Entertaining Angels Unawares

Entertaining Angels Unawares
Thurmon Harris
November 3, 2011

During my lifetime many angels have been sent by my Lord to minister to me. The word “angel” means messenger of God. I know that there are in the words of the song, “Angels watching over me.” In addition to divine beings sent from heaven angels may also be humans that minister to us. These angels are not aware of what they are doing for us. They can only be described as “angels unawares” (Hebrews 13:2) because we usually fail to recognize them.
Today I am thinking of three that impacted my life. Not one of them was aware of how they ministered to me. I could mention many others, but I will only mention three.
The first angel was a lady at Bethel College back in 1956. This incident occurred the first day of our second year there. This girl was hunch-backed and unattractive, at least to a 19 year-old boy who was interested in pretty girls. Went we met that day she stepped up and looked me in the face and said very audaciously, “You are the last person I thought I would see back here.” Well, that pierced me right to the deepest depths of my soul. How dare her to say such a thing. I made no response even though I could have said the same thing about her. She had good grounds for thinking that because I was a very poor student and had flunked world history under Miss Polly Davis, the hardest teacher at Bethel.
How could I ever think this girl was an angel by insulting me like that? Here is how I see her remark 54 years down the road. She was sent by the Lord to give me a message that I needed to do better, to work harder, and to study more. There was God given potential in me, but I had to work to develop it. Honestly, I made little progress that second year in college. But that is not the end of my story.
I went on to graduate from Union University in Jackson, Tennessee. The first year there I did myself a favor by getting on academic probation. In order to be allowed to stay in school I had to make all “B’s” in three out of my four classes. Miracle of all miracles, I managed to do it. I had never studied as much or as hard as I did that semester.
Then God sent a second angel. I had a few years before felt the call into the gospel ministry. Knowing that I needed more education and training to be better prepared, I wanted to go to seminary. Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville seemed to be the logical choice. Thus, when a recruiter from Southern visited Union’s campus during my last semester I talked with him. He asked me what grades I had made in college. I told him that I was a “C” student. He lost all interest in telling me about the seminary. I remember him telling me that Southern was a highly academic school and that I probably would not succeed there. In effect, he told me that they weren’t interested in students of my caliber. They wanted smarter students. That ended our interview. I thought about that encounter and came to the conclusion that this man could not determine my destiny and I did not have to take his advice. With a dogged determination that fall I enrolled in the seminary in Louisville. Guess what! Seminary was much more demanding from the academic standpoint than I had experienced in college. However, the good news was that I made better grades there than I had made in college, even made a few “A’s.”
How was that recruiter an angel to me? I wasn’t thinking of him as an angel, but God sent him to prod me on or to give me a good hard kick in the rear, so to speak, that I so much needed. In our short discussion he certainly could not determine my destiny or how I was to press forward in trying to fulfill my calling in Christ Jesus. I thank God for this angel unawares.
A third angel was Dr. John Carlton, professor of preaching at the seminary. Of the three he is the only one whose name I can recall. I well remember him because he had such a great impact on my life in the two classes I had under his great teaching. Students were required to preach in a lab. The sermon had to be written and handed to Dr. Carlton at the time of preaching. I cannot remember the title of my sermon, but I can vividly remember how nervous and scared I was as I stood before about 20 other students and my professor. Students were required in a couple of days to meet with Dr. Carlton in his office to critique the sermon. I had rather taken a beating that to face him that day.
Dr. Carlton was very gentle and gracious to me. He began by saying that he realized I was a very shy individual like himself. He pointed out that though he was about 45 years old he had never married because of being so timid. Then he got down to the business of discussing my sermon. The bad news was that my delivery was as poor at any in the class. The good news was that the sermon content was a good as any. Then he said that he had been grading my papers. That was usually done by graduate students known as fellows. He told me that he discovered that I had the gift of writing and if I would write my sermons I would do well as a preacher.
What an angel sent from God Dr. John Carlton was to me! The first effect was that realizing for the first time that I might be a decent writer, I began making “A’s” on the papers that I submitted.