Word Beads: End, Abscessed, Annotate, Comparator, Imaginably

I got this meme from Word Beads.

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"The end of the world is nigh! The end of the world is nigh!", chanted the man, always on the same road, always with the same placard, always announcing the same thing. You wonder just now nigh the end can be given that he's probably been doing the same for at least 30 years. Though time is relative, I guess.

He tried to override the pain of his abscessed legs and feet. Believing in the Christ, believing that the agony he suffered, trekking the same paths with the same message every day, was minute compared to Christ's agony on the cross, and believing that experiencing this pain led him closer to God kept him going.

He was leaving early today, to see the nurse. She would dress his lower extremities, and check his blood sugar. He'd had diabetes most of his life, but he still could never quite get the hang of those annotated comparators to check the sugar levels once he had pricked his finger.

The nurse knew he would die soon, and wondered whether to approach the subject. He would imaginably be quite content, she thought, meeting the Lord after all this time.

She wondered how anyone could have such an unwavering faith, no doubts at all about his role on earth and how things were to be.

At least a small part of her envied the simplicity of his life. Not just in what he did, but how unquestioning he was. She didn't envy the teasing he must experience, with his placard in the street, nor the physical pain he must be in, though never complained about. But never debating whether there was anything more, or what happens next, that pure confidence, was calm and accepting within him.

He died shortly afterwards. He waited for the light, for Jesus, for the Lord. None of it came. There was nothing.