Angelos

This past summer in Prague, I served on a missionary English Camp, teaching the Bible and English to Czech children. Pastor Roger Wagner and his wife Sherry Wagner were leading our team. They celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary there, I believe, and they took an extra week off to actually roam the streets in the foggy mornings on Charles' Bridge. They have some pretty killer black-n-whites, I can tell ya, reader. But their leadership and their love are not the focii of this blog post. This blog post is about Pastor Wagner giving incorrect directions by mistake, with (almost) disastrous results.

Mrs. Teahan and her daughter Rachel were also members of our missionary team, and they faithfully taught the youngest school-age children. When the week was through, we all went our separate sight-seeing ways, and they took Pastor Wagner's advice to take the 22 tram going east, when they should have taken the 20. The day waxed old, and the sun began to set when Rachel started seeing signs that did not read like the familiar Czech signs that lead to Zbraslavski Namesti, or even Vaclavski Namesti. They disembarked, and realized they had no coins to purchase fares for the return trip.

{You see, reader, in the Czech Republic one must use the national currency, the Czech koruna (pronounced "crown," abbreviated Kc), or perhaps the Euro if one is lucky. The exchange rate was ~20 Kc = $1 two summers ago, and this past summer it fluctuated between ~16-17 Kc = $1, showing a doubled effect of inflation. Coins, thus, have significant value, if one can hold up to a 50 Kc piece in hand (the largest denomination of coin currency), one has the equivalent of approximately three U.S. dollars.}

So the Teahans found a flower vendor and split a Czech bill. They then bought a pair of tickets and began the journey in the other direction. They got off at Vaclavski Namesti (Vaclav Square), took the subway [the Metro] all the way to Smichovski Nadrazi (the main bus station), and began to wander a bit more. That is, until we ambushed them.

I'd better back up a bit.

While the Teahans were getting lost and the Wagners were falling in love again, Jared and Havalind Farnik (children of the missionaries to the Czech Republic) took me all over the place shopping and touring the parts of the city I hadn't yet seen. We found stores that made shampoo out of beer and body wash from wine (I got a bottle of the beer-shampoo for my brother. Oddly, he wasn't thrilled like I expected him to be), we watched the palace guard being exchanged, we bought freshly cooked corn on the cob, we drank water from decorative fountains (none of us cared, besides the Farniks), and we were almost too exhausted to shout with laughter when our day ended with finding the Teahans at Smichovski Nadrazi. But Jared and I still had an ounce of energy (that's the system we use here in America. An ounce is a very small weight for solids [1/16 pound] and a small weight for liquids [1/16 pint]) to chase down a very bewildered couple of Teahan ladies. We flagged them down, and I didn't notice until Jared was upon them that they were cringing almost in desperate resignation to being mugged.

[I didn't mention, reader, but the Czech Republic has a few noteworthy "bests:"
1. #1 Pick-pocket spot
2. #2 Texting usage
3. #3 Best public transportation system.
I don't know if these stats are current, for Prague only, measured against Europe only or globally, or if these statistics are accurate, but I trust them to be. In any case, back to my story...]

They turned around slowly only to burst into radiant smiles. "We were so lost, we didn't care if you were going to rob us!" We helped them get to the bus station that we would all be taking to get back to the hotel and to the Farniks' home, and then I noticed the yellow rose in Rachel's hands.
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They called us angels, sent by God to deliver them. Now, I don't know much about angelology or demonology, or what the spiritual warfare forecast looks like nowadays, but I do know that Christ has won, our victory is sure, and He will reign forever and ever, amen. But their comment got me thinking: how am I being used daily as God's providential agent to benefit society? I don't expect for a life of supreme adventure, or that God would intervene using me to find the Teahans or any other lost person on a daily basis. I think God works much greater and much subtler miracles through me so sneakily that even I can't tell what's really going on. It's kind of a trip, reader, to begin to comprehend that there are other people in this world. And they live lives destined for life or death, and they make choices that dive into death unless God intervenes, and they are now so intimately intertwined in our modern world yet so completely alone in a sea of meaningless and shallow relationships, and they have philosophies they cannot truly believe, and they believe things they know are false, and they say, "We have no king but Caesar."

What is my role in this? Father, help me to help them.