visited by an angel

            I wasn’t feeling good. I wasn’t feeling bad. My feet hurt a little, but hat was about it. I was just kind of in the same morning funk that most of the people at Wawa were Thursday morning a bit before 0700. I grabbed my black coffee from the ubiquitous brown thermal containers lining the long counter in the back of the store and waddled to cashier, paid for my java and headed to my red pickup truck.

            I hit the doorway the same time this chubby African-American fella with his own cup of coffee, a three or four day speckled grey beard, and a light blue tee shirt with Ethiopia embossed across the front – oh, and perhaps the biggest smile I had seen that morning. He looked to be about the same age as I am and he said, “Age before beauty” and gestured so I could walk out the door as he held it open.

            I must admit, I laughed pretty hard at that.

            As I walked out the door in front of him – he was always just out of peripheral vision – he said,  “We need to be thankful; not everybody makes it as long as you did.”

            It stopped me dead in my tracks. It really did.

            He passed me on my left between the building and me and was quickly gone. I don’t know where he went or how he left. He was just gone.

            Then it occurred to me that I had just had an encounter with an angel. No kidding.

            His comment to me was too precise and too timely for it to be coincidence. It was really spooky, yet affirming.

            I’m not suggesting he was a supernatural being, but rather I think he was a guy that God put into my life at a precise time, to deliver a precise message and then leave. He may not have even known he was an angel delivering a message on behalf of a supreme being, but I believe he was.

            As I drove to work it all kind of haunted me – not in a bad way, but in a what the hell just happened sort of way and then I had a blinding flash of the obvious (I call them BFOs). Maybe we are all called to be angels to someone else and might never know it.

            Maybe it is the word of kindness, opening the door, or helping someone we’ve only met once that makes us angels. Now if that’s true – I kind of think that it is – what the hell does it really mean?

            I think it means we always have to be ready to meet other people out of the blue and be open to delivering a message. If we are agents of the Supreme Being, then doesn’t that mean we have an obligation to deliver whatever message for which we’re the conduits?

            It’s a tricky idea and I’m not exactly sure how it all works, but I thought I’d share it with you.

Thoughts?

Bill