All About The Angels

All about the AngelsJohn 1:51 “And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”I saw a Bible verse yesterday on Facebook for John 1:5 “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” When I saw this, I thought that would be the verse for today.  Then, when I read the chapter of John 1 today, the story of Nathanael stuck out to me instead.  I was going to write about his story, and then I came to this line, and I felt like the Holy Spirit said, that is the verse for today.  So, I am not sure what the Lord wants to tell us all about angels today, but I am ready for it because I know angels are so amazing.  I have heard some pretty incredible stories about how angels have helped people.  The Bible mentions angels 273 times.  I was surprised at this.  I am not sure why. I guess I just didn’t realize how often they were talked about in the Bible.  I went to a “Theology on Tap” night at a local hotel, and the priest was doing a talk about the angels.  It was really interesting.  He said that each person who is born has a guardian angel and that all the angels were created at the same time.  That means God knew from the very beginning of time how many people were going to exist in this world.  That seems so crazy to me to think about.  I mean, there are billions of people on Earth, and there are more being born each day.  To be more precise, there are 140 million babies born all over the world each year.  That means there are more than four babies born each minute of each day.  That is a lot of angels waiting up there in heaven for a job to do.  Did you know you have a guardian angel?  I spoke to a friend one time who said she believed in angels. However, she did not believe that each of us had our own guardian angel.  She said that would just be too many angels.  Whether we believe it or not, we do, in fact, each have our own guardian angel.  Here are a few things I have learned about angels.  First, they have to respect our free will.  We need to give them permission to work in our lives.  If you have not done so, maybe just take a quick second and say, “Guardian angel, I give you permission to work in my life.” Just to make sure they know you approve.  Angels work for God; they aren’t going to do anything bad in your life, and I think you would be surprised at the things they can do in your life. I heard a story that Father Padre Pio, who is a saint, used to send his guardian angel ahead of him into any meetings that he had, and he would ask his angel to talk to the other peoples’ angels and help prepare their hearts so it would be a good meeting.  This can work for you, too.  When you are walking into a situation where you don’t know what to expect, or you are nervous or anxious, or you are worried the other person won’t be kind, you can send your angel ahead of you to speak with their angel and ask their angel to prepare their heart to hear what you have to say, or maybe soften their heart. I have told people about this before, and they reported good results when they have done it.  Give it a try sometime. What have you got to lose?The second thing I learned about angels is that they want to do things for you.  Their whole job is to protect and guide you.  They are sitting around waiting for you to ask for their help or for you to put them to work.  They are there to guide you, so ask them to help you make decisions, ask them to help keep you on the right path, and ask them to remove obstacles that might get in your way or distract you.  You can talk to your angel. You can thank your angel.  I am guessing being an angel is a pretty thankless job because we don’t even know most of what they protect us from.  If we don’t know what they are doing, it can be hard to thank them for doing it.  However, if we