Good morning. Mystery. God has revealed so much to us of who he is through Jesus, how he works, through the Holy Spirit. We’ve got all kinds of insights that come to us that can’t be figured out by the brain but can be held and understood in the heart. And there’s story after story after story in scripture about all these mysterious things happening. But there’s one thing that’s fascinating to me is we’re told through clearly stories in scripture that there’s these beings that God created called angels, and they speak to human beings.
The three men that told Abraham that he and Sarah were going to have a baby were considered to be angels. The voice in the head of Joseph when he was ready to leave Mary because she had been with some other man and was pregnant, you know, there was an angel that talked to him. So you get this idea of angels, but we don’t get any information, any direct thing about how did God create them, when did he create them. But we get hints. And the one hint I think that’s so fascinating about this idea of angels is that they were the beings that God created before the earth, before human beings. And then when God did create the earth and described to all the angels that he had, that he was going to ask the angels, who are beings much, much higher than humans, he had a plan that he was going to create these human beings and that angels would be his middle ground or his way, God’s way of being able to talk to human human beings.
Angels would take on the role of being messengers. And that sounds like a great plan. But then in the story, Lucifer, the greatest of all the angels, decides, no, I’m not going to do that plan. I’m not going to be one of those people that serve people less than me. A perfect example of a narcissistic angel, if you can say that. And a bunch of the angels followed him and that’s the origin of evil.
Isn’t that a fascinating story? And it’s more tradition than it is literally written out in scripture. So what do we do with that, you know? Well, it gives us an insight into two forces that are not us, not necessarily us, but two forces that we work with as we struggle to become all that God wants us to be. There’s an influence coming to us. This life giving messages come.
Angels can appear as human beings, they can help us out. We were told that each one of us gets an angel to watch over us with a special responsibility. But then we also have this evil thing that comes from bad angels. And we know that it always comes in the form of a critical voice, a judgmental voice, a violent idea of hurting someone or something like that. So what I’m saying all this to awaken you to is that there’s a mystery out there in terms of our life here that is not just between ourselves and God, but between ourselves and these other powers around us. Some of them are good, some of them are bad.
But if you don’t look at it with a clear understanding that God has destroyed evil, taken away its power, it can’t win. Then you can deal with this image. And you know that when angels, when you think of them, they’re those spirits that are there to inform, to enlighten, to awaken, to guide. And they’re wonderful. So there’s more than just you and God in this world. There’s you, God, the angels, and then there’s another group that we haven’t talked about.
But it’s those that have gone before us, that great company of people on the other side who are there with us, praying for us. So we have God, we have angels that are helping us, and we have those that have gone before us supporting us. We’re never alone and never without lots and lots of wonderful help. Have a great day.
