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Touched by an Angel Named Lambros
Part 2
"My wife is often disappointed in me," Lambros said offhandedly, blatently reading my mind again. He had this delightful round face with a generous sprinkling of crow's feet that sprouted around his eyes as he smiled. "She doesn't always understand my ways. Sometimes I come home without any money. Like that pregnant woman I drove to the hospital the other day. I gave her all my money. If someone asks for something, doesn't the Bible tell us to give it to them?" he questioned me.
I nodded, spellbound.
"Once I came home without any coat. My wife asked, 'Where is your coat?' I told her I'd picked up a guy who really needed it. The streets were cold. 'But Lambros,' she scolded me, 'I bought that coat for you as a gift. It was expensive. You have a lot of coats. Why couldn't you give one of your other coats?'" His crow's feet sprouted again. "'You don't understand, my dear. I must give my best when I work for God.' He doesn't ask us to give our worst, does he?" Lambros directed the last question to me.
I nodded again. My Higher Power was talking directly to me through a taxicab driver. The traffic thinned on the interstate and we gained speed.
"One time a man put a gun to my head," Lambros shuddered, reenacting the story as he told it to me. "I'd picked him up from a casino."
"'I just lost everything,' the gunman wailed, 'my wife, my kids, my house, my job, my car, and all my money. I have nothing left, and I'm going to kill myself, taking you with me. You're a dead man.' The passenger shoved the barrel up behind my ear.
"OK. All right." Lambros soothed him. "Let's drive. I'm a dead man anyway, so let's drive."
The guy repositioned the barrel to the base of Lambros' skull. "I'm not kidding. I'm going to kill you."
"I believe you," the Greek declared. "You know, you remind me of Isop. Have you read about Isop in the Bible?"
I didn't know if my driver was still dramatizing his story or asking me a question. "Isop?" I asked. Lambros continued without pausing, and I began to understand that he was speaking about the Book of Job.
"Isop loved God. Then the devil said to God, 'Of course Isop loves You. He has land and cattle and lots of children and good fortune. Let me take it away and see if Your Isop loves you so much.' And so God agreed. And the devil wiped him out, taking his money, his wife, his health, his kids, his land, and his cattle. Like you. See? But Isop still had faith. And eventually God restored everything twofold. It's true."
How could Lambros know that the Book of Job is the theme of my life? I began to understand by studying Job, after severe losses of my own, that trusting God when things are going well is easy. But to trust your Higher Power when the black holes of life swallow you and yours is what separates the sheep from the goats, the meteors (that burn up in the atmosphere) from the meteorites (that land on earh). Trusting God through times that are good and bad, successful and devastating, plentiful and sparse is real trust, not conditional trust.
"So I tell him," Lambros continued, "'Look. I'm not trying to buy my life, but I want to give you yours. I have $4000 in the bank. Let's drive there. I give it to you so that you can begin again like Isop.' So we drove to the bank, and I got out all my savings and gave it to him."
"You gave him the money?" I asked.
"Of course. I told him I would. What else would the Father have me do? So he began a new life. Gave up gambling. Got a good job and his family came back to him. We're good friends now. We have coffee at least once a week."
"Did he give you the money back?" It seemed important to me, although it was in no way the point of the story.
"Ten years later."
Lambros pulled up to the airport departure gates and put on the emergency lights. Handing me my bag, he frowned slightly and said, "Are you married?"
I shook my head no.
"Because I get the strongest impression that you will be married this year."
"You are psychic," I replied, as I slung my suit jacket across my shoulder and slid out the handle in my bag.
"No. But I feel strongly that you will be married soon. Believe me."
As the luggage wheels clickety-clacked along the corridor to my departure gate, I thought about my attempts to become more spiritual by trusting God about the big things (like the course of my life) and the little things (like not being obnoxious when I miss shuttles). I thought of God talking to me through a taxicab driver named Lambros. And while we humans are trying desperately to become more spiritual, angels are trying desperately to become more human, so that they can understand us better and carry messages from God to guide us home.
This article first appeared in the March/April, 1999, issue of Venture Inward and has been used by permission of the author.
Shelly Marshall is the author of Your Dream of Recovery and travels the world over on behalf of the recovery movement. She maintains a website at
Part 1
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