Heavenly Encounters

I plan to write again later tonight when I have more time, but here is a fun copy and paste story from my facebook:

This June I had the chance to travel through Uganda Africa. On one of my first days there, I met a little boy, dressed in ripped and dirty clothes. I noticed his big bright smile at first, but soon he blended in with the rest of the smiling... children's faces. As music began to play, I danced along, and had all the children dancing with me. The little boy who's smile I had noticed earlier, approached and held both of my hands. After a few seconds I freed one of my hands and encouraged all the kids to hold hands and dance. It only lasted a minute before they all let go and danced freely again. But this boy kept coming back, wanting both of my hands, and to have my eyes focused on him. I kept feeling guilty, that I was focusing on this one boy and not the whole group, and thus did not keep my eyes on him.
The day came to an end and our translators urged that it was time to leave the village. The boy came up to me one last time, holding both of my hands and looking as if pleading for me to give him just a few minutes of my attention. I held both of his hands, and stared intently into his eyes one last time. As I did, I was consumed with the feeling I was looking into the eyes of some one great, and wished that I had done it sooner. For a solid several minutes I stood there staring into his eyes, and he stared back, neither of us looking at anyone else. Finally the leaders came and said one last time that it was time to leave.
The little boy broke his stare first. He laughed out loud as he smiled and hugged me, then waved goodbye to me.

The next morning, as I sat with another person from my team, looking through photos from that day, I saw I had a photo with the boy. My teammate was the first to notice something on the boy's shirt. I zoomed in on my camera, and there I saw it. Some thought it was a necklace, some thought it was a picture I had edited, some thought it was a reflection. But I could not find any way to explain, the bright glowing cross on the boy's shirt. The sun was in the wrong place, he was not wearing any jewelry, and I did not add the figure. In that moment I was left wondering, had I just had a divine experience?

Maybe there are angels among us. What if angels are not what we imagined at all? Instead of a magnificent being from another realm, perhaps angels are there to give us a glimpse of heaven's glory. Think about a teacher, who all year long spent 6 hours a day in a small room with twenty students. By the end of the year that teacher thinks they have the kids all figured out. There are the future millionaires, the future criminals, and the future average joes. But how often are that teacher's assumptions wrong? Often twenty years after those students leave that classroom, you find out one of them has blown every one's expectations. And then that teacher will say, "I can't believe they were the one to do all this!"

If the teacher had known that, that one student would have been the one to grow up and be the most phenomenal, the teacher most likely would have devoted more attention and devotion to the student.
Just as the teacher could not fully foresee who would do what in the future, we also do not always realize who is standing beside us. I for one have learned from this experience, that the next time a person is asking for just a short amount of my time, my time is worth it, because, I never know who I may be giving that moment to.