Do We Have a Guardian Angel?

Angels: Our Strange Neighbors   by Ron Wenzel

 

Do We Have a Guardian Angel?

 

 

There was a picture that hung over my bed when I was a boy.  It showed two children, a boy and a girl, holding hands as they crossed a rickety bridge in the middle of a storm.  Above them hovered a huge angel that appeared to be protecting them as they went on their way.

 

Do you believe you have a guardian angel?  If so, you aren’t alone.  According to a national newspaper poll in September of 2008, fifty-five percent of all adults (even those who say they have no religion) believe they have been protected from harm by a guardian angel. 

 

Do we each have a guardian angel?  When looking to the Bible for the answer to that question, Chapter 12 of the book of Acts is frequently in the discussion.  In the beginning of the chapter, we find Peter is in prison, guarded by four squads of soldiers, and there was a guard sitting on both sides of him as he slept in his chains.  He was in a situation that was impossible to escape.

 

An angel appeared to Peter, woke him up, and the chains fell from his wrists.  Following the angel, Peter walked out of locked doors that opened themselves, right past guards who would probably be put to death if he escaped.  There is no question that this angel delivered Peter from certain death.  But was this angel “with” him all the time?  Was this “his” guardian angel?  The Bible falls short of saying that.

 

In 2011, a tornado in Joplin, Missouri killed 165 people.  I went there as part of a team to serve the victims five days after it happened.  At one point, I stood on a hillside, and every direction I looked (and I could see about a mile each way) there was nothing but sharp sticks where houses and trees once had been.

 

Major newspapers, at that time and since, have reported that many of those who survived this incredible destruction saw “butterfly people” who protected them from harm.  Many, but not all of them, were children.

 

Are the “butterfly people” always by the side of the children of Joplin?  We don’t know.  But it is certainly reasonable to believe that, in times of trouble, God may provide us with a guardian angel…even if it is only on a “loaner” basis.

 

 

Ron Wenzel is an author and the pastor at Rosewood Heights Community Church.  He is also an adjunct professor at Brookes Bible College in St. Louis.  He loves to talk about himself in the third person, and is looking forward to your questions and comments!