Classic stories of angels portray them as inhabitants of the heavenly realms. But even in those stories, they sometimes appear in the human world. An angel heralded the birth of Jesus. On Easter morning, Mary Magdalene found two angels dressed in white sitting in the tomb where the body of Jesus had been lain.
Then there are the reports from people who see angels. And even the wildly popular TV show Touched by an Angel.
An angel is an individualized Divine Presence. It seems that few people entertain the possibility that angels not only visit the earthly realm through some kind of brief appearance. They come to Earth by incarnating in human form—as Earth Angels. And as the biblical saying goes, Some have entertained angels unawares.
I don’t think it is just some. It is practically everyone.
The Easter Story is of the coming forth of the angel, using that word to characterize the spiritual reality of Jesus. As the story goes, he came forth in what was supposed to be death. But that was the culmination of his coming forth through his entire life. His life story is of that emergence.
How does the angel come forth? If that phrase has real meaning and relevance to our life as human beings, what is that coming forth?
Imagine for a moment that what I am saying is true, that the inmost reality of us all is an individualized aspect of Divine Presence—an angel. And that most of us are entertaining the presence of the angel unaware. We’ve lost track of the reality that the angel is the most essential thing about us.
If this is so, what might it mean for the angel to come forth in life?
Remembering that the angel is, in essence, a spiritual reality, the coming forth of the angel is a spiritual event. It is the expression of the spirit of the angel into the world.
The implication of this for us, as human beings, is that the angel within us comes forth when we surrender to the spirit of the angel to allow that spirit to express through us. It is not by accident that we were designed to let exactly this transpire. So we surrender our human heart to the fire of the angel’s love, and that love enters the world. We offer our human mind to the angel’s light, and that light enters the world. We surrender our body to the life of the angel, and the glory of that life enters the world.
As the spirit of the angel enters the world, the Angel Presence is here.
Surrendering to that experience, we come to know that we are the angel.