Constant Anticipation

Constant Anticipation

Matthew 24: 33-35

(…) Even so, when you see all these things, you know that it is near, right at the door. Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and Earth will pass away but my words [will not](...)

The open bible lay on a large wooden table among other books in a country home, somewhere buried deep in the mountains of South America. Sheep grazed outside the open door, wild birds chirped in the trees, a shallow and thin creek fed the green grass typical of summer... not a single human soul in sight, unless you noticed one skinny woman in a brown rustic suit, sipping on Argentine mate, staring into the distance, sitting outside on the rustic porch.

“What is it?” wondered the woman.

The end of the world?

World War Three?

The Apocalypse?

Was she even going to live long enough to see it?

If so, was she able to recognize it once “it” happened?

Her family always talked about Parravicini's prophecies: “The tenth hour: The beginning of the End. The eleventh hour: The End with no End. The twelfth hour: The End of the End... until the beginning.” she recited to herself, taking another sip of the mate. “But what in God's name was he talking about?” she added aloud.

Sighing, she rose from her chair and walked into her home.

No one would have guessed that under the dark brown, crows feet encased eyes, sun kissed complexion, graying short brown hair and wrinkles that decorated her weathered face, was a story that no one cared to hear lest they should be sucked into a whirlpool of painful truth.

To everyone else, Claudia Ramirez was just another common named, Latin American woman in her early thirties, wasting her life in the middle of nowhere, raising farm animals, taking care of a garden, and reading random books that had nothing to do with a professional career. She hated it once. After all, there wasn't a bachelor's degree that said “professional survivor”.

Claudia had lived through Hurricane Katrina, Hurricane Wilma, witnessed the fear and panic of September 11^th 2001, seen and read about the effects of global control and the eventual New World Order that would evolve from it, and thanks to her family that was the very definition of unstable, she had to adapt to all sorts of situations.

Claudia was 32 and already she felt like she was 60 from everything she had seen. In a span of twenty years she had lived in three different countries, moved more times than she could remember (because her dad's job never stayed in one place), went to three different elementary schools, was forced to leave the U.S when she was sixteen and crashed landed in Argentina, tutored English students, worked in youth hostels, waitressed her way through college, even took a job as a domestic worker taking care of a forgotten grandma once... you name it, she probably did it.

In short, if God held a record of her soul, her resume would be the following:

1. Capable of cold detachment: No hometown + no roots = no cultural identity. Therefore, no attachment to any one nation or people of any kind.
2. Adaptation: A very...wide...variety of life experiences. So, if push came to shove, Claudia Ramirez could adapt to literally anything. And since she worked in so many different areas, she could relate to others easily.
3. Improvisation: Change was always a constant. She couldn't afford to stick to old traditions and habits. So if a job couldn't fit her skill set, she made one up.
4. Maturity at a very young age: “Your life is not your own. Therefore freedom and control are the illusions of a weak mind. Everything that exists first began with an idea, including your own life. Find that idea and you will discover your true purpose.” she once wrote in her journal. Hard lessons that a few select people learn when they're sixty, if they learn at all.
5. Constant anticipation: ...

It was this feeling that led her to where she was today. Even when she had a taste of normal, something would keep her awake. As if something was wrong with the world...

And so, Claudia was waiting for a sign... a hint... any divine symbol that indicated why she had to live through what seemed like 25 lifetimes in 20 years. That feeling followed her everywhere she went.

Returning to her present, she cleaned out the yerba mate (a kind of tea typical of Uruguay and Argentina) and looked down at her notes again:

The 10^th hour: The Beginning of the End

The 11^th hour: The End of the End

The 12^th hour: The End with no End.

Thirteen years since she first saw it and she still couldn't figure it out.

Claudia and her family thought that Parravicini's prophecy meant the years 2010, 2011, and 2012, so in 2009 they had built Claudia's current residence and researched everything they could to survive the 2012 disaster scenario. Hence the towers and towers of books that ranged from conservation of food, candle making, manuals of the breeding and skinning of different animals, properly cutting down a dead tree...everything from survival tactics to even the most mundane subjects.

The family library was the treasure of the house. After all, a global and natural annihilation of everything that currently existed was not a question of if, it was a question of when. And if anyone was to survive it they needed all the information they could get.

But when the fated year came and went, Claudia's faith started to waver. Her natural sense of observation made her see how things got worse and worse. The slow introduction of a chip that right now was meant for medical purposes, but in the wrong hands could be used for more sinister intentions...even the global quarantine seemed like a symbol of the coming of World Dominance...but even that passed by without any real effect.

“What was God waiting for?” Claudia wondered with a touch of anger.

(…) Woe onto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!(...)

Isaiah 5:20

(...)Have you not known? Have you not heard? Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? It is He who sits above the circle of the earth (…) He brings the princes of this earth to nothing; he makes the judges of the earth useless(...)

Isaiah 40:21-23

“Then why oh why does God take so long to set this world right? Why does He let these power hungry people burn all that is good in the world while we have no power to stop it?” she continued to wonder. Giving up she closed her notebooks, placed them back on the bookshelf and went on with the rest of her day.

Five months later

The rain poured down on Claudia's windshield as she drove through the rural highway, on her way to the nearest town to get a few supplies. When she reached the main provincial, asphalt covered road, she turned on the radio to hear the morning news.

The signal was weak so she had to struggle to hear it. Even so, the words “economic crisis” and “inflation” followed by the mention of some new politician claiming to fix things reached her ears.

“Since when has anything been different in Argentina? Its always in an economic crisis.” she thought as she pulled into the main road of Mount Chapel.

That's when she noticed the silence.

Her car was the only one that was on the road when normally the local town was full of people. There were no pedestrians, no city officers, no open shops... it was as if everyone had disappeared.

And then it hit her.

She remembered that the government had issued a martial law due to the violence that had erupted. Most people had lost their jobs and had turned to desperate measures to feed themselves, while the nation's inept politicians either ran off to another country or tried (and failed) to contain the disaster. What do you expect from a nation that had no sense of foresight?

“Of course...” she thought. The scriptures had said it. Famine, violence, confusion...all of it would be the signs of the end of times. The chain of events that had unleashed the current madness had begun way before anyone could recognize it. Or even connect them to the irreversible lack of morality that seeped into the collective human mind.

A soft voice crept into Claudia's mind, ““It” had already begun. The Eleventh hour was here.”

To be continued...