Angels are our teachers, our guides, our friends, and our companions. They are personally by our side, ready and able to help us learn and mature from each moment of each day. Seraphim know us intimately. They are very much like us except they don’t have physical bodies. They see our material forms. They understand our challenges. Admittedly, they don’t understand why we are so fearful, but they share our higher emotions. They love our art and music and even our humor (so long as it is truly humor and not viciousness passed off as humor).
Seraphim know our thoughts. They do not put thoughts in our minds or try to pressure us, but they are mind stimulators. They can highlight an idea that we have come up with—trying to call our attention to a good idea.
Angels manage the social, ethical, and moral environment of our lives to provide us opportunities to make decisions.
Decisions are the steps in our spiritual growth. One decision at a time we choose our direction and regress or make progress. I imagine angels having planning meetings (maybe at night while we’re sleeping), working together to set up circumstances where we must make choices.
Sometimes the choices are so simple.
Once on a vacation I stopped in a supermarket to buy something I needed. The line was long, so I struck up a conversation with the woman behind me in the line. It became obvious that she was burdened in some way, so I asked a question or two.
She seemed to want to talk. I listened. That is all that happened: she talked and I listened with sympathy and attention. Yet I know that it was the work of our angels. They brought us together so she could be heard by someone gentle and understanding. The look on her face and the relaxation in her body told me that she had needed my willing ear.
How easy it would be to miss the opportunity to be of service in a simple way that requires little time or effort. That is the reason we need to be alert to the opportunities we are offered each day…by our angels. They have an ability to bring people together like that. It is a shame to waste their efforts.
At other times the decisions are major.
When I was a young mother, I had stopped teaching social studies and was staying home with my son. I wanted a part time job. I inquired about taking a course at a university nearby so I would be able to be an effective tutor in reading.
Before long I received information about a scholarship at the university to get a master’s degree in the teaching of reading. It was a full scholarship from the federal government covering the cost of classes, books, and even a monthly cash allowance. It looked wonderful, but I had a small child. Perhaps I could do this the next year when he was older. I threw the brochure into the trash.
A few days later I walked into the living room and there on the couch lay the brochure. I picked it up. Instead of throwing it away again, I looked it over and commented on it to my husband. He was very firm, “You need to take this opportunity. Do it!” So, I did.
That decision redirected my life. I learned to be more sensitive to the person in my presence, increased my attention to the present moment, and so much more. The degree made it really easy for me to get a job teaching when my husband started his own business and we needed my salary.
And, by the way, waiting until the next year would have changed everything. The scholarship was discontinued, and we had moved to another city. A little angelic help to move a brochure from the trash can to the couch made an unforeseeable and amazing difference to me!
