Recognizing the Angels Here Amongst Us

The human mind works swiftly with its judgments and labels. That's what it's trained to do, to make sense out of the world by forever comparing new experiences to familiar ones. We see a person in a particular uniform and think "police officer" or "mailman"; we see a familiar face and think "boss" or "ex-girlfriend". But we seldom greet the present moment with a sense of wonder and think: "There's an Angel on an errand from the world of Spirit."

We humans have a tendency to want to organize our lives into neat little compartments. We may arrange our personal relationships, for example, into a clearly defined hierarchy. At the top of this pyramid there are our "special ones": our mates, close family members, and dearest friends. A block below we may relegate other acquaintances not so close but still significant, in some way, in our lives - perhaps co-workers, in-laws, more distant relations, and friends we hang out with but don't bond with so tightly.

By far the biggest group lies at the base of this pyramid: the uncounted multitudes that float into and out of our experience every day but are not given much consideration at all. We pass these people on the street, stand next to them in line at the bank or fast food restaurant, or deal with them on a strictly business level. These are the people who dwell on the periphery of our lives.

There may be dozens of reasons why we seldom give these people more than passing consideration. We might assume that we have little in common with them - that they are shallow, maybe, and could never relate to the pain that we carry or the ideals that we hold. In short, we believe that they have nothing to offer us; nor we them.

When we base our lives around these kinds of assumptions, though, we allow the grace of the universe to reach us only through certain select channels from a realm of infinite possibility. We cut ourselves off from so many opportunities for growth and learning, and cling to the familiar. We don't recognize many of the gifts that life brings us because we're expecting them to come only in certain set ways. In the process, we ignore many of the angels around us all the time.

If life is seen as a random accident, then it can be difficult to see the value in most human interactions. There's too many of us here on this planet anyway, right? It's only when we consider the possibility that every person has a soul, which is possessed of its own purpose and reason for being here, that we can recognize each moment and each interaction as something of potential value to us. Acknowledging - however tentatively, that the Divine Spirit may be within everything in this world will inspire us to walk through our days with open eyes and ears, alert to its messages.

I don't subscribe to any formal religious belief, but I do recall that Jesus warned us that we never know when we are entertaining angels. I believe that he was, in fact, referring to everyone in this world, and admonishing us to never turn a blind eye to any moment because the Spirit is always at work there.