Angels

Between despair and hope

April 6, 2015 by Billy Coffey 2 Comments

It’s come and gone now, but Easter is still on my mind. That’s how it is when you get older. When I was a kid, Easter wasn’t even an entire day, really. It lasted only a couple of hours on those Sunday mornings, beginning with waking up to dive into all that candy stuffed into the basket left for me on the kitchen table and ending just a few hours later, when I walked out of church. When you’re just coming up in the world, Easter seems a little overblown.

After you’ve come up, though? Well, then things get different. You get to that age after you find out the Easter Bunny’s just a poor man’s Santa but before you start sneaking chocolate into your own kids’ baskets, and Easter maybe dims a little more. Maybe it’s the time of year that does it. It’s springtime when Easter rolls around, and everything is new and fresh and drowned in color, and what’s on your mind is more the rising temperature than a rising Lord. You take it for granted that the Miracle happened. The stone got rolled away and the angel said Look inside and inside was empty. You hear things like that too much, sometimes it doesn’t seem so special anymore.

But then something new happens, usually once you get some age and you find that you’re starting to attend more funerals than weddings. Life takes on a different look right about then. The shine starts to wear off. You start thinking less about where you’re at and more about what’s laying on ahead. You maybe discover what Easter means for the first time in your life.

I wouldn’t say that’s where I am personally, but I’d say it’s near enough. To me, Easter is the holiest time of the year. It’s a period to be quiet and listen—days to both despair and hope. That last point is what’s been on my mind.

For a lot of the religiously minded, Easter is really just three days rather than one. It begins on Good Friday, when we pause in our otherwise busy and stressful lives to consider this person who was both God and man, dying such a horrible death, setting himself apart from God so we would never have to ourselves. It ends the following Sunday with that empty tomb full of promise—proof enough for any believer that death has lost its sting.

It’s that Saturday that I want to talk about, though—that Saturday between the first Good Friday and that first Easter. The day between all that despair and all that new hope. Nothing much gets said about that day, and so it’s all left to some imagination and hard thinking. I think about the Marys and the disciples, all shut up inside somewhere, hiding and grieving. I think about them all trying to hold onto a faith that maybe can’t help but be slipping away, searching for any reason at all to believe, and I think about how that seems an awful lot like what most of us feel everyday.

That first Saturday? That’s our lives. Those hours are our years, ones spent trying to hope and understand. Trying to find the reasons behind the horrible things that happen to us all. It’s a tough thing, this business of living, especially when you put a God whose ways are so far apart from our own at the center of it. We stand in the present now just as the disciples stood in it then, and the choice we have is the same as theirs. We can look back to despair, or we can look ahead and hope. It’s a daring hope, no doubt, one that seems near to impossible. And yet that is where we all must turn, and that is what we all must cling to—that stone rolled away. That empty tomb. Because we can do without a great many things in life and still call ourselves living, but we cannot go without hope.

What to pray for

November 5, 2013 by Billy Coffey 1 Comment

An important part of my nighttime routine is making a final pass through the house. I make sure the doors are locked and the outside light is on. Make sure the morning coffee is ready—it’s the smell of coffee and not the sound of the alarm that gets me out of bed—and the lights above the sink are shining—just in case someone wakes in the middle of the night thirsty. I’ll check to make sure my son is adequately covered and hasn’t flopped and flipped his blankets off. My final stop is to check my daughter’s sugar, because she may sleep and we all may sleep, but diabetes never does.

I always pray over my children then. Every night, without fail. They don’t know this; I’ve never told them. I suppose doing so is as much for my benefit as theirs. I have an uneasy relationship with the night. It’s the time of day when I often get most of my work done, and yet I spend much of that time peering into the shadows for what isn’t there.

My prayers are the usual ones—help us to sleep well, bless our family, let Your angels stand guard. And keep us safe, always that. Always a lot of that.

I heard a preacher the other day talk about praying for safety. He said Christians shouldn’t place so much of a premium on that, that this is pretty much one of the safest countries in the world and so we’re pretty much wasting our words, that we should instead pray for boldness because that’s what we need more. He said we’re often content to remain where we are because that’s where everything is safe and familiar, when God wants us to go forth and conquer new lands within and without.

I’ll admit he stepped on my toes a little with that. It’s probably true that I need more boldness than safety, just as true about those new lands. And I’ll say that fear plays an important part in my life and maybe too much, what with all those shadows and whatnot.

So maybe instead of praying that God will keep us safe, I should pray that He will keep us on our toes. And rather than asking that His angels stand guard over us, I should pray that they will charge ahead of us into new places and new ways of seeing things. Maybe I’ve been tricked into thinking that my life is better thought of as something to be endured rather than made better, as if my purpose in being here is to comfort myself before I comfort others.

Maybe.

But maybe praying for safety is important, too. It reminds me that despite what everyone in my family may believe, I’m small. Just a tiny speck in a big world, one that oftentimes is much more scary than it is beautiful. And one who often needs a great deal of help.

Perhaps if I had the faith of the preacher I heard the other day, I wouldn’t need to ask for so much safety. Perhaps if I had his view of the world, I would see no reason to fear anything. I would see the battle as already won and the last sentence already written, one with an exclamation point rather than a period.

I hope to have that sort of faith one day. For now, I don’t. For now, I look at this world and see more shadows than light and more of what could go wrong than what has already gone right.

Angels unaware

August 15, 2013 by Billy Coffey 5 Comments

I really wanted Patrick Dowling to be an angel.

Chances are good you’ve heard the story. Two Sundays ago, a young woman named Katie Lentz was driving to Jefferson City, Missouri, to attend church with friends. Near the town of Center, a car collided with hers, leaving Katie trapped in a ball of crumpled metal. Rescue teams arrived, but the equipment necessary to free Katie failed. Though she remained alert enough to talk of her church and her college studies, Katie’s vital signs began to fail. If she did not get to a hospital soon, she would die.

The emergency crews decided to push her vehicle upright—a dangerous and life-threatening course of action, but the only choice left. That’s when Katie asked if someone would pray with her, and that’s when a man dressed as a priest stepped forward and said, “I will.”

No one knew how the priest had gotten there. The road was blocked off for two miles in either direction. None of the rescue personnel, many of whom lived in nearby communities, recognized him. And yet the priest approached Katie’s car and began praying with her, telling them all only to relax, that help was coming. Twenty emergency workers helped to sit the car upright. Katie’s vital signs rebounded. Another rescue team arrived, carrying fresh equipment. Katie was freed and rushed to the hospital.

When the emergency personnel turned to thank the priest, they found he had vanished. No trace of his presence remained. Adding to the mystery was that of the nearly seventy photographs taken at the scene, not one of them showed the priest. Thus was born the legend of the Missouri angel.

I love stories like that. Crave them, in fact. They are a reminder that we are never truly alone. We are watched over. Protected, even in the midst of such pain and danger. By the time I read of Katie’s ordeal, her story had been picked up by news media worldwide. Everyone wanted to find the mystery priest. I only shook my head and smiled. They’d never find him, because that hadn’t been a priest at all.

Then Patrick Dowling stepped forward. Father Patrick Dowling, I should say.
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He had been returning home from delivering Mass in Ewing, Missouri, when he’d arrived at the scene. He parked 150 yards away and made his way forward, believing there was something he could perhaps do. The Sheriff granted him permission to approach the scene of the accident. That’s when he heard Katie ask if there was someone who could pray with her. After, when she was extracted and taken to an awaiting helicopter, Father Dowling hadn’t disappeared at all. He’d just walked back to his car.

There hadn’t been an angel along that stretch of highway near Center, Missouri, at all. There had just been a man.

I’ll be honest—a part of me didn’t want Father Dowling to come forward. I’d rather he’d remained anonymous. Let people think it was an angel. Let them believe. These are dark times, after all. We need that reminder of a watchful God and loving Father, Someone eager to send help.

I’ve since changed my mind, though. As much as a part of me still wishes it had been a genuine member of the heavenly host with Katie Lentz that day, I’m fine with it being a simple priest. Glad, even. Because these are dark times, after all, and we all need a reminder that we’re not alone. We all crave that kind touch of grace and mercy from God’s hand. We all need to know He’s eager to send help.

We all want to know there are angels near.

And I believe God sends them. Every single day, and to everyone. Sometimes those angels come as mystery and light. Other times, they come as people like you and me.

Calling all angels

May 3, 2012 by Billy Coffey 8 Comments

742px-Angel_with_Mobile_Phone_420 In the village of ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, there is a cathedral. Atop the spires and colonnades are statues of saints and angels, many of which are smiling faintly, as if they know all the answers to all the mysteries that vex us so.

One angel in particular has caused something of a stir in that small village. The newest one, erected only last April. Whereas all of its counterparts are garbed in the traditional flowing robes and wings, this one has been modernized with jeans, a laptop, and a cell phone.

It’s the cell phone that captured the attention of one particular husband and wife in the village. The wife especially. So much so, in fact, that she set up a number so people can call the angel. Sort of a heavenly lifeline.

The church, of course, frowned on such a development. They didn’t think it appropriate for anyone to be playing an angel. In their wisdom, however, the bishops decided to let things be. A good thing, that. Because now upwards of thirty people a day dial the angel’s number, and each are greeted by the voice of a very normal and very anonymous Dutch housewife who says, “Hello, this is the little angel.”

It’s all become somewhat of a phenomenon. The angel even now has his own Twitter account (@ut_engelke). Calls come from all sorts of people in all walks of life—old and young, rich and poor, happy and sad. Recently, a little girl called the angel for prayers for her dead grandmother. A widow called for prayers for her dead grandchildren.

The angel (I suppose that should be “angel”) answers them all. She listens. I doubt if much advice is given, but I have no doubt that’s a good thing. When people are hurting, what they need isn’t advice, it’s an ear to whisper into and a shoulder to lean upon.

I read about all of this the other day. It stuck in me. Not so much like a nagging pain. More like an itch you get deep in your ear that can’t be scratched. I couldn’t define that itch then. I think I can now.

What struck me wasn’t so much that somewhere in the Netherlands there exists a statue of an angel wearing jeans and holding a cell phone. Not even that in a tiny village there lives a woman who is now heaven’s answering service. No, what struck me was the number of people every day who call a number they know doesn’t point heavenward to speak to someone they know isn’t an angel, for no other reason than that they are hurting.

That they need help.

That, my friend, is a powerful thing.

I’ve long believed that joy is an individual thing; what makes me happy, what brings me peace and laughter, might not be what would bring those things to you. But when it comes to what makes us hurt, what makes us afraid, what keeps us up at night staring at a vacant ceiling, those things are the same. Maybe not exactly, but close enough.

Our hurts unite us.

They define us.

They make us not only human, but a family.

And if that’s the case, maybe we could all be angels, too.

Behold

December 19, 2011 by Billy Coffey 13 Comments

So. Things have been a little tough around here lately, and for a variety of reasons. Seems to be that way for a lot of folks this year. Times are tough out there, no doubt about it.

I’ve never understood how anyone could be melancholy during Christmas. To feel a heaviness amidst such beauty seems impossible, and to possess a measure of fear while surrounded by so much joy seems tragic. Such people have always been alien to me. I understand them better now.

The Nativity story is a popular one in our house these days; the kids have fallen into the habit of reciting the first verses of Luke 2 each night before bed. One of my favorite parts of the Bible, Luke 2. It is a fantastic retelling of fact—of shepherds and angels and a big miracle in a tiny baby. Last night as I listened, heart heavy and sadness there, what struck me was the tenth verse:

“But the angel said unto them, ‘Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be for all people.’”

I imagined those shepherds—alone that night in darkness, guarding their flocks, trying to keep the wolves away. It was likely a tough time for them then, just as it is now for us. It was a life of work and of scraping by, of dealing with loss and hardship. And fear, especially fear. They were trying to keep the wolves away, after all. Maybe that’s why so many of us are afraid, too.

I think it’s fear that lies deep inside our troubles. Fear that the bad things will get worse, that the black hole we’re in will get deeper, and that whatever joy is left for us in this world will be carried away by a cold wind that will leave us shivering.

For a tiny group of shepherds one night long ago, help came in the form of an angel with Good News to tell. But before that News was given came four words that were even more needed, at least for that group of sheep herders in the Bethlehem countryside:

“Fear not; for behold…”

If there is a magic to all the Christmases that have followed that first one (and I have no doubt there is), then the secret to that magic lies in one word—behold.

My problem was that I was familiar with that word but didn’t really know what to behold something truly entailed. My dictionary put it this way:

“To perceive through use of the mental faculty; comprehend.”

In other words, to behold something means not merely to see it, but to ponder it. To seek to understand it.

Our worries and cares shrink not only our hearts and minds, but our vision as well. The more we look upon what we fear, the less we can see of what can comfort. I think that’s why beholding is so important. It involves interest. It requires attention. It demands participation. It means that for one moment we chance a small step outside of ourselves to gaze upon larger things.

So let us—you and I—do just that this Christmas. Let’s take a moment to ponder and wonder and try to comprehend. In that even our sadness will be coated with a sheen of joy, and the angels will proclaim even in our darkness. For the reason we celebrate this time, this Holy Child, is because by His presence the sadness we feel in this life was rendered temporary, and by Him we know that fairer lands await.

Do not be afraid. Behold.

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