One of my all-time favorite people
was Margie Hall. She used to remind anyone who would listen that showing
hospitality to strangers may be the easiest way to not only entertain angels
but also to meet Jesus.
When I first arrived at Margie’s
church as her new Rector, I felt my highest priority was to get to know the
people of the parish. The parish had a very active outreach ministry to the
downtown community in which it was located. There was always a pot of coffee on
so that the street people could come in out of the cold – it was winter when I
arrived: my first Sunday it was 17 below – and grab a cup of coffee. There was
always someone sitting on one of the chairs outside my office sipping coffee –
the longer it took, the better; a second cup was the best.
One of the regulars was a young
man named Larry. Only I never learned Larry’s name, not at first. Oh, I had
been introduced to Larry. But I made no effort to learn who he was. You see,
Larry was not that important to me at that time. Learning Larry’s name was
secondary to learning the name of those who paid my salary, until I offhandedly
heard Margie preach her one-line sermon to someone. I learned and remembered
Larry’s name the next day as I sat down next to him and sipped my own cup of
coffee as we talked about mostly nothing.
Was Larry an angel, a messenger of
God? Of course, he was, in his own way. His message was very simple and very
clear: I am someone; I am not a nobody; I have a name just like everyone in
this church has a name; don’t take me for granted; don’t patronize me; get to
know me.
Every stranger, every person can
teach us something. Everyone is somehow in some way a messenger, an angel sent
from God. Sometimes that message is profound. Sometimes that message is very
simple. But we cannot hear that message unless we take the time to take time to
be with that stranger, that other person. That does not mean that everyone we
see we have to stop and talk to. That is impossible.
What it does mean is that there are
people who come into our lives who seem to be footnotes, people we can skip
over because the real text of our lives can be explained without them. And so
often we treat them like footnotes, if that. We simply ignore them as I did
Larry way back then. But like a footnote, they give a better understanding of
that text, as Larry did for me.
Something more to reflect on: we
are probably thought of as a footnote in someone else’s text of life: ignored,
thought not to be of any importance or significance. We are all more than that,
much, much more – each and every one of us
We must never take anyone who comes into our lives for
granted. We need to see Jesus in them and they need
to see Jesus in us. We are God’s angels one to another, whether we are aware of
that or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment