By SALLIE SATTERTHWAITE
Lifestyle Columnist

I've never held much brief for angels, as beings that watch over us and guide our footsteps, religious art notwithstanding.

But sometimes things happen that defy cold reason. I was recently the target of a joke that may have begun something like this:

The Angel Illumina, assigned to keep an eye on me, was bored. My life is not exactly exciting, and she wanted a subject that requires occasional deliverance from the brink of a waterfall, or at least a caution against lasciviously craving a diamond bracelet.

Unfortunately, the only protection I usually need is from tripping on phone cords or grocery carts running amok, and my material lust leans toward replacing 15-year-old carpet and a nearly defunct kitchen stove, neither in the budget until we recoup from buying a boat last spring.

My life is dull and my sins unspectacular. But I may have piqued Illumina's interest with a smug little sermon in Sunday School several weeks ago. We were reading the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis, and members of the class were explaining what each verse meant to them. At verse 29, I fell to temptation.

“Permit me to point out,” I said, no doubt in that lofty tone I employ when I'm sure I have a genuine “gotcha” to deliver, “that here where God creates and instructs humankind on the purpose of things on earth, we find a mandate for vegetarianism.”

And I read, “Then God said, `I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.

They will be yours for food...'” That verse is followed by one clearly saying that to all the living creatures on earth, to “`everything that has the breath of life in it, I give every green plant for food.'”

Nowhere does it say we should be eating our fellow creatures, I concluded sanctimoniously.

So I can see why I'd be mighty tiresome duty to any angel bent on righting the really bad wrongs of the world. If I even believed in angels. But to go on with what may have happened that day in Heaven:

“I'm bored with this assignment, Lord,” Illumina whined to the Almighty, and immediately regretted doing so. The burning eye of the Creator of the universe fixed her in its beam, and she covered her face with her wings and cried, “Forgive me! How quickly I forget that you chose my name because I am to enlighten others, not to engage in heroics. Give me a little time and I'll tailor my skills to her needs — that will keep me from boredom.”

Well, I think Illumina laid out for awhile, because my life turned awfully sad for a couple of weeks. Remember those lines from “The Song of Hiawatha,” comparing an accumulation of troubles to a gathering of vultures?

Never, Longfellow says, does just one vulture spot a dying animal but that he is followed by another and another, descending from nowhere, “First a speck, and then a vulture, Till the air is dark with pinions.

“So disasters come not singly; But as if they watched and waited, Scanning one another's motions, When the first descends, the others Follow, follow, gathering flock-wise Round their victim, sick and wounded, First a shadow, then a sorrow, Till the air is dark with anguish.”

It had been a tough week, the air dark with anguish, the pain of friends receiving dreaded diagnoses and of others losing a grandchild. It was the kind of week that makes you wonder if there's anything to smile about in what our forebears called “this vale of tears.”

But it came at last, not just a smile but a belly laugh, and proof positive (as if there was ever any doubt) that God has a sense of humor.

A wicked sense of humor, actually, if one dare ascribe wickedness to God, even in 1990s colloquialism.

(Is it for God as it is for us, that God laughs to keep from crying?)

My Sunday to read the lesson in church was approaching, and when the printout arrived, I laid it aside. Yesterday I opened it. My first thought was, “I can't read this in church. Everybody knows we're vegetarians. Whose idea of a joke is this?”

That's when it began, first a tickle in the tummy, then a snicker and a burst of sound, and at last a howling peal of laughter. I laughed until the tears came, trying to picture myself at the lectern reading with a straight face the letter of Paul to the church at Rome:

“Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only VEGETABLES.”

I'm beginning to think there may be something to this angel thing. Someone — with the blessing of the Lord of Joy — had found a way to make me laugh.

I'm tempted to use another translation, one that makes it clear Paul is writing about those whose faith is weak, and how important it is not to cause them to be led astray by offensive practices.

Or put this way, while one beer won't hurt me, seeing me drink it could cause an alcoholic to go off the wagon. I don't know why Paul didn't just say that. But he didn't, and Illumina arranged for me to get this reading.

At least she had the wisdom to know that, instead of embarrassing me, it would make me laugh.

Got me!

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