Ramble for Kirwan Uniting Church Keeping in Touch pew sheet Christmas Eve and Christmas Day 2022

 This is the season for angels. They tell John’s and Jesus’ mum and dad that they’re going to have babies who will be pretty significant, and then they rouse shepherds in the field, “watching over their flocks by night” with the news that the Messiah has been born in Bethlehem. The poor shepherds are scared witless, but the angel tells them to pull themselves together and jolly well get down town to worship the Christ child, lying in a manger as he might be.
 Let me tell you, I believe in angels.  I haven’t got the foggiest what an angel looks like. As with most things to do with the divine, our imagination and consequently our language can’t grasp what the Holy Spirit means when God’s Word talks about angels. Probably not a muscled hermaphrodite sprouting ginormous wings.  But that doesn’t matter.

What matters is that in God’s economy of care for us, there is an agency which watches over us, guards and protects, and in the final moment of this existence leads us to the One who was made, for a little while for our sake, “Lower than the angels”. Satan knew this and tried to pervert the promise when he quoted Psalm 91 to Jesus, “He will give his angels guard over you, to keep you in all your ways”.
 So this Christmas, on the roads, in your homes, in aeroplanes, at the beach, in hospitals, while you sleep, may God’s holy angels keep their watch of love over you and those dear to you.

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