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Entertaining Angels: Life Comes Full Circle Edition
I had a peripatetic childhood, and by the time I finished high school I’d attended well over a dozen schools on three different continents, with time off for good behavior during a glorious year (in about third grade) where there wasn’t a school anywhere in sight. My mother, who was largely disinterested in her parenting responsibilities for most of her life, wasn’t really into the idea of homeschooling, and so I spent most of that year loafing with what few little English friends I had, and playing with the children of the Nigerian house staff. The following year I resumed school somewhere else, in the appropriate grade, with apparently no ill effects at all.
At some point though, when I was bored or lonely, I learned to find refuge in books.
I remember reading only one really childish picture book, although surely there were more. That book was Little Chick Chick, a tiny paperback about a small chick who disobeyed his mother, got himself lost, and ended up spending the night all alone in the pouring rain, hiding underneath an empty tomato soup can by the side of the road. Fortunately for my own mother’s sanity, his mother hen retrieved him the next day, slapped him upside the head with her wing, and all ended well. But before this happy outcome, and at each sight of poor Little Chick Chick shivering and desolate next to the tomato soup can, the two-year-old me would cry floods and floods of inconsolable tears.
I’ve written on this theme a couple of times before–Hebrews 13:2, “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” That’s pretty much an ironclad rule for me, and although I can’t say I bat a thousand, my average when I get to the plate is high enough to make it worth my while. (Note well that in the foregoing sentence, She finally deploys a sports analogy, correctly, coherently, and consistently. Or so She believes. Perhaps there really is a first time for everything. If I messed it up somehow, please don’t burst my bubble.)
