Angels Unaware No More
I was at church the other night, doing what I do each year, ending the Thanksgiving whirl and officially kicking off the Christmas season. Like most of you out there this is one of the busiest seasons of the year for me. I go to our church to center myself for the coming onslaught of buying, wrapping, eating, and merriment. It is there I find a bit of true peace before the December days start to speed past me in one gigantic blur. At that small evening service I catch my breath—I actually breathe and thank God for making it through another year with all my loved ones.
The service is usually about 40 minutes or so long, but the choir manages to capture the spirit of Christmas in that brief time of respite. Carols are sung, scripture is read and finally we light our small candles in the darkness of our sanctuary. It is pretty—the light piercing the darkness like our faith does each challenging day we face.
There a few rituals that we observe. After Thanksgiving a crew of “decorateurs” (yours truly included) descends on the church and its buildings and gets the area ready for the Christmas season with a couple of trees, some wreaths and a plethora of bows. (Yours truly is one of the bow-makers, maybe exhibiting the only artistic bent I have.)
With the church all dressed up we then have our service. During that time we hang various ornaments on the tree—doves, crosses and angels. The ornaments are called Chrismons and if you’d like to learn more about them, check out the information below.* This year my friend Charley was called upon to hang the angel. Charley and his wife Carolyn helped me through the most horrendous period of my life as I nursed my husband through kidney cancer and got him to dialysis three times a week. I literally could not have made it without them. My friend Martha carried up a Chrismon and added it. Martha, a recent widow herself, has become my phone buddy and confidante, a lifeline in a lonely world. We talk like teenagers and often that alone gets us through a down day. There was Tom who was responsible for me attending this particular place of worship. Slowly I looked around at our small church and saw all the church family who had been there for me.
The choir, the congregation, our Sunday School teachers and our minister were the true angels. Our minister listened while I raged some after my husband’s death, and was the one who reminded me that God could was tough enough to take my anger.
That angel on the tree was not the only one there that night. I was surrounded by angels--everyday, ordinary people who at various times had become my angels when I needed them most. I suddenly remembered the Bible verse in Hebrews--Hebrews 13:2:
2 Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
Indeed all these people had started out at strangers and now were dear to me beyond compare.
So, I headed out into the chilly December night renewed. Renewed and blessed by that faith we all shared and by the knowledge that a whole group of people had “had my back” through the last year. I did not make it alone—my dearest little family who never failed me; my lifelong friends (many I have known 50 years plus) who also chatted and cheered me up; my neighbors and my church family had all made the path easy. I was not like Sisyphus, that character in Greek mythology who rolled a huge boulder up a hill each day, only to have it roll down again for him to repeat this task for eternity. I had an army at my side, angels who had stood behind me as I pushed my boulder each day. Gloria in excelsis Deo!