An Angel Named Love

A meditation for February 2004

I had a dear friend in Arkansas who often spoke about the radiance of God’s revealed truth and the confidence of God’s sure grace. He, and other saints we have known, personified that truth and grace. Just so, we have walked with angels and, as a consequence, have come to believe in angels!

Both Old and New Testaments are filled with stories of the divine breaking into our humanity. Again and again men and women encounter God and experience a presence and a providence which cannot be explained. This holy mystery confounds us, but at the same time comforts us. The heavenly visitor or vision is often identified as an angel whose presence represents this hovering and
shining providence of God.

The angels we meet in scripture are messengers, sent to announce a judgment or a promise. Angels may also be adversaries, as when Jacob wrestled with an angel and exacted a blessing before he would release the heaven-sent messenger. The idea of each of us having a Guardian Angel is close to the truth, affirmed by the Psalmist, who spoke of God’s putting us in the charge of angels, “to keep you in all your ways.”

The reality which is worthy of our trust is that God’s love never lets us down, never lets us off, and never lets us go. May God’s angels bless you and keep you in all your ways and days.

An Angel Named Love

Look for the ways God’s grace attends us and I will show you an angel on your shoulder.

If I speak of a down to earth presence or of a heavenly providence, but leave off speaking of God’s love as the reality, I will miss hearing an angel’s voice and I will ring no bells.

And if I, voicing my faith, argue for a heavenly vision and reason that God sends messengers to mortals like us, but I make that affirmation without showing signs I have received God’s love and am inspired to give love, I will be welcoming angels unaware.

And if I entertain angels unaware and offer a life of sacrificial service, but reach out to touch others without genuine love for them, I become a messenger without a message.

Love, in its bright appearances, is patient in its revelations; is not jealous or ill-mannered, nor does love show anything but kindness and gentleness.

When love confronts us as a wrestling angel, it does not withhold its blessing, but heals even as it wounds.

Love, coming as a heavenly visitor, rejoices in each truth revealed, in each calling heard; love lights up the night with glad tidings of great joy.

Love, hovering as an angel of mercy, bears us up on its wings, believes itself to be the announcer of wondrous things, hopes for a joyful epiphany, endures the skeptic’s words.

Love never ends with our reasoning about how love works. As for visions of angelic legions, they will underwhelm us; as for heavenly language, it will cease; as for our knowledge of an unseen world, it will come to an end.

For we know only part of the story and our vision is impaired, but when the perfection of love’s work and purpose appears, the imperfect will fade away.

When I was a child I had a childlike faith in “angels watching over me;” I spoke then of angels as guardians of each soul; I thought I saw fluttering wings in the newfallen snow and heard angelic songs over a manger; I reasoned too that one day I would be an angel in God’s heaven.

But when I grew up I gave up these simple, childlike ideas as being childish and unsophisticated. Yet what I saw, as in a mirror dimly, I came in time to see clearly, truth as only a child can see it. Now I have come face to face with all I need to know about God’s angels. Now I know myself to be an angel, a messenger of God’s love.

Now faith hears angels announcing good news to all people; hope sees angels bearing us to a heavenly home; and love perceives angels as present in every relationship, to embody God’s love. These three abide, but the greatest of these are the angels of love.

Be awake to love and sleep with the angels

(Permission is given to reproduce, with source acknowledged.)
From Love’s Letters: A Poetic Book of Confessions by George Gunn
(Library Lane Press / Copyright 2001)