The Heavenly Messengers

The First Day of Christmas: It should be no wonder to us that Angels - probably ALL of them - appeared to the shepherds to announce the birth of Our (both theirs and ours!) Creator's Son, Jesus!  Yes, they are spirits, but they took on some sort of bodily form so humans could recognize them. They probably led the shepherds to Jesus and sang heavenly songs in the skies for hours!  Imagine the glory!

Angels are mentioned in the Bible's Old Testament over 200 times and also appear in the New Testament.  They are individual and have names, like we do.  It was Gabriel who asked the Virgin Mary if she would be the Mother of God's Son.

Do you believe Angels are still active in our times?  I feel they are here, if only we recognize them.  Years ago, in the '70s, my big station wagon full of children and I visited my grandmother in Louisville.  On the way home to Danville (in Kentucky, U.S.A.), the car had a flat tire.  I had never in my life changed a flat tire.  As soon as I pulled over to the side of the road, and was wondering what on earth I could do, a man in a pick-up truck stopped behind us.  He came over and asked, "Ma'am, looks like you have a flat.  Can I help?"  I told him I would really, really appreciate it but I didn't know if the car had the tools.  (Talk about naive!!)  I directed the children to sit on the side of a hill nearby.  He said that he thought it probably did and readily got the spare tire out, along with the jack.

The kind gentleman quickly changed the tire and put back the tools.  I asked what I could pay him.  He said, "Oh, I don't need anything.  Bye!," and left.  He must have been an angel!  There have been other times in my life where help just seemed to appear from nowhere - angels?  What about you?  Have you experienced anything like that?

Angels on my mantel this Christmas season.

Angels around the Nativity Scene on my piano this Christmas season.  Many were made of ceramics by my mother and grandmother, most of the others were gifts.

My religion teaches that we each are assigned by God a Guardian Angel for life, to help us in our journey to heaven.  I personally hardly ever remember this. With all these good angels, sometimes we forget there are also the 'bad' angels, or devils.  But let's save that topic for another day.

Perhaps today we could thank God for giving us his wonderful angels, ask Him to help us remember them, and also pray that we could act like selfless Angels with our fellow human beings now and always!  God loves us all, humans and angels!