Attentive to God’s Angels
We read yesterday of three men who appear at Abraham's tent in the heat of the day, and how he was attentive enough to see to their needs. But as it turns out, they weren't actually humans. Two of them were angels, and one was God Himself.
Turning to the book of Hebrews, we see that the early Christians would use this story as a model for treating people, expecting that perhaps the people they were serving were angels - look at these words in the book of Hebrews: "Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering." (Hebrews 13:1-3)
Love each other. Reach out to those in prison. And show hospitality to strangers - it might be that you're entertaining angels and not know it!
Divine Encounters in Ordinary Moments
Shereen has a story of her and her mum stopping at a one-stop late at night, and being approached by a man and his son for something to eat. Something inside her just said "help these people". And so they said "sure we will", and then they turned around and the two of them had disappeared into thin air.
Angels? Maybe.
I used to sit on the Gautrain and head to Pretoria. Almost everybody was sitting there, earphones in, scrolling scrolling scrolling. I wonder sometimes how many opportunities I may have missed to show hospitality to people (or angels), because I wasn't attentive, I was oblivious.
Praying for Godly Attentiveness
Here's an idea. Every day when you start your day in prayer (as I hope you do)... Ask God to make you more attentive to the needs around you. That's all! But ask... Ask for a Christlike, Abraham-like attentiveness to the needs of the people around you.
And then go into your day open to how God may lead you to bless somebody. To help somebody. To care for somebody.
In that article I quoted on Monday, the author said this: "Without a godly attentiveness, we will miss God's cues and ignore the needs of those about us."
I don't want to be that person anymore! Let's pray for godly attentiveness to the needs around us as we go about our days, and perhaps we will find that we’ve entertained angels as we’ve done this.
