Tollway To Heaven

 

If there’s anything my frequent round trips between Cleveland and Chicago provides, it’s plenty of time to contemplate the big issues of life. Death too.

 

Some of these deep musings are inspired by the much-holier-than-me Homo sapiens in Indiana, who erect big billboards to tell us what to expect when it’s time for the dirt nap.

 

This one got me thinking:

“After you die, you will meet God.”

 

Wow. Just, wow.

 

Think about it from God’s perspective.

 

That’s quite a receiving line. A lot of hugs and handshakes. And since folks croak every day, no Sundays off for Big G (though I suppose He made the rules, so no sympathy).

 

Let’s also say (uneducated guess here) there are 24 hours in the Big Boss’s day, just like ours. If He created us in His image, then I’ll assume He did the same with clocks.

 

And let’s say that, being supreme, He only needs one hour to deal with everything else in the cosmos after the day’s meet ‘n’ greet. (That is, unless He really goofed up and made other planets with other beings getting the same deal. Hoo boy.)

 

I’m also guessing -- and I usually hear preachers referring to the Biggest Cheese as a dude, not a dudette, so who am I to argue since they seem to know Him – that He thought this up when humans first populated earth a few hundred thousand years back. There were something like 20,000 of us skittering around, which on an average day meant only 500 or so got eaten by tigers or whacked in some other pre-historic way.

 

So in those early days, He would be able to spend some quality time with his new arrivals, even if their hygiene was a nightmare. My calculator says they’d get around two minutes each. That might not seem like much, but if you’ve ever seen receiving lines for big shots (and who is a bigger shot than the Bigliest Of The Biglies), five seconds, with maybe an additional thirty seconds for the worthiest or pushiest, is all you get for your “Hi how are ya.” Heck, if He kept it brief, He could probably breeze through it in a few hours and leave some time for a round of Sacred Solitaire.

 

But He might’ve been having serious second thoughts by the time He sent Big J down here to officially kick off the Christianity party. By then, things had gone from 20,000 sinning buggers to 300,000,000 (three hundred million!), which means lots more people passing their expiration dates every day. That is a really, really big line, even dwarfing the one I stood in for Springsteen tickets in the ‘70s.

 

But this is why that billboard made me so contemplative. It helped me understand why The Deity in Chief got the job.

 

That all-powerful thing isn’t just handy, it’s downright necessary. Why?

 

There are now almost eight billion of us. 8,000,000,000. Look at all those zeros. And that’s on earth alone. Factor in those on the International Space Station, and the mind boggles.

 

So then how many newly emancipated spirits ring his doorbell (or pearlygatesbell) every single day, ready (or not) to meet their maker (aka kicked their bucket)?

 

150,000. That’s more than the population of Pasadena. And wouldn’t you feel bad if Pasadena croaked every day?

 

So (stay with me here), a 23-hour day has just under 83,000 seconds. That means every freshly-deceased denizen gets one-half of one second to make a good first impression -- though being God, He already knows all about them since He made them in the first place, so that’s not a real issue.

 

150,000 per day. The crowd control alone makes me suspect that when Andy Frain ushers keel over, even mortal sins are forgiven but keep that uniform on.

 

Anyhooo, I’m sure more learned theologians have this all figured by now, so I’m not sweating it.

But that’s only one thought-provoking message among many along the Indiana Tollway Bible Study Course. Other chapters include: “Beyond Reasonable Doubt JESUS IS ALIVE,” and “There IS Evidence for God [with photo of a baby],” or “If You Die Tonight? Heaven or Hell.”

 

I think I’ll pitch one myself, maybe like:

 

“Indiana Tollway: Road to Rapture? Or Highway To Hell? Answer: No Rapture For You If You Sit in the Passing Lane.”

 

I might have a future in this. Where’s my frock?