Entertaining Angel

A few nights ago, my son invented a fun new game. Well, I say “fun.” For him it was all about imagination. For me it mostly involved figuring out what game we were playing.

It all started when he was allegedly taking a shower. I was in the room next door, laying out pajamas for him. 

I heard a voice from within the shower.

“Hey, um…. Where am I?”

“What?” I asked.

“What is this place?”

“You’re in the shower,” I offered helpfully.

“Oh. But where is that?” he continued.

“You’re in your house, with your mom and dad.”

“Oh,” he said, seeming to grasp a new concept. “What color is the house?”

I told him.

“And… what's a ‘mom?’”

“Well,” I said. “It’s the woman who gave birth to you.”

“What does my mom look like?” he asked,

“She’s got curly hair and she likes to smile.”

“Oh! Okay!”

I was glad to see we were getting somewhere now.

“And what about you?” the shower stranger asked. “I suppose you’ll need a name, too. How about ‘Matt?’”

“I like it.”

He continued this act throughout the shower. Problems arose when we turned off the water and tried getting him ready for bed. 

You see, at some point during the bathing process, my son had been replaced by a new person. I learned over the course of the next fifteen minutes that this person was new to Earth. He had just recently arrived from Heaven. (Please don’t ask me how he got here. He was very vague on those details.)

You’d like to assume that heavenly visitors would be helpful additions to your evening. Turns out they are quite the opposite. Have you ever tried putting an angel to bed? I’ll bet you haven’t. Well, don’t be jealous. It’s no picnic.

“Hey, Heaven Stranger,” I began. “You’d better go to the bathroom before you go to bed.”

“Oh, sure,” my mystic visitor agreed. “But… where do I go to the bathroom? What is a toilet?”

They don’t have indoor plumbing in Heaven?! (Seriously, this has me a little concerned.)1

“Hey, could you feed Otto?” I asked later.

“Who’s Otto?” Of course. Why am I such a slow learner?

“He’s your pet fish.”

“Oh!” Pause. “What’s a fish?”

Needless to say, bedtime took longer than usual. But in the end, I got my little miracle to lie down and go to sleep. 

Hebrews 13:2 reminds us that we should be hospitable to strangers and mentions that some people, by showing hospitality, have “entertained angels without knowing it.” Somehow I doubt that I was talking to a heavenly messenger that night. But he certainly is a gift from God. And I think we were both entertained.

^{1. [Actually, the problem went beyond plumbing issues and raised questions about basic bodily functions in the afterlife. I was also asked “What is poop?]↩}