We Are Each Other's Angels

Years ago, our church held a Wednesday night dinner. Our financial secretary arrived that evening and noticed a car pulling into the parking lot — a young couple with three children, all under the age of three. She could tell something was wrong. The man was in the back seat mixing a bottle for the baby. When someone invited them inside, it became clear just how desperate their situation was. The children had no clothes. The woman had no shoes.

What happened next has stayed with me.

Several people from that congregation quietly rose to the occasion. Someone listened to their story. Others put together dinners in to-go boxes. Someone gathered canned goods. Another person made a phone call and found them shelter and clothing for the night.

I have thought many times about the particular grace of that evening. Had it been any other night, no one would have been there. But it was Wednesday. And the people were there. And somehow, a family in crisis pulled into exactly the right parking lot at exactly the right moment.

A songwriter named Chuck Brodski wrote a song called "We Are Each Other's Angels." I like the title. Because it points to something true about the way grace tends to move in this world — not usually in dramatic, unmistakable ways, but through ordinary people who happen to be in the right place, who happen to notice, who happen to be willing.

You never know when God might use you to minister to someone in need. And you never know when someone will be there to minister to you.

Prayer: Make us attentive, O God, to the needs in the world around us, to the moments that call for more than indifference. However it might look, use us as angels for one another. We ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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