I Can’t Believe It’s Not Kingdom Come (14)
Chapter 14 of the crime comedy. When the world fails to end on schedule, the mob is in no mood to discuss End-Times theology...
You can listen to the author commentary for this chapter here. (Don’t worry, no spoilers!)
I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT KINGDOM COME is serialized Thursdays and Saturdays on Substack. Links emailed out once a week in our weekly Monster Complex™ newsletter!
I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT KINGDOM COME
It’s not the end of the world—which could be a problem…
- 14 -
So I was still thinking about the whole thing the next day at work. That would be, what, Thursday? Yeah, I guess it was Thursday. The worst day of the week: So close to the weekend you can see it, but still too far away to taste it.
If I were running the show, we’d have Thursdays off. Or Wednesdays. I guess Wednesday is the halfway point, and if we had Wednesday off, maybe that would make Thursdays better.
Of course, that would make Thursday the new Monday, and nobody likes Mondays. I wonder if the coming Kingdom has Mondays? I mean, when Jesus comes and sets up his Millennial Kingdom, that would be, what, 1000 years? That sounds like a lot of Mondays. I never really thought of it that way before.
Sorry. Context. It’s all context. I just want you to understand I am not some religious nut.
So anyway, I’m at my job. I work in a real-estate office at the corner of Foster and Moon. Sherman’s Realty. I can give you a card—
Oh. I don’t seem to have any on me right now. I’ll have to get some for you.
Anyway, I was sitting in the office there and it was sort of a slow morning. I was supposed to go out and take some pictures of some new listings. That would be property that has recently gone on sale through my agency. But I was sort of preoccupied with thoughts of the men from the night before.
I didn’t mention the meeting to anyone. I probably should have mentioned it to someone at church—especially Reverend Daniel Glory—but something about the man’s look made me feel like a spirit of oppression reached down my throat and grabbed my heart.
To keep my mind off things, I spent the morning online reading about the end times. Who the Antichrist might turn out to be. What role the UN would play in the Tribulation. Where the Koreans having the bomb fits into Daniel chapter 10.
Soon, I was searching to see what I could find out about gangsters. I tried some different keywords—“gangster,” “mobster,” “organized crime.”
By lunchtime, I was checking boat prices. The clock was ticking. And I wanted a boat.
I work hard, you know? I deserve something for me. Why couldn’t my wife and kids be more supportive? Why did they make it feel like I was dragging them out to boat lots and the docks all the time? Why couldn’t they understand a man needs to be free? To feel the salt in his hair…
Um, I got lost there. What was I talking about?
Oh. Reverend Daniel Glory? I’m getting to that. But this is my story. Just let me tell it.
Anyway, I deserved a boat. Some fathers go golfing, I needed a boat. I made the kids move everything from the garage out into the backyard, their bikes, everything. We needed room for the boat. I didn’t own one yet—and believe me, I got grief from the kids over emptying the garage in faith—but I was believing for a boat.
I told my son, Clint, “Other dads go golfing, I’m going boating.”
The boy had to give some lip. “I’d wax your golf clubs, no problem,” he says. “At least then I could still do my homework.”
As if taking him out to the docks a few nights a week to stare at boats was a crime. Sure, we were out late, so he was a little red-eyed when he got up at three-thirty for his paper route—but he just needed more faith, you know?
So that Thursday morning, still sort of recovering from the meeting with those gangsters, I decided that I needed to take a break. Come lunchtime, after a couple hours gazing at virtual showrooms, looking at runabouts, cuddys, deck boats, cruisers—I still hadn’t made up my mind—I told the receptionist I had an afternoon meeting and headed out to the boat lot.
First, I stopped at the newsstand and grabbed some magazines on the topic. I bypassed the classified ads—I didn’t think Jesus wanted me to have a used boat. When our Lord got in the boat to preach to the crowds from the lake, do you think He went second-class? No sir, He went first-class all the way.
Which is how I ended up at Midwest Auto & Marine on 48th. Just to take a look.
But you see—and this is what I’m getting at—I was still terrified of these men. I knew it was a test of my faith. It was a test of my spiritual fortitude.
Did Jesus run from the devil? No. He stared him down. After the church leaders beat them and threw them in prison, did the apostles run? No. They stood their ground.
This was my test. I needed to go back and face the enemy. Go back to those men and prove to them and to God that I was not scared.
Standing there at Midwest Auto & Marine on 48th, looking at that boat—that’s when I first started to consider the form my contest of faith would take.
I wondered what Marvin Dobbs would think of that.
[NEXT CHAPTER BUTTON COMING]
AUTHOR COMMENTARY:
It’s been years since I originally wrote this chapter, so until I revised the book I had forgotten just how much the narrator was blinded by his selfishness and his greed. And then shocked to remember that I know people in real life who are this oblivious to what’s going on around them and in the lives of people close to them. So, yes, Mark Hogan is as crazy as any of the quirky characters I've written over the years—but it makes me sad to know that he’s still quite true-to-life.
There are 70 chapters for I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT KINGDOM COME. I’m posting one chapter every Thursday and Saturday on Substack. (I’m sending out the links once a week in the Monster Complex ™ newsletter.)
If you can’t wait to see how the story turns out, you can actually read the whole eBook (as TRIBULATION HOUSE: RELOADED) on Wattpad.
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