FILE -In this Tuesday, July 6, 2004, file photo, Kelly Gissendaner, the only woman on Georgia's death row, peers through the slot in her cell door as a guard brings her a cup of ice at Metro State Prison in Atlanta. Gissendaner's lawyers, on Monday, March 2, 2015, asked the Georgia State Board of Pardons and Paroles to reconsider her request to have her sentence changed to life in prison. Gissendaner, 46, is set for execution at 7 p.m. (0200 GMT) at the state prison. Gissendaner was convicted of murder in the February 1997 stabbing death of her husband. (AP Photo/Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bita Honarvar, File) 
First, a snowstorm.
And the state of Georgia postponed the execution of Kelly Gissendaner.
Then, the lethal drugs weren't quite right. Monday night, as executioners once more prepared the death chamber for Gissendaner, they found their lethal drugs had been somehow and mysteriously clouded.
(I imagine the prison officials peering into the hazy syringe, almost like witches before a cauldron. To misappropriate a Gospel story: the pentobarbital waters had been troubled.)
"The drugs appeared cloudy," prison officials said.
And cloudy drugs are not effective drugs. So for the second time in a week, the state of Georgia had to postpone Gissendaner's execution.
What's next? Plagues and frogs? Withering crops? What else must God do to unharden the hearts of those who can't let go of their desperate and punitive desire to kill Kelly Gissendaner?
What stopped Monday night's execution was not the long and noble line of preachers and theologians who told the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles that Gissendaner is reformed, redeemed and transformed.
"I have seen a complete transition from an angry, self-centered prison inmate to a caring, loving disciple of the Lord," said pastor Dottie Benson. "Kelly has done a complete metamorphism. The person she was no longer exists. The butterfly has left the cocoon."
Nor was it the prison guards and wardens who say she calms, loves, mothers, restores and softens other inmates.
"I ask that you please spare Ms. Gissendaner's life so she can continue to be that positive influence to so many troubled and difficult inmates," said one prison guard.
No, what stopped the Monday night execution was a pharmacist.
There in the cloudy death chamber, that's who the state turned to for guidance. Not philosophers, preachers or prison guards, but pharmacists. And weathermen.
"The Department of Corrections immediately consulted with a pharmacist, and in an abundance of caution, Inmate Gissendaner's execution has been postponed," the agency said in a statement.
An abundance of caution?
For what? Her life?
What a drunk, absurd statement. No matter how much you shine a guillotine, it still remains an instrument of violence.
Gissendaner, who went to jail in 1998 for plotting the death of her husband, has accepted full responsibility. She is remorseful, and only asks for life in prison instead of the death penalty. She has reconciled with her own children.
(Listen to the tender way her son describes their jailhouse visits: "We laugh and cry together. We talk about my work and my classes at school. Mom holds my hand, strokes my hair, and assures me I can do anything or be anybody I want to be. She is my biggest cheerleader.")
By refusing her clemency, the Board of Parole and Pardons renders itself pointless. If Gissendaner doesn't deserve clemency, who possibly could? (And why, in nearly every single media account of this, do reporters recount only her crime and nothing of her transformation?)
Yet God is still God.
Death penalty opponents gather on the steps of the State Capitol in Atlanta, Ga., Monday, March 2, 2015 to protest the death penalty and the planned execution of Kelly Gissendaner. Tuesday, Gissendaner's supporters learned that her execution will not be served under the current warrant. In other words: she has more time.
"They will have to order another warrant," said Dr. Jenny McBride. "And we don't know when that will happen."
McBride, who graduated from Baylor School, is the theologian who met Gissendaner during seminary courses offered to inmates. They have become dear friends, and McBride has witnessed firsthand the saving grace of God in Gissendaner's life.
"She still hopes for mercy, not only so she continue her relationship with her children, but she wants to continue to be an encouragement to her fellow inmates," said McBride.
Gissendaner prays over Psalm 118: I shall not die, but live and declare the works of the Lord. She spent Monday night -- the hours she thought were her last on earth -- in service to others.
"She was writing a letter to her fellow inmates," McBride said. "She did not want them to be concerned about her. She was encouraging them."
What else does God have to do?
Contact David Cook at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329 or follow him on Facebook at DavidCook TFP.