now to see you,” said Shire.
“Soon I hope. I had been so worried,” said Jenny.
“Right now, Mistress,” said Shire.
Lo, a little green dragon came out unto them here at the river’s little beach. “Borough, it is so good to see you,” sang out her mistress.
“I am alive, my mistress,” said Borough. And wyvern and woman hugged, both rejoicing in the Lord.
And from there, the wyvern and the silver hind introduced themselves to the man, and the man introduced himself to the wyvern and the silver hind.
Then Flanders said, “You have a few other pets, too, Jenny?”
“I’ve got ten more,” she said. “Dogs and cats and griffins and unicorns and others.”
“Do I still get to go and see them with you?” he asked.
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“Flanders, are you asking a repentant Christian girl for a date?” she asked in flirt.
“I am asking a beautiful Christian girl for a date,” he said returning the flirt with praise.
“Here together at this Fox River beach was a date,” she said.
“It was our first date,” he said. “Now I want our second date.”
“Lady Jenny Joy Sheltie accepts the honor of seeing Sir Flanders Arckery Nickels on a rendezvous at her place to see the animals,” said his new girlfriend.
“Today?” he asked.
“Right now?” she asked with hope.
“Right now, O dazzling Lady Jenny,” he said.
Man and woman hugged each other for their first time.
Shire said, “Borough, it looks like romance has come into our mistress’s life for her first time.”
And Borough said, “Our mistress has found her first boyfriend, Shire.”
Flanders said, “You two will have to get used to me. I will be with your mistress for the rest of our lives together.”
“For the rest of our lives together, you two pets,” said Jenny. Then Jenny Sheltie wrote in the sand, “Jenny + Flanders forever after in the Elysian Fields.”
And boyfriend-and-girlfriend-in-Christ embraced again, this time long and hard.
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