Bad Luck in Disguise

 

Bad Luck in Disguise

Two traveling angels, Raphael and Uriel,  knocked on the door of the home  of a wealthy couple and asked if they could stay the night. These well-to-so folks had a big house with several vacant bedrooms but refused the angels' request.  "But there's a storm coming......"  pleaded Uriel, the younger of two travelers.  “Alright, you can sleep in the  basement if you want tonight only,” came a reply. “Just  don’t think  we are going to give you anything to eat.”

The basement  had a hard concrete floor, and it was drafty and unheated.

 Searching for something to lie upon, the older Angel, Raphael, moved some crates and saw there was a large hole in one of the basement walls: he decided to repair it. Before lying down on the hard cold floor,  Uriel asked the Raphael, “Why did you do that? These people were not exactly hospitable.” His senior partner replied, “Things are not always what they appear to be at first Uriel.”

The next evening found the traveling Angelic twosome resting in the home of a poor farmer and his wife. The pair were extraordinarily welcoming and hospitable, sharing what little they had to eat with their guests and even forsaking their own bed and allowing the Angels to sleep in it so they could have a good night’s rest.

At sunrise the following morning, however,  tragedy struck, and the farmer and his wife were in tears. Their only cow, whose milk provided their sole income, lay dead in the field.  The younger Angel was angry with his older companion. “How could you let this happen? The other day we stayed with a wealthy family who had everything but gave us no food and told us to sleep on a cold basement floor. But you fixed their wall. In fact, you cannot even tell where there was a hole. The farmer and his wife  have next to nothing but shared it all willingly with us, and your repaid them by allowing the cow to die. What’s up with that?”

Again, the senior angel said, “Things are not always what they seem at first,” he said.  When we stayed in the home of those wealthy people, I saw they stored all their money and gold in the hole in the wall. Since these rich people were so obsessed with greed and had no regard for others, I sealed up the wall so they would not be able to find or get their money. And last night when we slept in the farmer’s bed, the Angel of Death  came for his wife. I gave the Death Angel the farmer’s cow instead.

 

We've all gone through situations  at various points in our lives when something goes wrong, sometimes terribly wrong. But things aren't always as they seem at first.

 

Take Joanne, for example.

It was in the early 1990s and  she was a struggling single mother, unemployed and living  in poverty  in Edinburgh, Scotland.  Her  only support came from the Old Poor Law

The Old Poor Law system depended on local parishes to administer relief, causing considerable variation in the help provided. Wealthier areas could offer more support, while poorer areas had fewer resources, leading to inequality in the assistance  people received. Joanne got very little. (To put it in modern terms, you'd likely prefer to be homeless in Lake Forest, IL  than in Englewood.)

Then Joanne’s mother died, and she went into a deep depression. She called it her darkest hour. But Joanne loved to write and dreamed of being a successful author. She approached twelve different publishing companies before she found one that was willing to publish her story.  Many publishers at the time thought that writing a children's book about a boy wizard was  bound to fail. Bloomsbury Publishing in London was willing to “chance it,’ but the company told Joanna  to get a day job since it was doubtful she would earn much money from her book. (How’s that for a kick in  Harry Potter’s pants?)

Yes, Joanne is J.K. Rowling and when Harry Potter was eventually published, it went on to become one of the most successful book series in history, leading to global fame, wealth, and recognition. Rowling often spoke  about how those tough years shaped her as a person and a writer, and how, in retrospect, they helped her develop the resilience needed for her career.

 

My thanks to Rabbi Wolf who told the parable of the two Angels to me nearly twenty years ago. His message was clear.

Things don’t always turn out the way we want, but if you have faith, you just need to know that it was probably to your advantage. It may take some time for you to realize this or sometimes you never will.

But if you have a hard day at work, think about the husband and father who struggles to feed his family because he can’t find a job.

Maybe you find yourself wondering just what life is all about, asking what is my purpose? “Oh, woe is me.” There are many who don’t live long enough to get the chance.

 

And maybe, just maybe  you find yourself a victim of other people’s bitterness, ignorance, smallness or insecurities; Just remember things could be worse.  You could be those people.

Life is God's gift; make the most of  His  present.

 

Meme:

 

J.K. Rowling is not her real full name; it's a pen name. Her real name is Joanne Rowling, but she uses the initial "K." in her pen name as a tribute to her grandmother, Kathleen, as she doesn't have a middle name. Rowling has said that she chose to use the initials rather than her full first name because her publisher thought that young boys might not want to read a book by a female author. She also wanted to keep her personal life somewhat private, and the pen name gave her a little distance from her public image.