Everyday angels

An angel stuck his head round the study door the other day. His name was Colin. Colin’s wife was visiting my wife Lorna. He had come to collect her, and was a little early, so he came upstairs to find me.

I invited him to come in and sit down.

‘I’m interrupting you,’ he said.

‘No you’re not,’ I replied.

In a way it was a lie, because his coming was an interruption, but you learn that interruptions are part of life, often to be welcomed. Besides, I was at that very moment writing about the explorer David Livingstone’s frequent lack of grace in personal relationships. How could I not give my unexpected visitor a warm welcome?

Colin and I talked about Livingstone, and the responsibility you have for others when you are leading an expedition. Colin told me about a trip to India he once organised for a group of young people.

The bus in which they were travelling down a steep mountain road in India was caught in an avalanche of rock triggered by a ferocious storm. They spent the night in the vehicle, its front wheels overhanging a massive drop, as lightening shot across the sky, rain battered the bodywork, and boulders crashed around them. Colin had not at that point come to a full Christian faith, but that night he prayed. Day came, and with it, rescue.

Colin’s party arrived at the airport twenty minutes after the departure time for their flight home. He walked heavy-heartedly into the airport. He knew their cheap tickets were not transferable.

He heard someone calling his name. ‘Hurry up!’

Their plane had a burst tyre and was being held at the stand until this was fixed. By the time it was taxi-ing towards the runway, Colin and friends were safely on board.

‘One burst tyre out of 36 was enough to hold back the plane,’ said Colin. In that punctured rubber tube, Colin saw evidence of the hand of God, a God who is in the business of fixing detail.

As I listened to Colin, I had a lingering sense of reassurance and joy. God is not an abstract idea, but a living being we can rely on.

This sense of peace reached me through Colin’s story, but it came from somewhere deeper than the facts he told me. Because of course there are problems. If God is in the business of helping us then why, we wonder, does God not do it more consistently?

Sitting there with Colin, I didn’t know the answer. I simply realised that if we learn to rely on God in our daily routine, then we will be enabled to trust God in the dark times too.

Sometimes I focus too much on the unanswerable questions, and forget the things about God of which we are convinced – that God is love, that God is passionate about justice, that God is more than worthy of our trust.

And of this the angel Colin reminded me. He wasn’t the supernatural kind of angel. I don’t think I have ever seen one of those. But he was a ‘messenger’, which is what the word ‘angel’ means, bringing God-sent encouragement.

That week, another angel got in touch by email. It was my friend Iain. His mail contained a quotation from a book which he previously introduced me to, and which I now love as much as he does. – Primal speech, by Ann and Barry Ulanov.

The quotation was about praying for people close to us. ‘We pray for those we love because we must,’ it began. We pray because ‘we know that our love is not powerful enough to protect them’ in every circumstance, and because we know that ‘we cannot even prevent our own faults from hurting them.’ And so, remembering the limits of our love, we ‘confide their souls into God’s keeping.’

‘Isn’t that very fine?’ wrote Iain. He’s right. But the Ulanovs’ words felt uncomfortable. Because I don’t think I have yet learned to love other people that much, to seek the best for them so passionately and selflessly, or to pray so intently for their good.

And so Iain’s mail brought the familiar sense of failure until I realised that God loves me with the focus and intensity of which the Ulanovs wrote. God’s love longs to give us the best: it is a perfect love, a love which liberates, a love deeper than unanswered questions, stronger than death.

And in realising how much I am loved, I am released to love more fully.

God sends flesh-and-blood angels into our lives bringing messages of love, hope, challenge and encouragement. And we, in bringing good news of God simply by being ourselves are, though completely unaware of it, everyday angels. 

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 4th April 2013)