Messengers in the Dark

Their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father
When I was a child, I felt alone a lot because I was an only child. Most of the time, I didn’t mind it, being an “only” certainly had its benefits, except at night.
I confess that I was a little afraid of the dark. Being all alone in the unknown frightened me. I would go to bed at night and pull the covers over my head, sometimes crying myself to sleep. My parents were very concerned about this and so, to help remedy the situation, they got her for me, not a sister, but a guardian angel night light. She was about 8 inches tall and she was made of translucent plastic. She sat on the desk in my room and she had a light bulb insider her that gave off a very faint light. She glowed. She glimmered and, most of all, she was there, in the dark, in the unknown. I was no longer alone.
Later I became a very sophisticated theologian. I have the paper to prove it, but I would be a liar if I said that there are not times when I still feel a little afraid of the dark, of being all alone in the unknown. We all do. It doesn’t matter who we are, how old we are, how surrounded we are, how powerful or how rich we are, there is always a little part of ourselves that will remain, should remain children.
There’s no doubt that we boast and brag, that we bluff our way through, that we perhaps even begin to believe our own clever, convincing lies, but the dark comes as surely as an autumn sunset.
We know the reality of the darkness, whether that is our self-confidence, our guilt, our leftover pain of the past, our utter sense of worthlessness, our simply having no one, our loss, our illness. WE KNOW.
But we also know that into the deepening shadows, that angel comes. Angel means messenger and a messenger is only as great as the message. What is the message?
God knows and God cares. God knows all our secrets and our fears. God knows every wrong thing we ever did and every anonymous good. God knows how alone we can feel even in the crowdedness of busy lives. God knows what weighs upon our hearts as we lie in our beds, pulling the covers over our heads. God knows our cowering and cowardice. God knows and God cares and thus, the angel comes.
The angel comes, perhaps not in a blaze of translucent plastic, but
Perhaps in a reassuring hand on our shoulder.
Perhaps in the comforting words of a friend
Perhaps in a listening ear
Perhaps in a random smile on the street.
their angels in heaven
always look upon the face of my heavenly Father
And those messengers show us that caring face, that loving face, that face which speaks truth in the darkness of our lies.
And they challenge us those guardian angels to become what they are, messengers of God’s love to all the children, young and old.
Isn’t that why we are here?