Listen for the Angels

Today my uncle is dying. He isn’t expected to live beyond the day. My uncles were people who looked on me fondly as a child and an adult—and teased me whenever they had a chance.  Uncles are proud of you and wish you the best in life. This day takes my thoughts to what that I’d written earlier this week regarding something Angela had said—

I’ve been thinking about what Angela said at lunch yesterday—that the children see angels. Her friend who works with terminal children speaks of how common it is for them to see someone that catches their attention the day of their death. “They might mention, ‘Mommy, there’s that lady again’ wherever they go during the last day.” Angela’s friend believes that these visions are angels—angels the children see, that we do not.

And if the children see them when they approach that most terrible translation—to leave all that one has known to go wherein all our hope lies—then they are here, but I don’t see them. Is it that I cannot or that I will not? Yet, the angels are here. They are sent by God. And, if I cannot see them, then let me feel them—to know they walk on each side to guide the path I trod—their only purpose, a messenger of the Most High. And if the angels be near, can His gaze be not far away?

“Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein.” Mt. 19:14

"For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. after that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.  Therefore encourage each other with these words."  I Thes. 4:17-18

This day, seen or unseen, the angels will make way.