I just had the most remarkable experience. It involved one of my paintings and its impact on someone’s life.
It started yesterday, when I received a message from a young woman named Jamila. She had been pondering a remarkable visit she had experienced three years ago. While going through some tough times on the West Coast, she had purchased breakfast one morning at a drive-through and stopped at a payment station for her job’s parking lot. A voice spoke to her, telling her that she didn’t have to pay; it was Sunday. She looked around but saw no one. Turning back to the meter, she heard the voice repeat the message. She turned again and saw a homeless man approaching her.
“God bless you,” Jamila responded, surprised that she would say that to a homeless person. He smiled and said, “God bless you too, Beautiful.” Later she realized that he had called her by her name, even though she had not introduced herself. Jamila is Arabic for beautiful. He had named her.
She had expected him to ask for money but he just turned and walked away. She parked her car and waved for him to come back. As he approached, she offered him six dollars and one of the two drinks she had ordered. He accepted both.
He said his name was Joseph. “Like in the Bible?” she asked. “Yes,” he replied, smiling. His eyes sparkled. Although he carried a sign saying he was homeless, he didn’t seem like a homeless person. And he looked familiar, like her brother’s father. But there was something else about him she couldn’t identify.
“What did God say love does?” he asked.
Jamila’s eyes widened. “This is God talking to me,” she thought. She cleared her throat. “Love is patient, love is kind…” she began, quoting Corinthians.
“No,” he said. “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten son. Love gives.”
She stopped, awestruck. She had never defined love like this. He had opened her heart. “God is talking to me through you,” she said.
“I know,” he smiled. And then he looked into her eyes. “If a man says he loves you, he will give you his time.”
Jamila caught her breath. She had been questioning past relationships and was wondering what to do. “He is telling me that time is precious,” she thought. “It is all we have. When someone shares their time with you, they are showing their love. Be careful with whom you give your time.”
They continued talking as they walked toward her job, Jamila holding back tears. “This is God talking and walking with me,” she thought.
“Beautiful,” he said, turning toward her. “Do you hear what I’m saying? I want to make sure you hear me.”
She nodded. She had heard, understood, and cherished every word. “If I never see Joseph again, I know he was an angel,” she thought. “And if I do see him again, I pray God keeps speaking to me through him.”
They parted, and two years passed. On the East Coast, I was pondering a new painting assignment. A long-time artist, I had just received an assignment to create several paintings of angels. I needed to paint a portrait, too, but the angels came first.
But wings; the angels needed wings. I had never painted them, but I knew they were tough. A realist, I needed excellent reference material if I was going to get them right. I searched several sources but found nothing usable.
A few days later, as I neared the end of a morning walk, my thoughts returned to the wings. I stopped and closed my eyes. “Father, please open a way,” I murmured.
I opened my eyes. There, on the sidewalk in front of me, lay a bird. Curious, I bent to examine it. The eyes were closed. There were no signs of life.
With a flick of my finger I turned it over. It was an adult male tufted titmouse, a magnificent specimen, grey everywhere, in perfect shape.
I moved it again. The head lolled grotesquely. “Not so perfect,” I thought. Probably a windshield impact, breaking its neck. Recent, too; the body was still warm.
I frowned. What should I do with it?
As the words crossed my mind, a clear impression came into my heart: “It is a gift.”
I drew back. A gift? The bird would make an excellent model for wings, clearly, but at what cost? And could I use it? I knew the law—federal and state statutes made it illegal to possess any dead migratory songbird, in whole or in part. I could dispose of it, and I would. But could I use it as a model until them? I shivered. It seemed a bit grisly.
The impression came again, this time including an image of a scene I had painted years ago of a young man kneeling beside a drunken thug, sword drawn, wrestling with his thoughts. The Lord had delivered this man into the boy’s hands. The question for him was, what would that young man do now? For me, the same question applied.
My thoughts cleared. I would do it. If the Lord cared enough to dovetail the death of this bird with my small needs, then I would make use of it. I picked up the titmouse, my stomach only crawling a bit, and began snapping pictures.
Frustration grew. I didn’t have enough hands. The poses didn’t look natural. I couldn’t open the wings enough. They slipped as I closed the shutter. The pictures were blurry. The light was wrong. People were staring.
I prayed for help again. If this was indeed a gift, I needed help using it.
A shadow fell across me. “What are you doing?” someone asked.
I startled and looked up. A middle-aged man with a baseball cap stood beside me, his eyes filled with suspicion.
I blurted out my story and pulled up my website on my phone, showing him that, yes indeed, I was an illustrator. He looked impressed and began to listen. As I concluded, he sighed with relief. “I thought you were some kind of weirdo,” he said. I grinned sloppily and wiped my brow. Then I mentioned that I could really use some help. He smiled and reached for my phone.
We took over 100 shots that morning. It turned out that this retired repairman had an inspired eye for lighting and staging. He came up with angles I would not have imagined.
As we worked, we talked. He told me of his life and family. The subject of angels led easily to discussions of God. We represented different religions but had the same faith.
At last I set the camera down, but our conversation continued. Freed from the camera, I could now focus on his face. But it was distracting. The angles, the lighting, his animated expressions—they were amazing. “The portrait!” I thought. Was this man a dual gift? Could I paint him, too?
I pulled out my phone again and asked if I could photograph him while he spoke. I mentioned an international portrait competition I wanted to enter and said he was the perfect subject.
He nodded absently and kept talking. I kept shooting. Thirty shots later I put the phone away and shook his hand. I asked his name. “Joseph,” he replied. “Well, Joseph,” I said, “thanks to your help, I can now paint those angels. This morning you were an angel to me.”
We parted. I gave the bird a respectful resting place, went to my studio and pulled up the photos. Success! I had the reference I needed for both the angels and the portrait. With the model shoot for the angel paintings a few weeks away, I decided to paint Joseph first. Four days later I put brush to canvas. Five hours after that, I had my portrait.
After posting “Joseph Angel” to the competition and my website I determined to show Joseph the painting. But I couldn’t—the note with his address on it had disappeared.
Several months later, while pondering her meeting with the homeless man, Jamila received a prompting to search the Internet for the words “Joseph Angel”. Looking through the results, she found nothing of interest and was about to give up. But something impressed her to scroll further. She did, and my painting appeared. Her heart sped up and her stomach dropped. She clicked on the link and opened my website. The portrait was her angel. He had visited both of us.
She used my website to contact me. We shared our stories over the phone. “People say when they meet Jesus in Heaven he has a sparkle in his eyes,” she said. “Joseph is Jesus’s earthly father. I don’t know if this was Jesus or an Angel, but I am glad he came to you as well.” I fully agreed.
She shared with me a link to her online reaction. We pooled out experiences into this story. Our prayer is that God will bless you to be aware of the angels in your own life.
You can read Jamila’s reaction to Joseph’s visit on her Facebook page and my original post and the portrait on my website. Below is a slideshow of the angel paintings and the young man and the sword.
