Entertaining Angels

A trip to Western Australia brought Laurel to the famous Busselton Jetty - a 1.8 km timber-piled jetty stretching out into the Indian Ocean - the longest of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. Initially built for practicality, the jetty is now a tourist destination and even features on postcards.The way it reaches out with such purpose is similar to prayer - an extension towards the eternal.But the main difference, of course, is the fact that we didn’t build the jetty between us and God. He did. But we still get to enjoy it. We can walk its length at any given moment and commune with Him.

In Romans 12, the Apostle Paul has a challenge for Christians:“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is- His good, pleasing, and perfect will.”But where can we actually start with this renewal?

Along York Lane in the Sydney CBD are alcoves and recessed doorways set into the buildings.It was in one of these recessed doorways where a man named Karl used to live (or rather, sleep).Hundreds of people passed Karl every day - and sadly, in 2013, Karl died in his sleep, exposed on York Lane.However, in a remarkable postscript, his long-lost brother, who had been searching for Karl for decades, finally found him.And he brought him home."My son," the father said, "you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." - Gospel of Luke, Chapter 15

The gap between what an Ibis is made for and what it does in the city becomes very apparent once you see it in its natural habitat. The Ibis is made to roam marshlands and use their elegant bills to dig for crayfish and mussels - not for scraps of rubbish in bins. But like these birds, we also often lose sight of the type of world we are made for and how we are meant to be. We can’t find the answer to who we are meant to be by looking within ourselves, but we can find it in God.‘Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love’ the Psalmist writes in Psalm 51. ‘Cleanse me with hyssop, and I shall be clean … create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.’

No matter how well things may seem, everyone faces times of testing where every day can feel like wading through thick sludge. But these challenges can also sometimes be, like molasses, unexpectedly sweet.

God is never far off - we can talk to him at any time. But sometimes, strange as it may seem, casting our anxieties on the creator of all things feels like the hardest thing in the world to do. 

So much of our world is built on hierarchical relationships.If one is of more excellent status, importance, or class than another, that can dictate so much of their interactions.A meeting with the late Henry Kissinger two decades ago brought this reality into focus for our host - and reminded her how this is anathema to the Creator of all things.The One true God laid down his life for all, for the slave and the free.

A verse in Hebrews reminds us that when we help a passerby, there might be more going on than we expect."Don't forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing, some have unwittingly entertained angels."However, what if angels have entertained us?What if we've encountered these celestial warriors and never realised?

More often than not, libraries collect and organise works of human creativity, intellect and industry.They are repositories of finished works.Books and recordings, films and magazines and many more - all discrete units of human creation.Archives, in contrast, provide us with the backdrop to the works, the settings, the background, and the working out of ideas from which a job may have come.

Welcome to a new season of Small Wonders!This is the first of a two-part series on the power of words.People read for different reasons.For some people, reading is work; for others, it's a hobby.Sometimes, reading can cause something within us to shift; we might go from wanting to read to needing to read. Our lives can suddenly - unexpectedly - become intertwined with the words on the page - and our experiences become things we might feel the need to share with authors we've never met.