Angels: Invitations to Explore Thin Places

Angels are messengers, beings who bear tidings from God to humans. Thus, they serve as gateways into a deeper experience of God, unpacking the divine and mysterious, and inviting humans into that mystery. “Don’t be afraid” and “Come and see” are invitations to skittish, wary humans who only feel comfortable stepping into their own footprints, stepping exactly where they have set foot before. The angel presence invites exploration beyond the known and comfortable, exploration of the mystery of God. Angels invite others to an experience that is truly other-worldly.

Angels, then, hold this space between the heavenly realm and the earthly realm. This is the space Celtic spirituality calls “thin places” . . . those places and settings where the divine and the ordinary are in such close connection that the veil between this world and heaven is especially thin and transparent. Heaven touches earth. Earth receives heaven.

Angels announce a message that the holy and “spiritual” are hidden within what looks ordinary and insignificant. A baby born to a man and woman in a stable, placed in a cattle trough . . . this very earthy event explodes with meaning and significance . . . and is an event that changes the trajectory of human history. Angels proclaim the holy history hidden within ordinary events.

Being in touch with my own angel-within means seeing ordinary events as holy history (nothing is common and ordinary) and then bearing or heralding that message in my life-world.

To be in touch with the angel within me, I have to find that place inside my being where I notice the deeper, more interior meaning of things. Then, I find ways to proclaim those things in my life-world. These large and small things that happen in the run of life are invitations to notice what God is doing in the world, to attend to the work of God in me, in others, and in the world, and then to somehow let that experience be borne in my own being . . . through proclaiming it with my lips and/or my life.

The significant moments – big and small – which shift my interior life-stance are most often not noticed in the moment, for they seem much too ordinary or mundane . . . a conversation with a friend . . . the closing of a door that I wanted badly to be opened . . . the move to another job or another city . . . the moving away from home of children or grandchildren. These things that happen, whether grand or tiny, are what we might label “God-moments” or “God-experiences” – and usually we only call them by those names in hindsight, because they seem so ordinary and mundane in the moment.

Angels herald these God-moments or God-experiences. They bear the good news that God has been and is still at work in the world. So to connect with the angel within me, I must cultivate the capacity to see God’s action in the world, and then to bear that message to my life-world.

The angel within me is calling others to the mystery, to the good tidings. This is the part of me that is most interested in helping others to see, helping others to experience. So the angel-presence within me is given on behalf of others . . . heralding, announcing, proclaiming, messaging.

For Reflection:

Consider one place or setting you have experienced that you would call a “thin place.” Recall the experience in as much detail as you can that experience . . . what led you to that place or setting? . . . what was your experience in the moment (the people, sights, sounds, etc. involved)? . . . how has your interpretation of that “thin place” experience shifted or evolved over time? Do you have an ongoing sense of invitation today from that experience in the past?

Angels: Heavenly Messages Brought to Earth

The birth narratives are filled with angels . . .
• in the promise to the parents of John the Baptist, Elizabeth and Zechariah (Lk. 1:5 – 25) . . .
• in the announcement to Mary (Lk. 1:26 – 38) . . .
• in assuring Joseph that Mary’s pregnancy is legitimately of God (Mt. 1:18 – 25) . . .
• in announcing Jesus’ birth to the shepherds (Lk. 2:8 – 20) . . .
• in warning Joseph to flee with Jesus and Mary to Egypt, escaping Herod’s wrath (Mt. 2:13 – 15) . . .
• in telling Joseph to return with his family to Israel after Herod’s death (Mt. 2:19 – 21)

Angels are messengers who carry good news. They bear messages from God to humans. Most always, they embody the Good News . . . something significant is happening . . . something invites our attention . . . something is coming that will wake us up. They come proclaiming peace, joy, and glory (as in the scene in which they announce Christ’s birth to the shepherds).

In the scriptures, angels frequently show up saying, “Don’t be afraid” or “Do not fear,” even as they peel back the veil to uncover the mystery of God’s work in the world. The presence of the angel, even in its brilliance, may not be as fearful as God’s new order which the angel announces. Their announcement of a new future threatens the status quo and proclaims that God is doing a new thing. When angels announce a new future, a different way of being with God, they know that talk of newness and change stirs up anxiety and fearful clutching among humans, who prefer clinging to old and settled realities.

What part of me, then, resonates with these angelic appearances? The angels represent the part of me that is in sync with God, that knows God and bears Good News. This part of me knows and receives God’s truth, God’s goodness, God’s love at a deep, deep interior level, and then bears it to the world in word and action.

This is the part of me that is able to say to other people – and to the other more fearful, more anxious parts of my own being – “Do not be afraid . . . this is good news.” “Fear not . . . God is at work here.” This is the part of my personhood that is not fearful of the future, that steps into God’s preferred future with confidence and courage. This is the part of my being that does not run away from uncertainty.

For Reflection:
We rarely – if ever – see fully what God is doing in the world or in our lives. As we are ready to see, the veil is pulled back. Sometimes we require a “messenger” from God to help us see, to point out the mystery of God’s work. Consider a time when this has happened in your experience . . . that is, when a “messenger” announced to you something that helped you see more fully what was actually at work in a situation. Who or what was the messenger? What was the message? In what ways did that experience shape your life? your connection with God?

Angels: Messengers to All the World

Luke 2:8 – 14
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.

Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”


Each week during Advent, it has been helpful for me to begin with words that describe the character(s) who serve as our focus for the week. This week, we are interested in finding the angels within us. These are words I’ve started with:

• heralds – (Hark, the herald angels sings)
• announcers
• messengers
• bearers
• angelos (angellion, eu-angellion) = messenger, good news bearer (Greek)
• go-betweens
• mediators (“pontifex” = bridges)
• interpreters
• message-bearers
• mystery-explainers
• inviters
• separate beings
• crossing the veil (of the heavenly/spiritual realm and the earthly/ordinary realm)
• singing/music (their first language?) – “sing, choirs of angels, sing in exultation”
• comforters (“do not be afraid”)
• connecting (earth and heaven)
• proclaiming/exclaiming (a great mystery)

In the New Testament, the word for “angel” comes from the Greek word eu-angellion. The word is usually translated in modern translations as “Gospel”, or “good news.”

[It is also the word from which we get “evangelism,” which is literally “good news,” but which for many of us has been communicated as anything but good news. The kind of evangelism I grew up with began, not with good news, but with bad news . . . the bad news that I was a failed, incomplete, “sinful” person. Many of us are still stuck on notions of evangelism that did not communicate a message of “good news of great joy for all people,” but began with condemnation, and sometimes the fires of hell itself. But I digress . . .]

Literally, the word eu-angellion could be translated “good message” or “good angel.” You can see in it angellion, angel or message/messenger. So angels are good news bearers, message-bearers. This is what they do in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

So the beginning place for us is to discover the part of ourselves that is angel-like. It is that aspect of our being that is connected to good news, that bears God’s message, that heralds the goodness of God.

It has been important to me during Advent that in Luke 2 the angels pronounce in the good news for “all people.” What God does in the world is not for one person or group, not for one nation or race. God’s project for the world includes everyone, and the angels proclaim it to be so. All people are included. Everyone is inside. There are no outsiders.

I think the angel within us would be that part of each of us which is open to the other . . . so open that every person everywhere is included.


For Reflection:

Look over the words above and see which words or phrases resonate with you. To which words are you drawn? And can you discover times recently when that word describes something you did or said?