[[2005, on our 56th.)

GOD AND HIS MYSTERIOUS WAYS
The Time,1928.

 It was just another routine, humdrum day in Heaven. Some of the angels were singing and a few others were trying to get the hang of the Harp with the help and guidance of Gabriel.
God was feeling a bit listless with nothing better to do then to fantasize another encounter with the devil. That thought did not energize him at all because he knew what the inevitable outcome would be. The devil would lose and God would win.
Little did he know that the devil had conspired to bring about a certain circumstance that would challenge the combined talents of God and his own Magnificent Seven.
"In post biblical Judaism -- especially in apocalyptic literature, which describes God's dramatic intervention in history -- seven angels, sometimes called archangels, lead the heavenly hosts that in the Talmud [[an authoritative compendium of Jewish law, lore, and commentary) are viewed as countless. These seven, noted in the noncanonical First Book of Enoch [[chapter 20), are: Uriel [[leader of the heavenly hosts and guardian of Scheol, the underworld); Raphael [[guardian of human spirits); Raguel [[avenger of God against the world of lights); Michael [[guardian of Israel); Sariel [[avenger of the spirits, "who sin in the spirit"); Gabriel [[ruler of paradise, the seraphim, and the cherubim); and Remiel, also called Jeremiel [[guardian of the souls in sheol). Of these, two [[Michael and Gabriel) are mentioned in the Old Testament and two others [[Raphael and Urial) in the Apocrypha, a collection of noncanonical works.
The seven Archangels were Urial, Raphael, Raguel, Michael, Sariel, Gabriel and Remiel" [[En. Brit.)"
The key phrase in the above quotation is, "God’s dramatic intervention in history."
 The following is how it all came about.
In the month of November, in the year 1928, Raphael, in a very agitated state, requested an audience with God.
Bemused, God asked Raphael what was bothering him.
Raphael told God he had just made a survey of all the humans on earth and they all appeared to be normal and in good spirits. All except one!
God insisted on an immediate explanation.
Hesitantly, Raphael said, "God, I never encountered anyone or anything like this in all my millenniums." He then gave God an accurate and highly detailed description of what he had done. He had discovered the birth of a boy child whose erratic characteristics were beyond the scope of ordinary humans.
After listening to Raphael,God agreed. This was a most disturbing event. Something had to be done. He called for the counsel of the Magnificent Seven.
Euthanasia was considered but dismissed as "not a Godly thing to do."
 God and his Archangels agreed that this was the work of the devil. What to do?
The prescience of God was limited to only those who had already been born.
Opinions were bandied about. One unanimous opinion was that this newborn boy child was the victim of a cruel twist of genetics. His Aryan heritage was tinged with a touch of the Irish and therein lay the problem. This, they all agreed on. But the resolution of the problem was even beyond the means of God and His Seven.
Then God commanded that they all labor, day and night, until a solution was found and so it was decreed.
The days and weeks flew by. Despair was omnipresent. Neither God nor the sainted Seven had a clue.
Five months had passed. April was in its last week. Then, voila!
Raphael came rushing into God’s chamber, screaming at the top of his lungs, "I"ve got it, I"ve got it!"
God, perplexed a bit, managed to calm Raphael down and asked him what he was screaming about. Raphael replied, "A girl child has just been born!"
God replied, "So what?"
Raphael said, "Oh for Your sakes, she is Hungarian with a splatter of German blood. It is a match that could only be made in Heaven. The German heritage of pragmatism, a bit of Hungarian gypsy and the resiliency of the Irish spirit, is all too obvious. It won’t be pretty but they will make a go of it!"
And so it came to be. The foreordination, decreed by the Powers that be, was that the boy child and the girl child would , one day, wed. They would stay wed for a very long time, until deaths do them part.
The boy was very happy every single day of his married life. The girl had a few good days also.
 God immediately brightened and his prescience was set in high gear. "I can see it all now, he said, redundantly. It is not going to be easy for her for a long, long time but her place in Heaven is already assured. And with a little bit of luck, he will be able to sneak in, riding on her coattails. I am sure he will never let her go without him."

Happy Fifty Sixth,,,[[plus four)
P.S. 2009. Sixty is just around the corner, come September.
I sincerely doubt that there is such a thing as wedded bliss for sixty years or less
It takes a lot of skirmishing to keep it together.
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