By Robert Clements
Lent and the Angels…!
And as the world below goes through their forty days of Lent, in my imagination, two heavenly angels, one senior and the other many years junior are sent on a tour of earth.
“Why look so despondent little angel?” asked the senior angel, looking at the face of the young celestial being.
“Look at that man,” said the little angel.
“Yes, he’s given up his alcohol for Lent,” said her senior, “He does that every year!”
“But see where he looks,” said the little angel, “His eyes are fixed on a bottle of whisky, which I know he’s planning to open on Easter, and get drunk on!”
The senior angel looked at the little angel and sighed, “It makes you sad, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yes it does,” said the little angel, “Instead of concentrating during this non-drinking time of his, on what God did on the cross for him, he is thinking how great a sacrifice he himself is making keeping away from the bottle for forty days! The rascal actually thinks that by giving up his drinks for a month, God’s work has been paid back in full! Doesn’t he realise that no amount of abstinence from drinks or food or cigarettes, that no amount of fasting can compensate for what God did for him?” asked the little angel.
The senior angel looked at the junior angel, sighed and asked, “What would you have him do instead?”
“I would certainly want him to rejoice on Easter,” said the little angel, “and a drink or two may not hurt, but now I would want him to spend his time meditating on the greatest sacrifice of all time, picturing in his mind each scene of that terrible, humiliating act of a Man on a cross, with whose death, gives him a guaranteed entry into heaven!”
The man staring at his unopened bottle during Lent, heard the whirring of wings near him, and wondered at the sound. Suddenly it seemed his eyes were opened and he looked with angelic vision, at what the real meaning of Lent was, “Lord,” he cried, “You died that I might spend eternity with you!”
“Did you open his eyes, little angel?” asked the senior angel, smiling, as they saw the man walking to his bottle and flushing the contents down a drain. The little angel nodded as the senior one smiled and heard the man below.
“My Lord and my God,” said the man, his hands clasped in prayer, “may I spend these forty days in thanksgiving and gratitude, and in preparation for an Easter, where a spirit more powerful than any from any bottle, will reside in me, through You the resurrected Christ!”
The angels smiled as the last of the bottle’s contents flowed down the sink! Like I said this story is from my imagination, and in my imagination, I see the same angel looking at me and saying, “Do you remember the drunk girl who came into your life?”
I nod, and remember that day: The doorbell rang, a watchman stood outside my door. It was two in the morning. “Drunk girl on the staircase sir!” he said. I called out to my daughter to come with me. We walked to the building near the gate. She was sprawled on the first floor landing, my daughter went to her and slowly shook her, “Come, get up,” she whispered, “We’ll help you up the stairs!” The girl moaned and brought out on the floor.
I rang the doorbells of the two residents of the floor. One was a mother of a girl who had just got married, I was sure her motherly feelings would come to our help, I thought. “Take her away from here!” shouted her husband, “We don’t want such filth here! Call the police!”
“Call the police for a small slip up of having one too many?” I asked flabbergasted.
With great difficulty we lifted her up and with my daughter pushing and me half carrying her we lumbered up the stairs watched through the half closed door by husband and wife. I opened the door with a key I had found in her purse, cleaned out a chair and placed her on it.
We closed the door and moved out. The next day she called, “I am so embarrassed,” she said, “I am so sorry! It has never happened to me before!”
I chuckled on the phone and said, “It happens to the best of us!”
Yes it happens to the best of us; we think we are beyond mistakes, and we make a terrible one. We think we can do no wrong and we do something terribly wrong. From what I gathered somebody at the party had deliberately mixed her drinks and she not being used to such had passed out but to her neighbours she was a cheap girl.
It is so easy to pass judgement on someone else, isn’t it? As I think back on the episode I wonder what made me lift her up and take her to her room, what made my daughter also gently help? “Dad,” she said later, “It could have been me in that same situation!”
Yes, it could have been me too. It could be you, and when we see somebody fall, whether on the staircase or in life itself, we need to help, because it could very well be us the next time. My thoughts go to the parable of the Good Samaritan: Why did the man stop and help? Did he see himself lying on the road? Are those the ‘neighbours’ we are supposed to look for and help? Are we like those neighbours on the staircase, passing judgement? Somewhere up in heaven, I feel God smiling, not at me, but at the drunk girl!
“We just don’t know why they’ve got drunk, or the bottle has got hold of them,” says the little angel, “But this Lent, lift those who have fallen down..!”
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