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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/WorldAwayTweedy on 2025-01-11 14:49:08+00:00.

It was a Thursday when God revealed himself to all of humanity.

The day started ordinary enough, but sometime in the afternoon, I felt a presence in my chest and a voice in my ear:

“I have returned,” the voice said.

As it just so happened that everyone had heard that voice, everyone felt that presence, and soon everyone stepped out of their dwellings and looked up at the sky and saw the clouds disappear and a brilliant light shine for just an instant, a moment, a light so brilliant it couldn’t have belonged to the sun and it had to have been something else.

And it was clear. The feeling in our hearts was certain. The lord was real, and he was here. 

What happened next was likely what you would’ve expected.

The world became kinder—more compassionate. Not by virtue of an intrinsic force of goodness overtaking us, but rather, the fear of retribution. You didn’t want to fight, didn’t want to insult, didn’t want to judge, because you didn’t know what would happen when you did. A safe life, with the recent supernatural developments, was one that contained a bit more charity, a bit more turning the other cheek, and a bit more feigned grace. Fake it ‘til you make it, after all. 

I watched for signs of what would change next. We were all under the watchful eye, but it least felt—incorrectly, we would realize—that the almighty’s interventions had been minimal so far.

Everyone found out at their own pace that death had become a thing of the past.

Some knew immediately—when their loved ones in hospice care saw remarkable turnarounds in health.

Others missed the memo until mass consensus had been established, when scientists and statisticians alike revealed that by every known metric—natural disasters, car crashes, heart attacks—that the number of daily reported deaths had plummeted from an average of 160,000 to zero. 

Life went on, and as it did, I started hearing whispers of what worship was. Depending on who you talked to, online or at the watercooler, you’d hear a different rumor, a different interpretation.

It wasn’t until my mom was called upon that I knew what it was. I remember it vividly. 

7 o’clock, after dinner, Mom got up from her seat in the living room, got ready, donned her coat, stepped towards the shoe rack.

“Where you heading, hun?” my father asked her.

“I’ve been summoned.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The lord has summoned me for worship.”

I remember just how odd the moment felt. Life had been tinged with a certain unreality since the grand question was blown wide open. Seeing Mom head for the door both did and didn’t make any sense. Had it been any other year, we would’ve thought she was doing a bit.

“Did you, uhh… need a ride?” my Dad asked confusedly.

“The lord would like me to walk,” she responded. Then she turned the knob and went outside.

I was seventeen at the time. My brother was twenty. We both asked Dad if we should follow her. He told us to stay home—that he’d accompany her and figure out what was going on. 

He didn’t return until the next evening. We rushed downstairs when we heard the front door open, hoping we’d catch both parents entering. Instead, it was just him**,** disheveled, weary, a a muted expression on his face.

I’ll never forget the way he looked at us. 

“She’s standing in a field,” he said. Then—“There are other people there, too.”

________

Four months passed since Mom was first called to worship. 

During that time, we learned something more about God’s “interventions.”

The “New Commandments” as I’d termed them in my brain, were panning out as the following:

1. Thou Shalt Not Die (via disease, natural disasters, etc.)
2. Thou Shalt Be Called to Worship at a Random Time

Now I’ll admit neither of those are as catchy as the OG Commandments. This is, after all, not the official word of the lord, merely just my reading of the tea leaves.

“Commandment 3” came to me in a dream. Kidding—it came to me in a Youtube video.

It was your usual street fight video. Two guys on a sidewalk corner, for reasons unknown, exchanging blows, until the bigger of the two got the upper hand and started wailing and wailing, then secured a knife and—

Like a lightbulb went off in his head, stopped, lifted himself from his rival. 

The guy getting his ass handed to him stood up also.

And then both of them just… walked. Single-file, empty expressions on their faces. Manchurian candidate shit. 

So:

1. If Thou Attempt to Kill Another, Thou Shalt Immediately Be Summoned to Worship.

Was the takeaway.

But what—pray tell—was worship really?

I visited my mom one afternoon to understand better.

The spot she had journeyed to was an hour’s drive from home, so she must’ve trekked for hours that first night.

I arrived at the field, to the sight of thousands of people standing evenly spaced—three feet apart in every direction. They all faced the same way, heads tilted slightly towards the sky, perfectly still. No movement. 

I maneuvered the rows for what felt like an endless amount of time. When I finally found her, it genuinely felt like I just got lucky.

It was my first time seeing her since she’d been gone. I had mentally convinced myself that there was no need for me to come out here. After all, she’d be coming home—any day now. 

“Mom.” I’ll admit, I was a bit emotional.

To my surprise, despite her fixed posture and eyes tilted up, her mouth moved. “Hi sweetheart.”

“How are you?”

“I’m well. I am in worship.”

She wasn’t totally being herself. “Mom, are you able to move?”

“I am in worship,” she repeated. 

“But do you want to come home?”

The softness in her tone didn’t change, but it did seem like she was imbuing her words with some kind of subtext. Trying to say something more. “I can’t, love.” And then, enunciated even clearer, “I think you should go home. Perhaps before you’re forced to stay too.”

“But—”

“Home. Get going now dear.”

I told her I loved her then departed through the gathering of worshippers, all of them laid out so absolutely perfectly. Like a chessboard—everyone had their spot. And there was plenty—plenty—of land to go. So much so that I had to wonder what spots myself, my friends, Dad, older brother and everyone I’d ever loved would potentially occupy one day.

En route, I spotted a few other visitors. They looked more morose than I was. They whispered words of affirmation and love to their respective persons, hearing responses sure but said responses from the corner of their loved ones’ mouths seeming light, quiet, curt, God-centric. Like they were standing at someone’s gravesite—albeit more a statue than a grave. A commemoration of someone long gone.

But no one was really gone. Mom hadn’t left. Worship would be over soon, it had to be. Maybe another couple of weeks, couple months at most, and then she’d be home, and the lord would call someone else to take her place.

_______

1. When Thou Art in Worship, Thou Shalt Not Age.

“Commandment 4” became common knowledge a year later.

The amount of folks called to worship had steadily gone up during this time. This was global, of course, so anyone curious could at any time look up a livestream of the designated “worship areas” around the world to see people standing uniformly, frozen, perfectly spaced**,** in parks, beaches, city squares, you name it. Every town, every city had its place.

My place, I supposed, would be the same field where Mom was, unless it filled up by the time it was my turn, in which case it could very well have been somewhere completely random and unknown. 

The no aging revelation was again something discerned by the ever-decreasing amount of practicing scientists on the planet. Outside of worship, life was still progressing normally more or less, except for that final, tricky, “death” step.

“Worship grief” was a real term now—the experience of losing someone to God, essentially. Not yet coined was the secret counterpart buried in all our brains that God knows, literally, we weren’t brave enough to speak: worship fear.

I tried my best to keep my thoughts pure. I couldn’t help but assume that thoughts of blasphemy contained within the 17 or so centimeters of my brain were fair game for our omnipotent ruler to scrutinize. It was a nice fantasy though—the idea that there might be a spot, a street corner without God’s CCTV camera. Somewhere you could just be you without fear that your insubordination would expedite the ticket to your special place on God’s canvas.

Support groups existed, and so I joined one, and that’s where the “no aging” element of worship was first pitched to me as one of the many pros of the whole construction. I didn’t find Commandment 4 comforting, but I smiled and nodded nonetheless.

The world was still the world but less so. I’d take the train to work and notice that the average of people’s expressions had gone from tired and cranky to subtly mortified. I once saw a woman break down and start crying, and I can almost swear she said under her breath, “I don’t want to go.” Or maybe I was just projecting.

Nightmares weren’t the same anymore. The worst dream I could have now wasn’t one where I was being chased by a murderer or caught in a storm—rather, the one where I would stop in place while I was doing something mundane. I would hear a voice in my head. The voice would say, “You have been summoned.” My feet would start walking on their own, and I’d know exactl…

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