One hot summer afternoon Abraham was sitting by the entrance to his tent near the sacred trees of Mamre, when the LORD appeared to him. Abraham looked up and saw three men standing nearby. He quickly ran to meet them, bowed with his face to the ground, 3and said, "Please come to my home where I can serve you." … One of the guests was the LORD. (Genesis 18:1-2, 10 CEV)You are sitting at the computer doing stuff, and there is a knock on the door. At the door are three men and you know immediately that one of them is the Lord of Hosts. You quickly open the door and invite them in.
You offer them coffee and ask them to stay for supper. You get out the good coffee, the stuff you use for espresso and make coffee. Then you go down into the basement and get that package of thick sirloins you have been saving for something special. Your wife bakes one of her chocolate chess pies. You use the good Waechtersbach plates.
And you wonder. Why is the Lord of Hosts here with his angels? What do they want? Why have they come to me?
And even though you love the Lord, you are nervous as a cat. I mean, this is the Lord of Hosts here sitting at my table and eating my food and drinking my coffee. What do they want? Are they going to tell me something wonderful? Usually he doesn’t come just to tell people they are going to die. Not nowadays, at least.
What must it have felt like when Abraham realized that it was the Lord he was talking to, the Lord wearing a human looking body.
The bodies weren’t human, although he and the angels or whoever were with him ate Abraham’s food. But Jesus was God’s real incarnation on this earth. The other was a form, like the one Moses saw on the mountain when God told him he could only look on his back.
Looking at God’s back made Moses glow for days. Did Abraham and Sarah glow like that?
Was Abraham nervous being in the presence of a physical embodiment of the Lord?
I heard a man talking once who said one day he just wished that Jesus would come in the room and talk to him. He said he heard an odd noise outside his office and was suddenly afraid. What if Jesus did walk in for real. Was he ready to talk to the Son of God personally?
I have felt the presence of the Lord more than once in my life as I was praying or worshipping. But what if I looked up and there he was standing in the door, looking at me?
Hebrews 13:2 says, Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it. I wonder how many times something like this happened in the unrecorded history of the world.
I think I would be like Abraham: afraid but expectant. That would be something.
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