Be an Angel
Today was a tad unusual, because I bumped into an angel. For me at least, this is not an everyday experience. Over the years I’ve heard many reports of angelic encounters. Many of them involved winged warriors helpfully appearing to Christians whose cars had broken down, causing me to wonder if messengers of God have an uncanny affection for the M1.
I don’t know the name of the angel that I saw, because there was no personal introduction, but I doubt if his name is Gabriel. He didn’t look like a Gabriel, more like a Fred, a Dave, maybe a Ron.
I know. The angel Ron doesn’t have the right ring about it, and his appearance was a surprise, and not because his hands were a vivid, fluorescent blue. No wings were in sight. It was his beer-belly that caught my attention.
When angels meet human beings, there’s usually a rather predictable result. The messenger of the Lord appears – usually suddenly – which then prompts the hapless human to scream in terror, fall prostrate on the ground, and anticipate death. The angel then calms things down, offers some warm words of greeting and assurance, and then delivers some good news.
The encounter took place in a busy hospital ward. The Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, filled with beeping monitors and hurried staff, was rather short on peace.
And then, after sitting at a bedside for seven hours, we were treated by the arrival of the cherub.
His hands were blue because of the rubber gloves he wore. His job is rather ordinary. There are no Nativity announcements or choir appearances to bleary eyed shepherds on his CV. Every day, he tours the 700 bed hospital, and empties the patient’s rubbish bins.
But while that’s what he gets paid for, he has broadened his job description. ‘Knock knock’, he smiled as he entered our patient bay. And then he launched into a few minutes of warm, caring chatter. I soon realised that this was his modus operandi. I asked him if he enjoyed his work, and he smiled again. ‘If all I did was collect rubbish, then I wouldn’t have lasted long’, he explained. ‘But the gloves and the bins – they are just tools. My real work is bringing a smile, sharing a joke, hopefully lightening the load for people. If I go home at the end of the day and I’ve made a difference in someone’s life, then I feel I’ve fulfilled my purpose’.
He went to explain that one patient had told him how much she looked forward to his daily drop ins. Suffering from a terminal condition, she told him that her family would come by to visit, but would mostly just sit in morose silence, unable to think of the right thing to say. ‘You always make me smile, every time’, she said.
Angels are usually associated with the epic, and sometimes we humans wrongly think that serving God is largely about involvement in big projects, nation shaping initiatives, macro stuff. But Jesus makes it clear that it’s small acts of kindness that not only change the world, but grab his attention.
Teaching about the coming day when hospitals will no longer be needed, Jesus said, ‘I was hungry and you fed me, I was thirsty and you gave me a drink, I was homeless and you gave me a room, I was shivering and you gave me clothes, I was sick and you stopped to visit, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then those ‘sheep’ are going to say, ‘Master, what are you talking about? When did we ever see you hungry and feed you, thirsty and give you a drink? And when did we ever see you sick or in prison and come to you?’ Then the King will say, ‘I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was me—you did it to me’ (Matt 25:35-40 MSG).
Today, it won’t take much to make someone’s day, especially if they’re currently facing an uncertain future.
So, go on. You can do it. Be an angel.