Angels Unaware

“If your eye is generous, your whole being is full of light!” Jesus

Snow Geese coming in for a landing against the afternoon sun. It would be surprising if white-winged birds against the sun did not call up the image of angels for anyone familiar with Christian tradition and traditional Christian art. I do not know who first imagined angels with big white, light filled, wings. It certainly was not anyone intimately familiar with the Bible...where angels are variously described, and never described as we have come to picture them. They are either spetactular creatures, full of power, and inspiring awe, downright fear...right at the edge of our ability to perceive and comprehend (slightly beyond, if you go by the descriptions), or they go totally unrecognized...so ordinary that it is only in hindsight that those who encounter them become aware they have been visited. Angels unaware. Certainly the Snow Geese are unaware of their effect on our imaginations...but we do respond to the power and beauty of those wings with something like awe...with real awe if we see them with generous eyes. Not that we could or should mistake Snow Geese for angels, but whatever wakes awe in our souls is a message from God...and that is what angel means...the messengers of God. May God’s message of awe and wonder break through to you today, on this Happy Sunday. Another, lest literal, translation of the verse quoted is “If your eyes are wide open in wonder, your whole being is full of light.” Just like the wings of Snow Geese against the sun.