"..for thereby some have entertained angels unawares."

Hebrews 13:2 is an interesting verse, part of which I've quoted in the title. The verse says, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." I don't know much about angels. I don't really understand the special status accorded them. I don't understand their power or ability, which is a very human way of looking at things, I suppose, and not at all in keeping with thoughts of the divine, or at least holy. Angels have been called messengers, or vice-versa. We have angels of mercy and angelic praise, as a hymn or two reminds us.

Yet, in spite of my disbelief in angels, or perhaps because of it, I've had two occasions where I felt so strongly that I was interacting with angels that it spooked me. The first time was over ten years ago. The second was recent - the morning of Christmas Eve, 2004.

Many years ago - such that I can't recall when, really, but, generally, let's say 12 years ago or so, I took a trip down to Atlanta from Memphis. I went down there to visit a couple of friends and to participate in the closing service of a weekend retreat. My visit was a surprise, which meant that I couldn't stay at the retreat center the night before. Instead, I sought a hotel room nearby. That was a mistake. You see, Atlanta was busy that weekend. There was a baseball game being played in town. There was a basketball exhibition game being played. And there was a gathering of students from nearly every black college and university in the country for their joint spring break. Atlanta was crowded. There were no rooms nearby.

So, I kept driving East, until I was well past my destination, well into unfamiliar territory, and finally somewhere near hotels/motels with rooms to let. I stopped, booked a room, ate dinner, and went to sleep.

In the morning, I woke early and decided to take a look around as I had several hours to kill. Folks who know me know that I don't eat breakfast. Folks who have traveled with me know that I do. That's one of my personal contradictions: I eat breakfast on the rode, but not at home. Breakfast, in this case, meant WaffleHouse, and unavoidable feature of practically every interstate interchange in Georgia. So, I found one, went in, and waited for a spot to sit down. Soon, a barstool became available, and I sat down.

Now, folks who know me also know that I'm generally not one for talking to strangers. Heck, I'm not much for talking, usually, though the right crowd sometimes can produce odd results. But, it so happened that the stool next to mine opened up shortly after I sat down, and a middle-aged black man sat down next to me, and we mumbled our respective "mornin'" to each other. He had a local paper, and so I went out on a limb and asked him if he know the reason for the crowds I'd run into, etc. He knew alright - some of his wife's college friends were in town because of it, and he'd had his fill of reunions and too many women in his house, and had decided to go out and catch breakfast and a little peace and quiet. We laughed about that and I commiserated (I have 3 sisters myself) and then shifted to the weather, the local sports, and events of the day. He finished breakfast before I did, and he paid, and then he got up to leave. That's when he turned around, looked at me squarely in the eye, and said, "You be careful out there today."

That was an odd remark, I thought, but well-intentioned, and so I thanked him, and we said our goodbyes. He left, and shortly after I left. I got in my car and decided to take a little drive around Atlanta.

I still can't tell you exactly where I went that day. I drove all over - and I took a few u-turns, getting off the interstate and getting back on, trying to stay in the general quadrant of my ultimate destination. At some point, though, I got lost, or at least out of sight of the signs that I wanted to see. [A useful working definition of lost, at least for me.] I took a few turns, and then I was in a very different place. Graffiti became prominent. Fences. Boards on windows, bars on doors. Gang symbols, sprayed on corners, cars, streets. The general signs of urban decay. Suddenly, I was a little nervous, and I got the distinct impression I was in an area of town that, in the wrong circumstances, could be dangerous.

I should explain how I traveled back then. I had a fairly small car with bucket seats up front. I would slide the passenger seat back as far as possible, which allowed a good-sized cooler to be placed in the floorboard. I would stock up on ice, cokes, sandwiches, cheese, apples - snacks for the road. It was very handy.

I should also explain that my little car had a few miles on it, and that some of those miles had been hard ones. I had driven from Memphis to Milwaukee in that little car, at a pretty good clip. I had driven from Memphis to Atlanta in a little under 5 hours. My car rebelled at such treatment in subtle ways; sometimes, for instance, the electric windows would stop working.

Here I was, then, lost in Atlanta, in a rough neighborhood by the looks of it.

I looked up and saw a guy walking down the sidewalk. In a few moments he would walk in front of my car. He was a young black man in his 20's. He looked tough. He had the right number of tattoo's to fulfil a gangster stereotype. And he was looking at my car. So, I did the what I thought I should do: I tried to roll my window up. Remember how I said my car misbehaved on occassion. That's what they call foreshadowing, because that's exactly what happened. My window refused to budge. My fingers were glued to the controls, and my eyes were glued to the fellow who was, by now, walking in front of my car, then a little to the left, a little more, almost to the corner, and then he stopped. And I got very nervous and to what this fellow was up to. He stopped, and then he turned around, looked at me, and started walking back. Over to my window. Next to my car. And then he leaned down, put his arm on the window, and said, "Hey man, you got a pepsi in that cooler?"

i've always been of the coke congregation, so I told him no. Then I told him I had a coke, and he asked for one, and I gave it to him. He stood up, wiped his brow, popped his coke top, took a sip, and leaned back down. He looked at me and said, "Say, what's a white boy like you doing here?" I waited a second, and then he continued, "You need to get out of here. You need to drive straight two blocks. Then you need to turn right. Then you need to keep driving."

I said, "Okay" and I waited for the light to change (again) and then I took off.

Perhaps you're wondering what this has to do with angels. Or, maybe you've jumped ahead and you're asking yourself, "Who is the angel?" Is it the first man who warns me, or is it the guy who helped me, or is it both? I don't know. I like to think both. I like to think the first was a messenger. Did my offer of a cold drink on a hot Atlanta day transform someone into an angel? That's silly, but be not forgetful to entertain strangers, even if they look like young black gangsters. In the bible, angels have men's names - Michael, Gabriel.... but we're not supposed to believe they are ordinary men. When I close my eyes, my angels have black faces. So be it. That was my first visitation. Real angels? Do you care?

Christmas Eve began early for me. About 4AM, I heard a familiar winter sound - the sound of wheels spinning on slick ice. My hearing is good, anyway, but there is something about the resonance of that sound that penetrates my skull. This was a persistent sound, or at least the sound of a persistent driver. After I little while, I was good and awake and I figured I might as well go out and see what was happening. That, thankfully, didn't take long: a young black soldier, on leave and back in Memphis, had swapped the ends of his car across the street from my neighbor's house, and had slid off into a small ditch. As I approached him, he was giving the accelerator everything he could, wheels spinning furiously, but to no avail.

I walked over and he rolled down his window, and I leaned in and said, "Son, you're pretty good and stuck." He laughed, and agreed. I asked the usual questions, "Have you driven on ice? What gear is your car in? Front-wheel drive?" and quickly figured out that he really didn't know what to do, didn't really want to leave his car (despite my offer to drive him to his destination) and that he really believed he might get his car lose. So, we rocked it back and forth for a while and other tricks all designed to free his trapped vehicle. Nothing doing.

After a while, I walked back over to my house, got my flat-bladed shovel, came back over, and started digging away some of the ice. I don't think I'll ever forget the nice, one-inch thick sheets that I split that day. Great big sections, long as your arm. Even after digging enough traction for one wheel, he still had another buried over halfway in mud. He spun his wheels for maybe a half hour more.

I had another bright idea, so I went back to the house, had my wife open the garage, and was going to grab some firewood to put under his muddy tire. That's when I heard voices. I looked back up the road and there was another guy standing in the middle of the street, talking to the young soldier. I decided to walk back down.

The new fellow had a thin jacket on and was talking loud enough to wake the neighbors, (or so I hoped, secretly). He looked at the car and laughed. He walked around it and shook his head. He told me none of the coke trucks had gone out the day before, the streets where so bad, and that this morning was even worse, slick as glass, and that he didn't see how anybody was getting around. We agreed that even a wrecker would have trouble on the perfect ice skating rink near the corner, and that the car was very stuck, and he said, "You know, firewood might do the trick", I walked back up to my house, and my wife opened the garage, and I got a couple of pieces wood to prop under the car wheels. As I was walking back to the street, though, I heard a different sound, and so I dropped the wood, walked further, and saw the car in the middle of the street, pointing the right direction. I walked on, and they explained that they had just, "rocked her free" and that he was ready to drive home. I told the solder to put his car in low and to "take it light on the accelerator" and wished him well. The soldier asked for my name, thanked me, wished me a Merry Christmas, and slowly took off down the street. The other fellow wished me a good night and started walking off as well. I turned around and started walking back to my house, cold, tired, but happy at the prospect of a little quiet. I was even happy that someone else had decided to stop by and help.

About halfway to my house, I stopped and thought, for the first time: what in the world is somebody doing, walking the streets at 5Am on a day like today? So, I ran/waddled back to the corner, and took a look around.... and saw nothing. Not a person in sight as far as the eye could see. I even said outloud, "Where did you go?"

Was the young man who stopped by an angel? To the driver he should have been, but maybe he didn't notice. I like to think he was, even if he was only pretending. Maybe the driver was the one entertaining, and he got an angel and me for free. Or maybe the driver was the angel, and two souls, awakened early, got a reminder of the giving nature of Christmas. I don't know. I wish both explanations could be true.

I do know that they say good things happen in threes. I'm hoping that it doesn't take 10 more years for me to be convinced.