The Pound Keys of Heaven

Imagine your prayer is answered, but only by 'the first available angel,' and you are put on hold. 

The hold music: an angelic choir accompanied by plucked harps interrupted by an ethereal voice, "We are currently experiencing higher than usual call volume. Please stay on the line. Your prayer is important to us." 

How long will you wait? Perhaps your connection to the divine can be made hands-free, so you can go about other business while you wait, instead of kneeling beside your bed for an interminable amount of time, listening to the angelic choir, harps and ethereal voice on loop.

But what if it can't, and you lose your place in the celestial queue, or worse, you hear the dreaded dial tone from a cloud as the line goes dead? What then?

And what if Heaven has outsourced its prayer-call-center to Purgatory, so even when your call is eventually picked-up, your prayer is answered by a soul-in-Limbo who can only speak incomprehensible, heavily accented English. 

"This prayer call may be monitored for quality assurance," the ethereal voice announces. Then the soul-in-Limbo voice, distant and echoing, comes onto the line: "Xthaneflo." it mumbles. "Hephutsalve thou hum?"

Xthaneflo? What is the soul trying to say? It's all Coptic Greek to you.

Whatever. As the long as the soul understands you, that's all that matters. So you reverently repeat your prayer, hoping for the best.

"Pattush colombo xan wheppet, wheppet nonce ex-sollox benpho. Amen." 

Is that a yes or a no or a maybe? I guess you'll find out one way or the other one of these days. Just keep the faith, believing unseen wheels have been put in motion. What else can you do?

Then you complete the QC survey at the end of the call, rise from your prostrate position, and return to the world of Earthly quotidian thoughts.

Such are the trials and tribulations of petitioning the Lord during regular office hours.

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