A/N: I don't really know where this came from, but I was just having fun with the concept of free will, you know how that goes. All right, hope you like it!

"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty."

-Gen. 1.1

And blah, blah, blah. Everyone knows how the story starts, so let's just get to the good part.

"So God created mankind in his own image."

-Gen. 1.27

Now, that's more like it. Yes, it's true that He modeled mankind after Himself, but were they really all that appealing? Of course not. Who creates things with the intent of making them just as, or even more, attractive than themselves? No one in their right mind, and that includes God.

The first humans that were made had more of a… caveman-like appearance, to put it in layman's terms. They seemed to have little intelligence and self-awareness, so God took it upon Himself to help out His new creations.

Up in His white, puffy, and light filled home, God set up an interface in the clouds so He could see the humans, but made sure that they were unaware of these intrusions. At first, He was just going to watch, a little nudge here and there, but the humans didn't do very much. He got bored and so began to actively meddle in their lives. After a certain point, He basically controlled their every move and their destinies were entirely in His hands.

As expected, God took great enjoyment in this task. He controlled where they lived, who they interacted with, what they ate, and, of course, when they died. The only bothersome thing was that God could never understand what mankind ever said. Perhaps he was too high up in the clouds, or perhaps His humans just didn't know what they were talking about. Either way, their "language" became known as CM-rish (short for caveman gibberish).

In those early days, harmony was ensured. God made sure that all of humanity was comfortable and taken care of and overpopulation was unheard of. This took up most of His free time, however, and the angels were starting to get a bit frustrated with this mankind. God hardly had any time to do his normal duties. He hadn't even finished creating darkness, which, honestly, was not that bad. The problem was that He finished light long before he made mankind, so there was just all this light all the time. Too much dang light!

As a result, the job of forming some semblance of night or darkness fell to the angels and they were not happy about it. They already had many menial angel tasks to take care of and making night was just stressing them out. In addition to that, they all had to deal with God's constant nagging at his cloud screen and his many demands.

"Don't forget to diversify the animals."

"Make that half hot and that half cold."

"Keep those giant reptiles away from my humans."

It was never ending! Every angel would try to pawn off a new request to his brother or sister with a "Well, he's your father!" They always managed to keep this task-tag going until it reached a certain angel that had no one else to ask. Because of all these new responsibilities, some of them were slacking off on their assigned jobs. For instance, there was one angel, who was in charge of the animals, that was starting to tire of all these requirements getting dumped on him. One day, he was lazily creating some beneficial bugs when he accidentally flicked his wrist with a bit too much zeal and suddenly wasps, locusts, and mosquitoes popped up. God ignored that angel for some time.

As time went on, God was starting to get bored again and wanted to see how well His humans could get on without Him. He lessened His control bit by bit and mankind began to develop into better versions of themselves, all by their lonesome. At the behest of the angels, He granted the humans free will, but did not shut down the cloud screen.

Many years passed and God decided that mankind was doing very well for itself, with only the occasional misdemeanor. But those mistakes led God to the conclusion that man was not perfect. Far from it. In fact, He saw them more and more as sinners, not that this was a bad thing. Nothing that couldn't be fixed, at least.

One day, while contemplating on his throne, God came up with a brilliant idea. Instead of assuming control again, He would send someone down there to live with mankind. He or she would go down and save His humans, His sinners. Someone to save the lost, to judge the world, and most importantly, become a demonstration of His love. But who? Who could be asked to do such a thing? He spent a few hours pondering on the most worthy and willing… wait! He had it!

"Gabriel!" God shouted to the 26th cloud down, where this particular angel liked to relax.

Gabriel woke with a start and floated up to his Father and asked what was needed of him.

"It's time to help and maybe save some of the lost souls of humanity. Now, I obviously can't do it. You and all of your siblings made that obvious. So I would like to send a child of mine down to do it for me."

"Which one would you like, my lord?" Gabriel asked, motioning to the other cloud habitats. "Uriel and Zachariah haven't much to do and I've just finished up my-"

"No," God interrupted with his booming voice. "You are all busy up here and I wouldn't want to disrupt that. No, I want you to give someone my child. A certain woman of Nazareth I've kept an eye on. Her name is Mary and her husband, Joseph. Tell her that she will conceive a son and his name shall be… Jesus! Don't forget to tell her that it is God's will. She is still a virgin, after all."

"Wait, but if she's-"

God held his hand out to silence the angel. "No, there is no time for discussion! Go now. I shall be awaiting your return."

Gabriel flew down to Earth to do what was asked of him. As he bowed and walked away, Gabriel thought that the Lord was quite the imaginative person.

A/N: OK, I don't mean to brag, but I just wanted to say that this won me a Gold Key in the Scholastic Writing competition... just putting that out there!

Thanks for reading!