Reflections

Angels at Work

• By fannieb
• August 15, 2014
• No Comments

Theresa was floored when she found out that Gene and several others at work had taken it upon themselves to pray for her. How could she have been so judgmental? How could she have been so wrong in sizing Gene up?

Gene was a bald-headed white man in his mid-thirties who proudly wore a wooden cross attached to a brown cord around his neck, choker style. Theresa, a brown-skinned black woman, immediately thought skinhead when she first met him at work two months earlier despite the fact he had never done anything that would suggest he was a racist. In fact, he had always been pleasant toward her.

Gene and Will (another of Theresa’s coworkers) along with two other men who worked at the bank met every week to commune and to pray. Will had recently learned of Theresa’s mother’s diagnosis of terminal cancer and grew concerned for Theresa. So, he decided to tell his prayer group about it and ask that they pray for her, her mom, and the rest of her family. The group always assembled in one of the smaller unnamed conference rooms that lined the outer hallway of their office building. Wednesday mornings from 8 to 9 were not business as usual in that room. No discussion of how to sell more credit cards or generate more revenue would take place then and there. But business, however curious, was indeed being transacted.

Theresa had grown weary of the get more, be more, make more culture of her company. It was so cold and unfriendly – a very different culture from a few years earlier when the company was young, entrepreneurial, and had not yet gobbled up other banks and credit card companies to expand its reach and increase its bottom line.

So the “prayer chamber” as she began to refer to this group was heartwarming, mind changing, and refreshing to her. Theresa began to think that maybe she had been wrong. Maybe not everyone she worked with was callous, greedy, and self-centered. This was what she’d come to believe over the last two years, but this committee consisting of a finance director, two middle management analysts, and an IT project manager challenged this belief. It made her feel connected and gave her hope that when all was lost she would not be alone. These men and this prayer chamber produced miracles. Theresa’s strength during this time of anguish was one of them.

Photo Credit: Wonderlane