The Visiting Angels

This is the story of two angels who after having travelled all day needed a place to rest for the night. They knocked upon the door of a couple and asked for shelter for the night. The ill-tempered lady said, "Let them sleep in the basement down below. I shall not have them in the house." So the angels spent the night on the cold, hard and stony floor of the basement with only some left over bread to eat. One of them noticed a hole in the sidewall and patched it up. The other one asked her, "They have humiliated us by giving us this dungeon to sleep in; yet you have repaired their broken wall. Why so?"

The angel smiled and said, "You shall see." They moved on in the morning. When night fell, they sought shelter from another couple who lived in a small hut by the forest. The lady said, "Forgive us for not having much to offer you. Come and share our gruel and bread." The couple asked the angels to sleep in their own bed while they slept on a mat on the floor. That night, the couple's cow in the barn outside, died.

As they took leave of the couple who was grieving for their dead cow, the younger angel said to the older one, "The first couple treated us so shabbily, yet you repaired the hole in their wall. This couple has been so kind to us and you let their only cow die. You are so unfair."

The older angel said, "No, my friend. Things are not just as they appear to be. When we stayed in the first house, I noticed that there was gold in the broken wall. I patched it up so that the owners would never be able to find it. Last night, the God of Death came here to take away the lady of the house, but I gave him the cow instead."

Strange are the ways of God.


From the book "Sunrays for Monday" by Priya and Sanjay Tandon