ANGELS EVERYWHERE

A story (not mine, but I wish): When an ice cream sundae cost much less, a boy entered a coffee shop and sat at a table. A waitress put a glass of water in front of him. "How much is an ice cream sundae?" he asked. "Fifty cents," replied the waitress.

The little boy pulled his hand out of his pocket and studied a number of coins in it. "How much is a dish of plain ice cream?" Some people were now waiting for a table, and the waitress was impatient. "Thirty-five cents," she said angrily. The little boy again counted his coins. "I'll have the plain ice cream." The waitress brought the ice cream and walked away. The boy finished, paid the cashier, and departed. When the waitress came back, she swallowed hard at what she saw. There, placed neatly beside the empty dish, were two nickels and five pennies – her ti

A powerful story, that's why I wish I could claim it. But it is also a powerful reminder to me that it is so easy to judge another person, to make judgments about another person, simply because of first impressions; or even worse, because we are having a bad day.

Even worse than that is to have already pre-judged a person sight unseen. We do that, too, like the waitress. She worked for tips. Little boys don't tip well. And boys-being-boys, well, they are often more trouble than they are worth, especially if a big tipper is waiting for their booth.

The wonderful part of it all, even the humor of it all, especially because the joke is on us, the ones who pre-judge, is that the victim of our prejudice is not the victim. We are. And it is only when we realize this that we learn any lesson.

The Letter to the Hebrews reminds us that we often entertain angels unaware. We also often abuse them unaware. And when the table is turned, we are the ones who really feel the pain. The little boy was probably unaware of the waitress's impatience with him, upset because he was taking her time and thus losing her money.

But angels are like that. They somehow see through us, put up with us, so that we can see through our own impatience – or whatever it is that for the moment blinds us to the real person in front of us – and see.

Prejudice makes us blind. The only way we can regain our sight is to be healed, to have someone open our eyes. If the story is true, as I suspect it is, it was probably told by the waitress on herself. She was not proud of the way she treated the little boy, but she was thankful that he taught her an important lesson. She could not undo the past. But she could go into the future having learned a lesson taught by an angel who looked like anything but.

But, again, angels never do look like anything we would expect. That is why we encounter them unaware and why the lessons they teach are so profound, so moving and usually so life-changing.