'Stay on good terms with each other, held together by love. Be ready with a meal or a bed when it’s needed. Why, some have extended hospitality to angels without ever knowing it!'
As I was packing today, I came across a favourite brooch of an angel that I'd left in a drawer. She was tarnished from having been abandoned for so long.
I saw an angel once. On a walk with an Australian friend in Connecticut. I wonder how many other times I've seen their celestial faces and simply not known?
I've certainly met them in human form. Flesh and blood people, all too human, who have come in at crucial moments (not even big moments) and shown me unequivocally the love of Christ. Frequently.
I hope that can be said of me. Even as I excel on the 'all too human' front.
Angels with dirty faces. Like little kids making (/possibly destroying) things in the garden then coming in to show Dad - head to toe in filth. "Look what I've done!"
The amazing thing about God is that He takes in the ecstatic, hopeful, yearning look on my face, not the surrounding mess. I glance down at my broken, muddy nails and smelly clothing. "Yeah, sorry about all the rest of it..."
But He is smiling at me when I look up into His face. "Good job, Josie! I am so pleased with you," He says.
And even though I know how many things I've got wrong in the process, how many ways I've failed, how much better I wish I'd've been/could be, I hear His words and feel His smile. Sinking into my soul like hot, fragrant, bubbly, soothing, bath water. Suffusing through me.
I submerge myself and close my eyes. The water rises up all around me as I sit quietly and soak. No more "thinking" today.
"You know what matters to Me, Josie?" I hear Him say. "YOU."
Selah.
When I came across my brooch this morning, I was going to clean her. And then I realised.
It's far more authentic just to leave her exactly the way she is.
jsg/nov 17