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Posts Tagged ‘guardian angel’

Entertain Strangers

Posted in Ordinary Time, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on July 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I wonder if I would be a nicer person if I honestly considered that the person driving that car that just cut me off or the person who insisted on paying with coins in the checkout line or the huge person who just sat in front of me at the movies was an angel?

Hebrews 13:2
Do not forget to entertain strangers, for by so doing some people have entertained angels without knowing it.

All right, I know that’s far-fetched, but isn’t it unfortunate in our current age that strangers equal danger? All children are told to avoid them; women fear them in parking lots while men suspect nefariousness or come-ons. Most strangers are wearing black hats.

And of course, I understand that “stranger danger” is very real, but have we overdone it? Have we extended this assumption to regular people who might be visiting from out of town or drop by our church one Sunday or just want to help with directions–have we demonized them all?

I don’t know the answer.

We have a family friend who is very quick to speak to strangers. He usually feels led of God and because of that, he has no fear. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop and something terrible to happen, bu nothing has endangered him in the last ten or twenty years (both in the U.S. and abroad). On his way to visit us (driving up from Georgia with another friend), they picked up a hitchhiker (as is his custom). They talked at length and as he got closer to our home, he telephoned ahead and said we would have an extra guest.

When I found out it was a young man, generally high on something and recently out of jail, my heart skipped a beat. All I could envision was a complete takeover at knife point. My fears were over the top, but for safety’s sake, I did insist that they all crash in our basement guest room.

The boy was not an angel but he was in need and in the end, the two friends took him all the way to New York and got him connected with Dave Wilkerson’s ministry.

I am embarrassed that I was so afraid. I will never be like my global traveling missionary, but I do think I could be generous with my eyes, my voice, and my mind. I could be more interested in the stranger. I could be kind. I could be willing to help.

Something to think about.

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What’s An Angel to Me?

Posted in Eastertide, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 28, 2011| Leave a Comment »

I don’t know. There are days I think I should be making an effort to engage angels; they are, after all, part of the other “realm,” the timeless place, the God environment. And I wonder, do they have a hierarchy in such a place? Can a timeless, spiritual entity be spatial?

Hebrews 1:4; 6b
So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs. . . . “Let all God’s angels worship him.”

The angels and the saints worship God. And when the Messiah completed the task laid out reuniting human with God, Christ was recognized as worthy of worship, and sat, as they say, at the right hand of God. (Surely this is figurative . . . or is it?)

Based on scriptures, angels act in a great many roles throughout the telling of the Messiah story and his people (in both Testaments). Angels are created beings who worship, yes, but they also carry verbal messages to humans (and nations), they intervene and do battle against evil, and they serve God in a variety of ways from carrying out judgments to manifesting answers to prayer. Are they still doing these tasks?

But my real question is whether there is, anywhere in scripture (or perhaps in experience), an indication that I can have a relationship with an angel?

There is even (academic and not so academic) disagreement as to whether or not there exist Guardian Angels, that is angels which are “assigned” to protect or guard individual souls, particularly children. I know there are personal stories of people sensing or seeing such an angel in times of trouble or sorrow. There are also a few mystics who described interactions with their personal angels and wrote about it.

Can I be like George in It’s a Wonderful Life and chat up my angel? Ask questions, argue, complain, thank? I don’t think so.

But, before anyone gets indignant with me; I’m not saying angels don’t exist. On the contrary, I actually believe they are still among us, still doing the work of God in a variety of ways, still protecting, and still singing love songs to God. But I don’t believe they have relationships with humans. They are too different, too outside our human realm of understanding and perception. It would be like trying to have a relationship with the wind, even though we can see its effects and even predict its behavior, we cannot “know” it.

It is for this very reason that God manifested Jesus in human form, so that we could “get it,” or at least observe and hopefully follow. It’s specifically because Jesus offers a relationship that our experience with God is transformed. He is not the wind but a baby in a manger, a boy in the temple, a teacher on a hill, and a martyr on a cross. And after all this 3-D work, Christ passes along to us the Holy Spirit who dwells within, to guide us some more, to teach us some more and to ultimately heal us.

The realm of God is undoubtedly more diverse and expansive than anything here on earth. And yet, just as humans were made in God’s image, I wonder, is Earth (natural Earth) created after an image as well? And who knows, maybe angels are the creative spark. Something to think about.

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