A Drunken Angel
This is an account of an extraordinary event that took place while I was going to college at Kansas State University in Manhattan Kansas. This event helped to shape my views about God the Father, about angels, and further demonstrated to me the sovereignty of God in everything. I can’t say for certain what really happened, I can only relate to you what I saw and experienced from my end, and from my mortal and finite perspective.
It all began in Aggieville at Radina’s Café, a local coffee shop here in Manhattan Kansas. It’s a place where people come to meat with friends, study, or just drink some coffee or espresso. I liked going there to have my “quite time”. Allow me explain. I have a circle of people that I like to hang out with; Christians that are sold out for Christ and using their lives to follow Him and make Him known, like me. We (this group of people and I) spend, or try to spend, a consistent time alone at times throughout the week, ideally every day, reading the Bible, studying it, meditating over it, reflecting on it and praying through it. This time is dedicated to spending time and communing with God one on one. During this time, we try and limit the distractions we encounter from the world around us, thus it is known as our “quiet time”. Anyway, I frequented Radina’s because I enjoyed having my quiet times there. One day, late morning, early afternoon, I came to Radina’s to spend some time alone, just me and God, and as I was reading, I noticed Allie, a friend of mine, outside sitting at one of the outdoor tables they have in front of the cafe. I continued to read and finished my quiet time, and then went out to sit and chat a bit with Allie. As I got outside, I saw that she was talking with a man that had just been walking by and had stopped to talk to her; he looked to be maybe in his thirties. So I asked if I could join their conversation and sat down beside her. I don’t remember what all we talked about, but through the course of the discussion, Allie and I learned that this man, Ken, was an alcoholic and a severe alcoholic at that. Ken shared with us that he couldn’t go for very long without alcohol in his system or else the delirium trimmers would render him all but incapacitated. He also shared with us that because of this, he had really lost his desire to live. His quality of life had been degraded so much by his addiction to alcohol that he really didn’t care anymore that his addiction would ultimately kill him. We also found out that Ken was on his way to Rusty’s Last Chance (a fitting name), a bar in the area, to basically drink himself to death. He had decided that he was going to go drink until he either passed out or died, or both. Clearly moved by this, Allie begged him not to go. Later, she said she couldn’t explain why she had done this except that the Holy Spirit had come upon her and told her not to let this man do this. She begged him not to go to the bar, and in the process persuaded him to let her help him. After asking him some questions and determining what would be of the most benefit, she offered to take him to the emergency room, and he accepted. She asked me to come along, because she didn’t think she could do this alone. Moved by pity, by compassion, and probably a lot by the Holy Spirit, I agreed, so we drove him to Mercy Medical here in Manhattan. When we got there, the staff of the emergency room were very helpful and gracious. From what I remember, the process of checking him in and getting him the care he needed went abnormally smooth, especially considering we knew nothing about Ken, we weren’t related to him, and from what I can remember, he wasn’t really in much of a shape to answer questions or fill out paperwork.
After he got checked in, the nurse put us in a room off to the side, hooked Ken up to an I.V. drip that would help tame his DT’s as his body started to react to the lack of alcohol in his system. She put us in a tiny room off to the side of the nurses’ station, Allie, me and Ken, and then left, probably to go do some paper work or something. So while we were in this room alone with Ken, we began to ask Ken some questions. We began to talk to Ken, and Ken began to open up to us. He began to tell us all about himself, how he used to have a family, how he used to have a wife and kids, and how his addiction to alcohol stripped him of all those things. He told us that he was disgusted with himself because of his addiction. He said that if he were in bed with a beautiful woman and a six pack of beer, he would choose the beer over the woman. He told us how his addiction pushed his family away, and forced his wife to leave him and take their kids with her. He told us that he had no idea where they were, or even how to find them. This addiction had Ken in a strangle hold, and it was obvious he wanted out. After hearing this, I felt certain that this man needed to hear about Christ, and that he needed to hear it now, from Allie and me. I began to explain to him what he already knew, that he was in a pit of remorse, of pain, and of perpetuating self destruction; a pit that was too deep for him to get out of by himself, and would continue to get deeper and deeper. As I said, this he already knew because he had basically told us this in not so many words. Then I told him about Jesus. I told him that while he cannot get out of that pit, there is someone that can get him out. I used the imagery of Christ standing outside that pit on solid ground, extending his hand to Ken. I told him how Christ had suffered and died as a substitute in our stead for our sins, and how he was raised up from the death that came from those sins to gain power over them; power that he freely offers us. I said, “Ken, you can’t get out of this pit. You can’t do this by yourself; it’s too deep. But Jesus can help you.” I explained to Ken how, in the power of Christ that he freely offers us, we can conquer sin (and addictions) and rise above it. I explained that all he had to do was reach out and take the hand of Jesus that He was offering him. With tears in my eyes I laid out before him the Gospel.
As he was looking at the both of us, with tears in his own eyes, partly from, I imagine, his acknowledgement that he wanted and desperately needed what Jesus had to offer, and partly from the fact, as he admitted, that we, Allie in particular, reminded him of his children. He began to ask her questions, and Allie began to open up to Ken. She started telling him things about herself, about school, about her own family, and then she came to the subject of her father. She explained to Ken that her father, when she was young, died of alcohol poisoning. Her father was an alcoholic. She told Ken that she would give anything to see her father again, and she wished that she could talk to him, get to know him and look into his eyes again. As she was telling him this, Ken began to visibly break down. I could see in his eyes and his body language that he was deeply moved by what Allie was telling him. Allie leaned forward and looked him square in the eyes; she got up on the edge of her seat and asked Ken to promise her that he would not do to his children what her father had done to her; that he would not leave them not knowing who their father was and not having a chance to find out. At this point, Allie had tears running down her cheeks, and Ken was all but weeping. Ken made that promise to her, and went on to tell her how much he still loved his wife, and especially his children. How he wanted so much to hold them in his arms again and tell them that he loved them. We talked for a little while more, about what, I can’t remember, and then the nurse came in and took Ken to one of the examining rooms where doctors could begin the initial de-tox treatments. We were not allowed with him beyond that point, since we weren’t family, so we said goodbye, Allie gave him her phone number and email and told him to get in contact with her when he was better, and we left. I can’t remember most of what happened the rest of that day, only that we both went our separate ways. She went to go talk over what had just happened with a friend and mentor of hers, and I went back to my dorm room to process what had just happened.
A week later, Allie and I met together again at Radina’s to talk about what had happened. Allie, through talking with her friend, had discovered what she believed (and I would agree, given the facts) to be the reason for this all having taken place. She told me that through helping Ken, and through Ken telling her about his children, she gained a perspective on her father that she had never seen before. Through Ken, she saw how her own father saw her, and loved her as his daughter. Through this incident, God had allowed her to see through her father’s eyes. As she was telling me this, the Holy Spirit brought to my mind an amazing, and simply breath-taking verse. Hebrews 13:2, which says “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” As I verbally processed this verse and what it meant, I stumbled across this truth: Angels, being citizens of heaven and empowered by God, do not need our help. Anything that they need they will get from God. So what is the purpose of “entertaining angels”? That’s when it hit me. God doesn’t send us to help his angels, he sends his angels to help us. Any time we “entertain angels unawares” we are helping in such a way that will benefit us, not the angel; the angel needs no help. We both came to the conclusion at that moment that Ken had been an angel from God. He had come from nowhere, had no past as far as we could tell (with the exception of what he had related to us), no real identity, other than “Ken” and played a very large role in what you might consider an act of God. He’d come to give Allie closure to her relationship, or lack thereof, with her father. God had reconciled that relationship in order that she could have a right view of what it means to be a father, and what a father’s love looks like so that she could come into a closer, more intimate relationship with God, her Heavenly Father. She told me later that she had no expectation of Ken ever contacting her. He had done what he was placed there to do, and gone on to whatever was next, whether that is back to heaven, or back to wherever he might be from.
On that day, I gained a whole new perspective on what God’s interaction with us, his children, looks like, and I know that Allie gained a new perspective on her relationship with God. That is the story of Ken, and how he, whoever he was, changed Allie’s life and helped me to gain a broader perspective on who God is in just one afternoon.
I count myself blessed to have been a part of this experience, and I hope that you too, through reading this, have been blessed, in whatever capacity God has chosen to do so. Thank you for taking the time to read what I’ve written, and God bless.
