“Ordinary Messengers”—A Prayer for December 16, 2020
The angels you send aren’t as much a surprise
as the people you pick, God.
The heavenly host have a certain respectable glory to them,
all wings and light and awe-inspiring, fear-inducing radiance.
They are hard to ignore or deny, just by their presence.
They command our attention simply by showing up.
I have a hunch that if I were you, I would only ever send angels
to do my holy bidding. Here and there all the time. Every message.
What brings us up speechless is your inexplicable insistence
on reaching out to us in the unlikely faces
of old poets and dreamers we call “prophets,”
or the wild man knee-deep in the creek
with honey in his scraggly beard
and flecks of locust wing stuck
in his teeth when he speaks,
or a girl from a backwater town
who qualified for public assistance.
They seem too plain, too coarse, too poor,
to be commissioned as your emissaries.
Your choices surprise us. Good. We need that.
Startle us again with your ordinary messengers.
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